Study Abroad Without Spending a Fortune: Alternative Funding Ideas.

Hey all, with the recent revamp of the bursary program announced by the government, I am sure that some of you are facing a sheer amount of disappointment and feeling like it’s a dead end to your dreams of studying abroad. I understand that not everyone’s family is able to afford in sending their kid to study abroad.

 Hence, this blog post here is to provide you with some alternative ideas and routes for you to still achieve your dreams of studying abroad with funding and methods that you might not thought of at first. It is here to spark your creativity and let you understand that there are other methods out there to study abroad without relying solely on the bursary program.

This post is not only directed to all the students affected by the recent policy change also anyone who wants to learn more about alternative funding to study overseas.

I believe that if you want to achieve something really badly, you will eventually get it somehow with some ways. You will be surprised by how far your determination can take you.

Okay, let’s begin!

Since the bursary program stated that you can only apply for universities in the top 20 category of Times Ranking, I will focus my topic on these schools. As I can remember, most of the schools in the list are schools in the US, some from the UK, Asia and Australia. For this post, I will concentrate on students applying to schools in the US and UK. So at this point of the year, I assume most of you already applied for the schools that you intend to attend and at the same time in the list of approved universities.

Here are the alternatives for you right now:-


Alternative 1: Getting some form of financial aid or merit scholarship from the university you applied to. 

APPLY FOR FINANCIAL AID:

 If you applied to US schools, you might want to see if the deadline to submit a request for Financial Aid have passed or not. If my memories did not fail me, a majority of the universities in the US have financial aid deadlines in February or March. So, act fast! Research and gather the documents that you need to apply for financial aids. Of course, please bear in mind that there are need-blind and need-based schools in the US and make sure you understand if applying for financial aid will affect your chances of getting in to the school or not. As I remember, there are only a handful of schools that are need-blind (application of financial aid does not affect admission results) to international students. And they are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Amherst and Dartmouth (pardon me if I missed out any). Hence, if you applied to any of these schools, definitely try to get your financial aid application IN by the deadline.

APPLY FOR MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS FROM THE UNIVERSITY:

 If the school you applied to does not offer any form of financial aid for international students. You can still try your chances for merit scholarships from the universities you applied to. It is fairly easy obtain information about merit scholarships with a simple google search. For example, if you applied to UC Berkeley just search “uc berkeley merit scholarships” and add “international” to filter out scholarships for international students. From a quick search, I got this website as the first result http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/aid. From there you need to conduct your own research and see which scholarship fits your needs. This same action can be applied to UK, AUS or any universities in general. Just search for merit scholarships for international students from the university you applied to and I am sure you will find some options out there. Bear in mind, most of these merit scholarships often do not offer full coverage of tuition fees.

I actually wrote a post about this topic some time ago here. Check it out for a more detailed explanation.

I also recommend this website http://www.desperateguide.com/ for universities that offer aid or generous scholarships for international students.  The information there is quite old (2010) but should be still applicable.

Alternative 2: Wait for your admission offer letter and apply for other corporate/government scholarships 

This alternative here is really a no-brainer and I am sure many of you already know about the many corporate scholarships out there. Organizations like Khazanah, Axiata, Astro, Maxis, Genting, BNM, Sime Darby and a whole lot more have been offering scholarships to universities overseas for some time now. These scholarships usually open anytime from March till August and often require you to have some kind of offer letter from a university. Since you do not have all your offer letters for now, what you can do now is to research the different scholarships to apply for and brush up your skills on interviews, presentations, Q&A, diplomacy and etc. Keep in mind that these scholarships have certain criteria (major, pre-u results, income, etc) that are specific for the scholarship. So, it is up to you to find out which one you are eligible for. If you do not know where to start, afterschool offers one of the more comprehensive and updated list out there http://afterschool.my/scholarship/. In the near future, I will also compile a list of guides for specific scholarships such as Khazanah, Axiata, Astro, Maxis and etc. in their different stages of assessments and interviews.

I wrote one for Khazanah a while back if you want to catch a glimpse of how these interviews were run. The format of the assessments might have changed throughout the years but the guides will still give you an idea of what to expect. Message me if you need other scholarship guides.

Alternative 3: Petition for JPA to continue sponsoring bursary students. 

This step here is a 50-50 chance but it might still work depending how big and impactful the petition turn out to be. Considering JPA is low on budget, affected students can try to petition for JPA to continue the bursary program for top 10 universities in the list instead of top 20. That way, it might seem like a more conceivable for JPA. If any of you are up for this alternative challenge, feel free to message me. I have some experience in petitioning for JPA to reopen their program ivy league dan setara (or known as Program Universiti Terkemuka recently) back in 2012. We used systematic ways for the petition such as scheduled office visits, phone calls, media publication, writing to politicians and getting support from JPN and MOHE. Although there’s no guarantee that this might work but who’s to say that you can’t try right?

Alternative 4: Attend a low/free tuition fee university I actually know quite a few people who did this path way. 

 If you did some research, you will realize that a lot of the universities around Europe offer low or even free tuition fees to their students. The only caveat here is that the university’s courses might be taught in a foreign language (like French or German) and you need to gain a proficiency in those languages first before attending the university. Many of my friends who chose this pathway told me that their experience has been just as fulfilling and have no regrets whatsoever with their decision. 


........If you're willing to go further..........

Okay, here comes the unconventional alternatives. These alternatives ways are pretty much creative ways to raise funds. The reason I am listing down these alternatives is because I actually know or heard first-hand about people that actually succeeded to fund their education using these methods.

Alternative 5: Crowd funding 

 With the new world of the internet and social media, news can be spread faster than ever before. It definitely isn’t a farfetched idea to try to fund your education through crowd funding. There are a bunch of crowd funding platforms out there but they are mainly based in the US. The two crowdsourcing platform from Malaysian that I know of are http://pitchin.my/ and https://skolafund.com/ You can browse around and see if launching a crowdsourcing campaign is something for you.

You can also conduct some physical campaign to help yourself raise funds.
I once used a crowdsourcing platform to fund raise by cycling 40km in a onesie suit in order asking for donations to attend a competition in Taiwan. You can watch my video on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2wvgqpApTo (It’s embarrassing lol but hopefully it will provide some motivation.)

Alternative 6: Writing/cold emailing wealthy philanthropist 

 I kid you not that there are actually a lot of wealthy people that are willing to lend a helping hand to people in need. I have heard of stories about students that write personal letters to the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong (Genting boss) to ask for some aid in their education and succeeded. With the power of the internet today, it is fairly easy to email/contact another person. Who knows, your conditions might move the philanthropist which might lead to an agreement of education sponsorship in exchange for a bond in his or her company.

Alternative 7: Jump first, fix your parachute on the way down 

This method here is obviously not advisable and one should take this path at his or her own risk. This alternative is to basically wing it and just attend the university without actually “having” sufficient funds for the full cost of the university. I guess this pathway is to serve more as an inspiration and motivation to spark your own imagination. I know students who actually only have funds to attend one year of university abroad. Nonetheless, they decided to take the leap of faith and attend anyway. In between, they work multiple jobs, apply for scholarships, do co-ops, trade stocks and basically anything to fund their cost. Some even took up classes online and sneaked into classes from other universities to learn software programming and graphic design to do freelance jobs in between their studies. These students essentially arrived in a new environment and manage to learn and game the system.

That’s all that I can think of right now, I will add on to the list if there’s more that I can think of.  All of the alternative methods can be applied at any given time even if you decide to take a gap year.

Also, you are free to message me on Facebook under the name “Dylan Ler” about any questions that you might have regarding anything that I have mention in this blog post.

Last but not least, I created a Facebook group for everyone who wants to gather, discuss, and collaborate together to try out these alternatives. Whether you are a bursary program student or someone who has a dream to study overseas, feel free to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1128609357180018


 Cheers!


“If you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you.”—Les Brown

US College Application Fit

It's that time again when everyone is busy finishing up their online applications to the many schools they are applying to.  One of the most common questions I observe people asking is, "how do I get into ___ college?" or "what are my chances of getting into ___ university".  One thing US colleges emphasizes is the "fit" of the student in their university.  What exactly is fit?  I don't really have a clear description of "fit" but here's what I imagined it to be like in my mind (don't take my word for it).

*In the admission office of ___ university*

Chief officer: "Ok, we are going to take 500 students for our class of 2018 this year.  Let's get going reading all these profiles."

And then the process goes on something like this:-

"First things first, better get those athletes on board, we need to gear up our rankings this year."
"Ok, take some musicians here and there."
"We need some diversity in here!!"
"International? put her in that pool."

"Build a nuclear reactor in his backyard?  But we already have 5 of them here.  Nah..."
"Look, this guy likes to dance in the shower, take him in!"
"Performed for president, meh....."
"Olympiad medallist right here, we'll take 3 of them, no more."
"Invented a cat-dryer machine?  take her in!"
"Stopping and staring and flowers beside the road? Cool, take him in."
"Want to take over the world?  Well, if he's our alumni, that'll be good. take him in."

.....

"At the last spot goes to the girl who just said she wanted to enter our school just because she loves our mascot!"

Well, my point is, it's really hard to know if you fit a certain school or not and that some school might like you way more than another.  So, I just want to remind everyone to not be afraid of applying to a school that you really like even though you might think that you don't have a shot at it.  After all, there really is no harm in trying--you never know what to expect.  Don't be discourage by score statistics, admission percentage, collegeboard forum admission pages and etc.

Just be yourself, write an essay that is true to yourself and hope that you fall into your fit school like a jigsaw puzzle =)

Cheers.

Khazanah Stage 2- Breakdown

Stage 2 is a full day assessment

It consists of a presentation, individual interview, group interview(with some critical reasoning) and critical reasoning (read and answer).

Presentation

For the presentation, for my year, the topic was "Should Facebook be banned in the workplace?" So your group will either support or go against the topic.

Reminder that while the presentation is done by the whole group, each person is assessed individually, so try to carry yourself confidently in order to stand out of the crowd. Do not be discouraged if someone suddenly comes in and steer the whole group as if he/she was the chosen one,  each person is assessed individually so don't worry about it.  If you have any opinions about the group, you can always voice it out during the group interview.  Of course, play nice and don't undermine/diminish your counterparts in the group.

Individual interview

The individual interview is a cliche scholarship interview, with questions directed to you to dig the most information out of you.

Questions range from: "tell me about yourself", "tell me about a failure and how you overcame it", "what is your proudest achievement", "what is your future vision should you work in khazanah" and other questions of similar fashion. You don't need to memorize a script but just select a few interesting points to talk about for the interview.

For more information about individual interviews, refer HERE on my posts about individual interviews.


Group interview

  

For the group interview, during my year, the panelist hands us a list of cards with two situations on each sides--in the front and back. Each person is suppose to pick a side and reason out why he or she chose it. Some questions are directed towards you about your group mates too; for example: "what do you think about XXX as a person?", "if there is a person you would like to eliminate, who should it be?", "which person is the strongest is the group" and "do you think XXX poses a threat to your advancement to the next stage?" Overall advice: play nice, get to know your group members beforehand and play each other's strengths out. Talk with confidence, play humble, highlight your strengths and don't bad mouth others in the group. 

Critical reasoning (writing based)

The last assessment was a critical reading (writing based) assessment. For my session, khazanah gave us a set of questions which was part of a survey. We were not asked to answered the survey but rather we were asked questions like: "is the survey effective or not?", "if a person answered (so and so) to question X, what is your opinion about him/her?" The questions are formulated to make you think.  Is also encourages you to speak about your personal stance/opinion about something.

So there you have it, a brief explanation of stage 2. I wish you all the best and good luck for your future endeavors.

The Longkang Mee Guide to Interviews

Ahh, the season of scholarship interviews.  Since most scholarships are going to have their assessments/interviews in this time range, I'll try my best to give some advice on what to do in an interview.  First, I would like to clarify that I am by no means a professional interviewer and my advice may or may not be something that you would agree on.  Nonetheless, I want to share these advice as it has certainly helped me in all of my interviews.  So, take it with a pinch of salt will ya. ;)

So here's a basic guideline on what to prepare for an interview (Longkang Mee style)

1.  Prepare an outline for your interview speech.

Scholarship interviews are pretty standard and you can pretty much predict the questions the interviewers are about to ask.  The first and most fundamental question for all interviews is the "Can you tell me about yourself?" Yes it's the ultimate cliche question and many of you might or might not know how to answer this question.  I used to answer this question with some really mechanical answers like my name, where I go to school, where I live, how many siblings I have and etc.  Now that I think of it, I would like to face palm my past self.  When you're asked this question, try to focus the topic about yourself.  After all, the interview is a process to extract the most interesting facts/stories about you.  So, before your interview prepare your cheat sheet(mentally or on paper) of your "Tell me about yourself" speech.  Try to come out with interesting points about yourself, something only a few people know and something that makes you unique.  If you're having a hard time figuring about stuff to talk about, you may want to start with talking about your hobbies and go on from there.

2. Don't be nervous

Every normal human being will tend to feel a tinge of nervousness in an interview. So don't fret if you're dripping some cold sweat or have raging butterflies in your stomach right before an interview.  One of my favorite advice that I always tell people is to treat the interviewer as your relative.  Okay, turn on your imagination gears and picture this scenario.  Here's your relative, an uncle/aunty that you're really fond of.  He or she lives out of town and you happen to not see him/her for quite some time now.  You finally met him/her and you're bursting with stuff to tell him/her.  And when you start talking to your beloved uncle/aunty, you just can't stop talking and your eyes light up with enthusiasm.  In an interview, you might get an urge or feeling to tell the interviewer your biggest achievements, listing down your achievements one by one so that you appear as the creme de la creme, the top pile of the competition.  But this kind of interview speech only bores the interviewer and shows that you're just someone like the rest. When you're giving your speech, do it  more to express rather than to impress.  When you're talking to your relative, do you really want to impress him/her or do you just want to share out your thoughts and experience and express yourself?  Once you have got rid of that psychological barrier of "trying to impress", you will find that you can articulate yourself better and your enthusiasm will take over.

3.  Always and always tell the truth.

Though this might seem like the natural thing to do,  I find that most people(including myself) try to exaggerate our achievements to put ourselves on top of the interviewer's selection list.  Truth is, once you're not telling something entirely true, it greatly affects your flow of speech and you're forced to keep track of what you have said(lied) earlier.  This can vastly affect your speech(stutter), body language and pupil movement.  All these signs can easily be interpreted by the interviewer that you're not telling the truth and your previous good impressions instantly goes down the drain.  Unless you're the ultimate con artist, don't try to lie in an interview to place yourself higher on the podium.  For example, if you placed second in a competition don't say that you placed first, instead, try to explain why you got second and how you learned from that experience.  Remember that the interviewers are humans too and that they might relate to you on a deeper level if you actually are speaking sincerely.

4.  Keep eye contact and give a firm handshake.

When meeting the interviewer, just give him/her a firm handshake followed by a short greeting of "good morning/afternoon".  You don't need to be like super polite and ask "May I take a seat here?" if there's obviously only one seat.  I mean, if I were the interviewer, I would be like "you don't say?" and might think you're being superficial and someone you're not.  When talking to the interviewer, always try to look into the interviewer's eye.  Don't go looking into the ceiling or at your hands/table/whatever when you're talking to the interviewer.  If looking into an interviewer's eye gives you the butterflies, try making some small finger movement with your thumbs or tapping your toes to help ease the nervousness.

5.  Always ask questions after an interview.

Usually after an interview, the interviewer will promptly ask you if you have any questions for him/her.  Here's your opportunity to ask anything you want to know about the interviewer and your chance to exchange the role of interviewee and interviewer for a brief moment.  You can now be the interviewer and be the boss, you can ask anything about the interviewer, the company or anything in general. Do not let this chance slip away by just replying "no".  By asking questions, it shows your confidence and your interest in the specific company.

Here are a few questions that I have asked in an interview(my own curiosity about the interviewers):

1.  What do you(interviewer) do in your daily job? And how do you like working in ___ company? (Axiata)
2.  Which do you think is more important? Academic grades or communication and networking skills? (The Star)
3.  Why should I accept this scholarship if I were selected? (Lion-parkson)
4.  How many hours do you sleep at night and do you think you are getting enough sleep? (Khazanah 2nd stage)
5.  I used to think that I am unique, that when I sit in a car, I pretend that there's an imaginary runner beside me jumping over lamp poles and trees.  I later found out that there were many people just like me.  Is there a characteristic that you think you have that is so unique that no one in this world share? (Khazanah 3rd stage)
6.  What is your motivation to become the board of directors of Khazanah? (Khazanah 4th stage)


Last but not least, I will try to publish a sample outline of the interview speech that I used in all of my scholarship interviews.  After preparing an outline, try to practice it with a friend/teacher/lecturer.  Also, by applying for more scholarships, you will eventually go to so many interviews that it would feel like second nature to talk about yourself.

If you're too lazy to read my whole post, here's a summary of it.

1. Prepare your speech.
2. Pretend the interviewer is your relative.
3. Tell the truth.
4. Keep eye contact.
5. Ask questions.