Writers Qi presented an enthralling session titled ‘College Brew with Writers Qi’ where experts talk about college applications, essay writing, the Admission process and much more.
NewsX was joined by an expert panel which included Anjali Raghbeer, Founder, Writers QI, Viral Doshi, Independent Counselor, Raj Chinai, Managing director, LCR capital, Doris Bechstein, International Market Manager, India and Africa, University of Bristol, Erica Sin, Director of Tutoring, Abborbridge, and Lauren Kushnick, Assistant Director of the Admission, the New School.
Anjali Raghbeer, Founder, Writers Qi talked about the importance of the essay and explained, “Why is the essay important? and that’s something that I want you to kind of focus on, because the common app form for those of you who opened it, and for those of you who have seen it, you will see that it’s a very extensive document, it covers your academics, it covers your test scores, it covers recommendations from both your teachers, as well as the counsellor of your school. It has a section of 10 activities where you will fill out your extracurriculars. So whether you worked on a research paper, or you worked in community service, or you’re the head boy or sports captain, all of that would be covered within the extracurricular section, which is about 10, and does have a specific word count for that, which I will be guiding my students through as to what how to sort of succinctly market yourself within those sections”
Viral Doshi began by explaining the key components to focus on when thinking of applying to a top school and he said, “ I always tell students five things is what the American colleges look at, your academics grade at 9, 10, 11 and 12. They like to have consistency or an upward graph. It doesn’t make a difference which board you studied, they want to have consistency. Two, they will look at a standardized test, which is now onwards to be your SAT. Three will be your extracurriculars, four will be your recommendations, and five will be your essays.”
Raj Chinai gave insights about the Green card and said, “There are 85,000 slots available and the applications for this, this year, for example, are of 275,000 applications for each one being that make basically means you have a 31% chance of getting an H1B that allows you to get sponsored by an employer. This is again, very restrictive in its nature, you cannot paint jobs, you cannot change locations, you cannot even change your job function. So once again, H1B is a very restrictive option for those of you thinking about pursuing a permanent residency in the US. The alternative is the EB five visa, which you’ll see on the top part of this page and you can see just visually it’s a much more simplified shorter set of steps, you apply for IFL 26. Once you achieve that, you can then go through the process, get your green card, and after getting your green card, you can pursue any job in any industry in any geography that you wish in the United States.”
Doris Bechstein shared about their University and explained, “We are in the southwest of the UK, which is a beautiful part of land about an hour away from London. With our six faculties, we literally sort of half everything that a student might want to study with us. We were also the first university in the UK to admit men and women on equal footing. So that’s very important to us. You know, the ethos of the university is strong academic strong research and strong.”
Erica Sin shed light on the strong will of students for taking exams even in the pandemic and said, “ think you hit the nail on the head, if a student wants to take it, they’re going to take it. And they’re very strong-minded and willed in that way. Our advice in our realm, because we just are, what we like to do is work a lot with counsellors and families and say, okay, what’s going to work for you? What’s going to work for your overall workload, what’s going to work for sort of your overall profile, because I think as much as students might have these scores, and be able to submit that, then they’re becoming less relevant overall. They’re not going to be sort of the end all be all of your application, they may be sort of the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
Speaking about the designing, Lauren Kushnick said, “when students come to think of design, it’s so much more than just a specific small area, or lens it actually informs how we interact with one another, how our communities Connect, how we live our lives design is so integrated into me. I mean, this moment right now how we’re engaging right now this is a designed platform that involves so many layers of code and investigation into how communication is best made. And I was just speaking with our interior design faculty the other day And Carter was saying. This is such a unique interior design moment. We’re all in each other’s homes in this really unusual way as well. So, we’re seeing how design plays out on lots of different levels. Of course, students in high school might not have access to all of the same high levels of investigation that you will, of course, be doing in college. So it’s, I think, important to talk about your passions, I think it’s important to talk about what fires you up what engages you.”
Watch the entire telecast here: