Yoohooo!
“Dear ploenk,
On account of your request for exchange to the US through the ISEP program, I inform you that the board has decided to recommend you for exchange in the second semester of the university year 200/2007. Congratulations! You’ll receive a official confirmation letter and an invitation for an informational meeting.
What to do next: ISEP only accepts requests which provides evidence that a TOEFL-test is taken. This is an English language test which measures the knowledge of the Englisch language. Information will be found at www.toefl.org. You must also subscribe yourself at this website. You’ll need a creditcard for this. The costs are around 120 US Dollar. Please make sure you subscribe yourself as soon as possible. For any questions, don’t hesistate to contact me.
Kind regards,
Miss Abroad”
That sounds OK!
I get an invitation for a meeting for people who’re going to study in the USA. There will be some people who’ll tell us everything about Visa, cultural differences, and so on.
Although it’s still half a year before departure, and it isn’t actually sure whether I’m going anyway, I decide to go. There will also be some Dutch students who just come back from their year study abroad, so it will be interesting anyway.
When I get there, all I see are highschool students with their rich parents. These are youngsters who’re going for a year of study, at a university they actually choose themselves, but also have to pay for themselves, too. It’s fun to see.
The meeting itself isn’t quite what I expected, but it’s nice. I’m getting a little scared when I hear what more I have to arrange when it’s certain my trip will take place: toefl test, visa, mobile phone, bank account, creditcard, health insurance, flight, and so on, and so on.
It will be hard, but yeah, it’ll be fun too!
It’s time to collect all the things I need and to print out all the digital completed forms. I have to hand in everything in threefold AND have a copy of my own. So I make copies of my passport, I look for identic passport photographs ans have the printer running for about two whole hours. Good for me I can do this at my internship office, that saves me a lot of free time and money! What a piles of paper!