This could amount to $16,000.00 that you’d be able to apply toward your educational expenses!

That’s a lot of money to win for the small price of some TOEFL tutoring! ^_^

Restrictions apply (For example):
1. You must meet all of ETS’s eligibility requirements. To learn more about ETS’s scholarships, read more here.

2. You must enroll in at least all 4 of Strictly English’s Complete Strategies Programs (one for each section of the test).

3. You much provide documented proof of having received ETS’s scholarship.

4. This is not a cash prize. The money you win will be given directly to your educational institution on your behalf and will not exceed the cost of tuition for that institution.

5. You must be enrolled with Strictly English before January 10, 2012.

Please Note: Strictly English’s scholarship award is in no way endorsed by ETS or TOEFL. Strictly English is a wholly separate entity from TOEFL and ETS.

For more information, please contact Strictly English.

GOOD LUCK!

For whatever reason, if you need to take a TOEFL exam between December 17th and January 13th, you won’t be able to.

There is another option!

Although the TOEFL will be unavailable for a few weeks, the Pearson Test of English (PTE) Academic will be offering exams throughout this period. As PTE Academic has told Strictly English:

PTE Academic tests are available throughout the US through December and January by request. If you wish to book a test simply contact 1-800-901-0229 and make a request for a test booking and Pearson’s customer services team will try to identify an available seat in your chosen location. For a list of locations please visit http://www.pearsonpte.com/TESTME/TAKING/Pages/TestCentersandFees.aspx

Be sure to check directly with the Admissions Office to find out if an institution accepts PTE Academic, and what score you need. Their Admissions webpage may not be fully up to date.

Strictly English offers classes to prepare students for PTE Academic. Whether you need to take the TOEFL before December 17th, or PTE Academic later in the month, contact us today!

The rumors, unfortunately, are true.

Application volume at most competitive colleges in the United States hit an all-time high this year. The year before was also record-breaking. And the year before that? The same.

What’s behind this trend? Two years ago, we saw the highest number of graduating high school seniors in the U.S. That number is predicted to hold steady for another six years, and then go up again. Other factors have contributed to the application increase: a greater percentage of high school seniors are continuing on to four-year colleges; the average student today applies to many more colleges; financial aid has made attending college possible for many; and international students come to the U.S. to study in greater numbers than ever before.

With all this competition, how can you give yourself an advantage in the admissions process? Although it is tempting to use an educational consultant from your own country, who speaks your language, knows your customs, and understands the strengths of your educational system, it might not always be to your advantage to use such home-grown consultants. Instead, working with a U.S. admissions consultant (or counselor) is one way to ensure that your application will stand out. This is very important to build an application that works for U.S. admissions officers. So, how can a U.S. admissions consultant help you?

1. Consultants who have worked in at U.S. admissions offices know what can get you admitted. Those who have evaluated applications can provide you with an insider’s perspective. It’s important to make sure that your consultant has actual admissions experience at a U.S. university! A consultant from your country that graduated from college X doesn’t have the same knowledge as a former American admissions officer at that same college.

2. Consultants provide an objective opinion. If you ask your parents or friends to look at your application essays, they’ll be biased and perhaps not give you their real opinion. Instead, a consultant will be more honest when it comes to giving you constructive criticism. U.S. admissions consultants will not write your essays, but instead give guidance on what works (and what doesn’t work) to get you admitted.

3. You’ve got lots of questions that you need answered. Non-U.S. consultants might not have the most recent information to your questions or will not know what works best in the U.S to gain admission. For example, consultants outside the U.S. might value high test scores, but U.S. admissions officers might instead value other areas of the application, like your leadership, non-academic activities, and essays.

4. Consultants think creatively to help you stand out. U.S. admissions consultants can give you ideas about summer and extracurricular activities to make you stand out and appear different from other applicants from your country. For example, perhaps almost all applicants from your country play a certain musical instrument or participate in science research. While these are terrific activities, it’s not very unique if everyone from your country “looks” the same as you! Instead, you’ll need guidance on joining other activities that highlight your uniqueness and leadership.

EqualApp is not only a U.S.-based admissions counseling firm, but our counselors are all former admissions officers from highly selective U.S. colleges and universities. Because we deliver our counseling “virtually” – by phone or online – we’re able to bring all the advantages of a U.S. education consultant into your home for a fraction of the cost of face-to-face educational consultants, regardless of location. Our counseling packages are more flexible and affordable than any other alternative out there.

Hiring a consultant is an important decision – be sure to do your homework and pick the consultant that you feel will most enable your success as an applicant.

Visit EqualApp‘s website to learn more about how they can help you in your application process!

Let’s look at the timeline, working backwards from your application deadlines.

Many college applications are due in early January at the latest; some are due in early December. Even if your deadlines are later, the rush of holidays in late December can distract you while preparing your materials, so you should complete as much as you can before mid-December.

Putting together your application – writing letters, writing an essay, and so on – should take about six weeks. You need to leave enough time for the people who write letters of recommendation on your behalf, and you need time to draft and then revise your essay. Your timeline is now back to November 1st.

You also need to take the SAT by November 1st, so that your scores will be reported on time for your application. Students typically need 3 months of prep time for the SAT, which means you’re starting to study for the SAT in early August.

You should take the TOEFL before the SAT, which means that your last chance to take the TOEFL is in late July. TOEFL preparation can take 2-3 months, which means you need to start TOEFL preparation at the end of April – now.

Strictly English has courses designed for different levels of study; classes for each section of the TOEFL typically take 3-4 weeks to complete, depending on your schedule.

If you sign up by April 30th – today – you can take advantage of our best price on TOEFL prep classes: 50% off of your first purchase. See details here. The discount will 40% off of your first purchase if you sign up in May, and 30% off if you sign up in June. There will be no discount if you wait until the fall to sign up for classes, so sign up today to get the best savings!

Some internationals are convinced that a high TOEFL score will get you into the university of your choosing. For example, two non-native students are trying to get into an MBA program where the TOEFL requirement is a 90 on the iBT. If one student scored a 99 on the TOEFL iBT and another student scored a 110, then most test-takers erroneously assume that the higher score would get admitted into the university while the lower score would be declined. According to this view, even though both students made the minimum requirement, only the higher score would be accepted.

Luckily, this is not the case. Even if the applicant with a 110 got accepted and the person with the 99 did not, it was definitely not because the applicant with 110 had a higher TOEFL score. Rather, the person with the 110 must have had a better application essay, and he or she probably interviewed better. Application essays and interviews are where a student is critiqued on whether he or she will be able to excel in a university classroom. For example, an essay on the TOEFL with a perfect score is at best a C+ essay in a university classroom. TOEFL graders have different criteria about what makes a good essay than admission officers have.

To recap: If the applicant who scored a 99 submitted a great application essay while the applicant who scored a 110 wrote a terrible, or even a mediocre, application essay, then the score of 99 would be admitted and the 110 would be declined acceptance. The perspective of most American college admissions officers is that the applicant who scored 99 would be admitted because he or she achieved the minimum TOEFL requirement and had a good application essay. This applicant had two positive points while the applicant with the 110 only had one positive point (a high TOEFL score, but a poor essay). Remember there are a lot of people who speak perfect English, but are not capable of college-level thinking.

Having now explained why a higher TOEFL score won’t help you get into college, there are two possible caveats to this rule. One, the Speaking section of the TOEFL exam is important to admissions. A high Speaking sub-score will benefit the student applying to schools because verbal articulation plays a vital role in the university classroom. Your TOEFL’s overall score does not need to be higher than the requirement, but the Speaking score must be as high as possible if you want to sound your best in the admissions interview and in the classroom. Also, a high overall TOEFL score may be vital to the applicant indirectly. The preparation needed to acquire a top TOEFL score does not only develop one’s English skills but also his or her communication skills in general. If applicants can harness these skills during their TOEFL preparation, then they have a higher chance of putting together a competitive and outstanding application packet.

So a higher TOEFL score will not directly improve your chances of acceptance, but the skills you learn in order to get a higher TOEFL score might make all the difference in how you present yourself in your written and spoken communication to the school.

TRANSLATION: Before I took Strictly English’s course, I had taken the TOEFL twice. The first time I got a 93 and the second a 94, far below the 100 points I needed. I started my course with Strictly English on September 29th and on october 9th, I scored 103. The big difference between Strictly English and another courses is that they master the format and methodology of the exam, and they tell you exactly how you have to answer in which question. In the exam I was very relaxed and confident. As a result, in only ten days, I got the score I want and that I had been pursuing for three months. I really believe that Strictly English is the better choice both in quality and price. Once you`ve tried it, you will never regret it! RFMM, Porto Alegre – Brazil. October, 2010

On the TOEFL, six different  raters evaluate your Speaking responses, and they cannot be swayed by your smile or your tears to give you a higher grade because they feel bad for you.  I know IELTS says that they train their raters to be objective, but I just don’t see how you can coldly grade someone very low who is clearly nervous or afraid.  I would hope people are more compassionate than that, but I would also hope that a test taker doesn’t get a higher grade than their ability just because a rater feels sorry for them.

Dear TOEFL Test Taker,

Thank you for taking the TOEFL® Internet-based Test (TOEFL iBT™). This message is to inform you of a change in ETS policy regarding verification of scores by institutions and agencies.

Effective July 2009, if you provide an institution or agency with your score information and/or TOEFL registration number, you are giving ETS permission to allow that institution or agency to verify your scores.

If you do not want an institution or agency to have access to your score information, do not provide them with information about your scores or your TOEFL registration number.

You can read more about this change at www.ets.org/toefl under Test Takers, Internet-based Test, Scores, Policies.

When I was a boarding school admission officer, the range of questions I would answer from families would sometimes surprise me. However, there were some concerns that would repeatedly surface. For students, as much as they might be interested in the idea of going away to boarding school, they were usually very concerned about leaving their friends from home. For parents, there were always questions about how their child would be supported and guided when they, as parents, were not there to do that themselves.

Of course there is not one set answer to either of these concerns, as they are particular to the individual student and to the individual school. Therefore, it’s most important to keep your eyes and ears open when visiting a school to see how these questions will best be answered for you. As a student you know best what makes you feel comfortable. Would you rather be a large fish in a small pond or doesn’t that matter to you? Is there something in particular that you would like to participate in at your next school? Maybe a single-sex environment is more comfortable for you than one that is co-ed. Perhaps you love the idea of “dressing up” for school in khakis and a blazer or a skirt and jacket; on the other hand, it’s quite possible that you would feel much more comfortable in different clothes.

The truth is that while traditional boarding schools are college-preparatory in nature, there will be many variations on this theme. You might be very conscious of the names of some schools, yet the best fit for you may be a school you have never heard about before. A visit to your schools of interest is most important. Ask to meet a coach or instructor of a sport, activity or of a class that interests you. Ask your student tour guide what his/her transition was like to boarding school. Ask your admission officer all of the additional questions you have to see how you might fit into this particular place.

Boarding schools are full of students who can become lifelong friends like your friends at home. They are also designed to be places that are supportive and guide students in their pursuits of intellectual and extra-curricular interest. It’s all about finding the right “fit.”

If you are considering an American college education as a non-US citizen, don’t limit yourself by applying to only the “big name” institutions.

A good example of this bias came to our educational consulting office this morning from China:

“My son wants to go to USA for the high school and the college from Beijing, China. We are hoping for entry to the top 20 universities in USA. To get this done easily we decide to spend the high school in USA. He had taken a tours to visit 10 famous university and likes MIT, Princeton, and Yale very much.”

This is actually a very typical inquiry. Whether they come from China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, England, Australia, Panama, Argentina, or any other country for that matter, prospective students and their families come with “brand name biases.” Most have either only heard of the most prominent colleges (like those listed in the inquiry above), or have decided in their own minds that it is only worth pursuing an American college education if it’s at one of these “famous” institutions.

While I do not intend to crush dreams, suppress ambitions, or change others’ plans, I feel it is necessary to present the reality so that these prospective students and their families can make more informed decisions.

Here are some facts to consider:

• There are many tier three colleges in the US with a quality of education, as well as of prestige as those on the lists of the top 10, 20, or even 50 US universities.
• Application volume is still high relative to prior generations, especially due to the movement of applications online. As a result, acceptance rates are considerably lower. Colleges mentioned in the above inquiry generally end up accepting no more than 7-15% of all applicants … and those applicants are collectively credentialed well above the norm to begin with.
• The currency imbalance has caused many international students to study in the US for much less money. Therefore international demand is up as well.
• You gain no advantage by applying to the same colleges to which your country-mates apply.
• Attending a top or “famous” private school in the US does not guarantee admission at the aforementioned colleges.

So, now that you have some of the basics and perhaps a slightly new perspective on American colleges, what can you do to more successfully navigate the admissions process?

1. Open up your scope of college options! Beware of lists such as the Shanghai Jiao Tong Rankings in Asia – they are not focused on individual student needs and don’t necessarily give you a truly accurate picture from afar. Besides, in my opinion, it doesn’t do you much good if everyone is operating off the same list in your geography. You will need to do more research, perhaps enlisting some help to do so, but it is well worth the time and effort in the end. As a hiring manager, there are many brands beyond the “famous” ones on a resume that stand to impress me.
2. At the same time, I certainly won’t fully minimize the importance of name brands since they do matter in some domains… you just have to consider which domains are most relevant. If a student is planning on ultimately taking a job in the US, brand name will mean something very different from a scenario where a student is likely returning to his/her home country for work. Carefully consider and discuss the longer-term outlook.
3. Differentiate yourself as a student. US colleges are not looking for generalists these days. They want specialists… those students who have demonstrated a commitment to thoroughly studying one academic topic. Again, extending the scope beyond institutions to which peers are applying immediately creates differentiation as well.
4. Most importantly, consider the fit of a college (and a private school if you decide to get an earlier start in the US system) before anything. Would you rather be a miserable student at Harvard or thrive at a slightly lesser known (but still top quality) institution? Most studies show that the latter student is more successful in the end. Socialization, acquiring work skills and ethics, and gaining confidence and self-advocacy skills, along with building productive relationships, are considered integral assets in the college experience here in the US.

The bottom line is that brand names do matter in the US college realm … but only to a certain extent. My experience tells me that prospective international students can achieve much greater success in both the admissions process and post-matriculation by merely opening up their minds a bit more.

For additional insights into both college and private school admissions, feel welcome to visit our educational consulting blog. For information on educational consulting services offered through companies, visit EnCompass Education.