I spent my entire freshman year of high school dreaming about attending New York University (NYU). I didn’t even consider it a dream; to me, it was reality. I had the mindset that I would do everything I possibly could to be accepted to that school, so I could live out the glamorous life of a journalism student in NYC. What was less than glamorous, however, was overcoming the many barriers that came with applying to an American school internationally. Whether it was the lack of financial aid, the job restrictions, the unfamiliar standardized tests, or the “competitive course load”, as NYU liked to put it, I knew that I was in for a long and painful preparation to get into my dream school.
Before beginning the college application process, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if I wanted to apply to an American school. My defining moment was the day I was sitting in the dentist’s chair, slowly drifting away from reality (they gave me a very large dose of laughing gas).I was about to receive eight shots of Novocaine, and have three teeth pulled out. I was shaking from nerves, so my dentist told me to “go to my happy place.” While most people would drift away to a beach on a deserted island, tropical drink in hand and loaded with a ton of SPF, I planted myself on the NYU campus, juggling textbooks with one arm and my Starbucks white chocolate mocha in the other. If this was my happy place in a time of stress, I must be destined to go there, right?
After that, I started doing my research on how to apply to an American school. Little did I know, American universities cost much more than those in Canada, specifically private universities like NYU. I was looking at $50K+ a year, excluding room and board. I was used to people complaining about paying $5K in Canada for a year’s tuition. The real kicker is that in many cases international students aren’t offered any financial aid. I wasn’t prepared to pay the full tuition up front without any help or support. Not only was the tuition high, but I also learned that student visas don’t allow you to work off campus. My dreams of working part-time at a cute little bistro in Greenwich Village were, unfortunately, beginning to be crushed.
The American and Canadian post-secondary education systems are vastly different. I was shocked when I first realized this, because I always thought that the US and Canada went hand-in-hand and shared everything, like two peas in a pod. But when unfamiliar terms like “SATs”, “ACTs”, “subject tests”, and “AP tests” kept popping up in my research, I learned this wasn’t true. If you asked anyone in a Canadian high school what the SAT is, the majority of them wouldn’t be able to tell you the answer. The idea of standardized testing is foreign to Canadian students, especially for college applications. I had to take the initiative myself to prepare for these standardized tests, whereas American high schools sometimes help prepare the students for the tests. I never would have learned a lot of the included material in a Canadian school, especially some of the math content, so I had many years worth of math to catch up on.
Standardized tests are not the only difference in the application, though. Many NYU applicants had a laundry list of AP and IB courses, whereas in Canada those courses were not readily available to me. The average high school here offers college level and university level courses. Although the university level courses sounded impressive to me, they aren’t necessarily close to the level of intensity of an AP or IB course, and I was afraid that the admissions officer would take that into account. The only school that offered IB courses in my city was 45 minutes away, and I carefully mastered that application, spent weeks perfecting my answers, and gathered teacher recommendations to be accepted into the IB school. The final step was to take the three-hour math and science entrance exam that would determine if you were “fit” to handle the intensive IB workload. It was while I was sitting there, pen in hand, working on a math problem that was making my brain hurt, that I had my second defining moment. Maybe NYU was fantastic and a dream come true, but it was already leaving me sleepless at night. It just wasn’t worth it to me.
To this day, I’ve set my sights on another big university in the center of a busy city, but one that’s actually in Canada. It has amazing internship opportunities, and a great journalism program. It’s become my new dream come true, but this time; this dream has a better chance of becoming reality.