The New York Times has a special on Grad School. Some topics they tackle:
Like it or not, these colleges have outsize influence on American society. So their admissions policies don’t matter just to high school seniors; they’re a matter of national interest.
More than seven years ago, a 44-year-old political scientist named Anthony Marx became the president of Amherst College, in western Massachusetts, and set out to change its admissions policies. Mr. Marx argued that elite colleges were neither as good nor as meritocratic as they could be, because they mostly overlooked lower-income students.
For all of the other ways that top colleges had become diverse, their student bodies remained shockingly affluent. At the University of Michigan, more entering freshmen in 2003 came from families earning at least $200,000 a year than came from the entire bottom half of the income distribution. At some private colleges, the numbers were even more extreme.
In his 2003 inaugural address, Mr. Marx — quoting from a speech President John F. Kennedy had given at Amherst — asked, “What good is a private college unless it is serving a great national purpose?”
On Sunday, Mr. Marx presided over his final Amherst graduation. This summer, he will become head of the New York Public Library. And he can point to some impressive successes at Amherst.
More than 22 percent of students now receive federal Pell Grants (a rough approximation of how many are in the bottom half of the nation’s income distribution). In 2005, only 13 percent did. Over the same period, other elite colleges have also been doing more to recruit low- and middle-income students, and they have made some progress.
It is tempting, then, to point to all these changes and proclaim that elite higher education is at long last a meritocracy. But Mr. Marx doesn’t buy it. If anything, he worries, the progress has the potential to distract people from how troubling the situation remains.
When we spoke recently, he mentioned a Georgetown University study of the class of 2010 at the country’s 193 most selective colleges. As entering freshmen, only 15 percent of students came from the bottom half of the income distribution. Sixty-seven percent came from the highest-earning fourth of the distribution. These statistics mean that on many campuses affluent students outnumber middle-class students.
“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”
UNITED KINGDOM
www.aboutus.org/Britain-Info.org
www.fco.gov.uk/en/
This British Embassy answers most questions you will have about the United Kingdom.
www.hero.ac.uk/uk/studying/international_students__guide.cfm
Describes itself as the official online gateway to Higher Education and Research in the UK. There's a specific section for international students.
USA
www.edupass.org
EduPass gives a good introduction to student issues like housing, visas, credential evaluation, American history and culture. Also provides a list of US colleges and universities that give financial aid to the greatest number of international students.
www.usjournal.com
Provides a search tool for campuses in the US based on academic level, course, amount you can pay and geographic preference. Lists education fairs but unfortunately, there's none for the Philippines.
www.iie.org
The Institute of International Education website provides detailed descriptions of the institute's grant programs for US and international students to study in the US.
http://exchanges.state.gov
Government grants, fellowships and student exchanges for international students to study in the US. Includes link to Fulbright Program.
www.abroadplanet.com/schol1.html
Aside from being a survival guide for international students, it also provides information on scholarships available to them.
www.collegeboard.com
Links on how to prepare for college (SAT, etc.), finding a college, applying for college and paying for it. Targeted towards undergrads.
www.isoa.org
Insternational Student Organization's information health insurance for foreign students and non-US citizens.
www.aauw.org/education/fga/fellowships_grants/international.cfm
The AAUW Education Foundation offers graduate fellowships to women with Bachelor's degrees (or the equivalent). Candidates cannot be citizens or permanent residents of the US. These fellowships are meant to support graduate students writing doctoral dissertations and post-doctoral scholars conducting research in the United States. The fellowship for 2009 schoolyear has passed.
For foreign students, the decision to leave or stay in the country where they studied is a life changing one. When I first arrived in 1996, my plan was to get my MA, maybe get some work experience and hurry back home to my family. Thirteen years later, I'm still here. And there is still the urge to move back to the Philippines. With graduation coming up, it will be time for students to decide if they should stay or go, to help with your decision making process, I would like to share an excerpt from an eloquent piece by Butch Dalisay. He delivered the speech to departing Fulbright scholars in May 2006 where he revealed his experiences and thoughts as a Fulbright scholar himself. The full text is in his blog: http://homepage.mac.com/jdalisay/blog/PenmanMay06.html. I recommend visiting his blog to read not only the speech but also the feedback he received.
Today, with satellite TV and the Internet, the actual experience of going to America might almost be anticlimactic for many. I’m sure that many of you have been there before and might look at this forthcoming trip as just another one in the course of business. In some ways, it will; America has been so demystified for us by the media and by Hollywood that we think we know it much too well.
On the other hand, the marvel of America is that while it can prove to be very small, it can also be very large—much larger than the media and Hollywood can make it to be, in the realm of the personal encounters and experiences to which you and your imagination will be delivered by that 747. The American people are a fabulously, sometimes perplexingly, diverse lot, blessed with the capability of fitting into neat stereotypes and then just as quickly breaking out of them.
Even the Filipino rich can learn in and from America. A few months ago I spoke in this vein before a group of American educational counselors who had come here to recruit the sons and daughters of affluent Filipinos for their schools. I remember a palpably mutual sense of embarrassment over our awareness of that fact. But then I told them that one of the best things our young patricians could do would be to study in America—where they could learn to tie their own shoelaces, cook their own meals, and learn something about the fundamental equality of people under the law.
Some of you—if not most or even all of you—will learn to love America, warts and all. It’s not a difficult place to love or learn to love, like the rich neighbor you grew up with and sort of had a silent crush on, whom you suddenly find yourself going out to the prom or on a date with.
But to go back to my first message: love America all you please, but never forget where your home is, which is here—not even here in 21st century Makati, but in those parts of our country which languish in the 20th and even the 19th centuries. We go to the great schools of America not just to improve our lives but theirs—those Filipinos who cannot even read, or are too hungry and tired from work to read. We are their emissaries, their agents, their speaking voices in a world so caught up in wealth and newness that it can despise and dismiss the ancient pains and plaints of the inarticulate poor.
You can swear today that your commitment will never waver, but try not to speak too soon. The test and the temptation are part of the experience. You will come across or even be offered attractive jobs and opportunities for postgraduate work. Some of you might even find that ideal—or, well, that acceptable—husband or wife who somehow managed to elude you for so long.
You can make all kinds of arguments, justifications, and rationalizations: my life circumstances have changed; I’m no longer the same person who made that promise; I can find the money to pay back whatever I owe the program or my university; our facilities back home are too primitive for the kind of research I need to do; my department has forgotten all about me; the political situation back home is too volatile for my safety and that of my family. All of these could be true—and in the end, all of them would still be, in your heart of hearts, false.
None of these conditions exist in the fine print of our contracts with our people; we pledge to learn, to return, and to serve unconditionally, as our way of saying “thank you” for all the new knowledge we will be privileged to gain—for all the brilliant autumns and the showery springs ahead of you, for all the lectures that will leave you breathless, for all the bottomless libraries,
for all the summer frolic on the beaches of another ocean, for the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the sunsets of San Diego.
Again, for all these, study well, enjoy America—then come home to say
“thank you.”
Butch Dalisay
Philippine Star
May 22,2006
The clinic where Jose Rizal worked under the direction of oculist Otto Becker. 
Our guides are simple introductions to the cities we think students are most likely to go to school. In the US, we focused on the following cities: New York, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco and Chicago. Outside the US, we focused on Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane), Spain (Madrid and Salamanca), United Kingdom (London and Oxford), Japan (Tokyo), France (Paris) and Switzerland (Lausanne).
We asked students who lived and studied in these cities to share their insights and tips on how to survive in their respective cities. If you want a more comprehensive guide - feel free to check out are the usual guidebooks (Frommers, Fodors, Lonely Planet, etc.) with their corresponding websites.
Once we figure out how to post an excel file on our blog, we will have all the guides in one document but for now, we have to post each city individually.
First city we're posting: Boston.
It's not surprising international students are faced with a dilemna after they complete their studies and work programs abroad. After reading a Washington Post article about chinese students confronted with the need to stay (who will take care of parents when they leave?) and pursuing a career abroad (personal fulfillment with career), I'm struck with the similarity with Filipino sensibilities. I also found it interesting how the parents felt their kids would have made a better life in China (contemporaries who stayed have a car, house and families already) if they stayed on instead of working in the US.
We discussed this in a previous section (Ch. 9B What to do After) if you want to read more about the considerations for leaving or staying: Therese Ng's essay about her decision to return to the Philippines and an interview with Carmela Navarra, Constance Uy and Paul Avinante about their decision to continue living abroad.
Here's the link to the Feb. 4 issue in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020403219.html?sub=AR
We know the guide isn't perfect and we want it to be as helpful as possible. If you think we missed a topic or would like something added (photos maybe?) or if you have any tips yourself, please let us know. We would like to hear from you.
We're preparing our city guides and it should be posted soon.
