Dream of America

Assalamualaikum (Peace be upon you)

Today I want to talk about all the procedures that I went through to go to the US.First of foremost, I would like to thank everyone who helped me including my family, En. Nazar, Kak Nur, Kak Reena, Dr. Rohaidah (all the UPSIans), ISEP (sponsorship) and my friends at UPSI and ASC. I might not be able to study abroad without their help. THANK YOU.

There are miscellaneous procedures to go through:
1. Apply study abroad application which is under ISEP.
2. Make a Malaysian passport.
3. Do medical check up and take some injections (based on the US requirement).
4. Apply J1 type of visa (exchange student).
5. Ready for financial support such as debit/credit card.
6. Pack in all your stuff.
7. Study abroad. :)

And for each step, there are some tedious process especially step 1,3 and 4.

In applying study abroad application, we can choose 10 universities/colleges all over the world. It depends on the requirement of the college. Many colleges in the world except US need TOEFL or IELTS as their language requirement. I chose all of my ten choices in the US because language proficiency report can be accepted in the lieu of TOEFL and IELTS. Language proficiency report would be made by a TESL Professor at UPSI, and we need to sit for an interview and a test. The most painful step, we need to write up 10 essays for 10 colleges (it should not be the same essays) that we chose, plus, an essay entitled Why You Want To Study Abroad. I forgot the real format, but I guess it was one to two pages long.

For medical check up; I spent money on taking some vaccinations such as Tetanus, Hepatitis B, Meningococcal, MMR, Tuberculosis Screening and X-ray. It took a month to settle down all these vaccinations.

Meanwhile, applying a J1 visa is not really a horrible process to go through. Nevertheless, it quite risky when filling in the visa form online. You should ask adults/seniors to guide you. If I am not mistaken, there were two visa that I made and paid for (i-SEVIS 2019 and DS2016). All over, it costed about one thousand something. You also need to go to the US embassy in KL to have an interview and get your valid visa a day after that.

That's what I remembered. I hope this is helpful to those who want to apply study abroad application. For more information, you can ask me or other seniors personally.

Seriously, I cannot believe that I went through all these complicated procedures successfully and finished my study abroad program. No word or picture can describe my fun times there. I know it is hard and maybe impossible to go there by myself. I am thankful to Allah because He gave me this great opportunity in my lifetime. I really wish I would come back someday to America.