BigThink

Posted by Julie Walz, Fellow

Think back to high school for a moment. You were most likely flooded with information about universities. Starting freshman year you were receiving college brochures advertising their prime location, stellar professors, and sports teams. You were buying books and signing up for prep courses for acronym tests: PSATs, SATs, ACTs, APs, and the like. College counselors, both at school or to pay privately, were there to advise you on how to pick a good fit, how to apply, how to write a good essay, how to sell yourself. At least at my public high school, it seemed like those four years were dedicated more than anything to figuring out where you would study for the next four years of your life. And how to pay for it. But with the internet at your fingertips, scholarship applications were literally a click away. Google searches found scholarships that were need-based, merit-based, school-specific, privately-funded, the list goes on.

Perhaps the college counseling process that I grew up was too intense. But the students at Manyangana and Mdluli high schools in South Africa face a different problem. University is not simply a logical step for them after high school. It is the exception. They have almost nothing to prepare them; no access to information or people to turn to for help. Isn’t there some way to find a medium between the two? That at least, has been one of our goals. We wanted to start by creating a resource booklet that would be easily understood by students and teachers alike. However, first you need to understand the information itself. And let me be honest, the university system in South Africa and financial aid options are not the easiest things to understand. Especially for American students who grew up with a completely different system.

With the internet at our fingertips, David and I along with a committee of dedicated students at Georgetown set out to understand the system and gather as much information as we could. Although a daunting task at first, I am happy to report that the research for the booklet is almost complete. We divided it up into sections such as how to apply for university, financial aid at specific universities, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, bursaries, etc. Each member on our committee chose a subject to become an expert in, doing as much research as they could through the internet along with personal inquiries by email or phone. I have to give a huge thank you to our amazing committee, without whom, we would not be where we are right now.

With all the research compiled, the difficult task now is to fit it all together and decide how to present it. Clearly the booklet needs to be comprehensive, yet also as simple as possible using language easily understood by students for whom English is not the primary language. I want it to be clear and easy to follow with examples of applications or directions of how to apply and get more information. But we will see if I can translate the vision of the booklet in my head into a reality with all the information we have. This is my project for the holidays.