How to apply to a college in the USA

My accounting midterm was postponed and that feels good actually. I felt ready to do it this Thursday but it’s definitely better with some extra time. I still have a cold. I’m feeling kind of week but after skipping four days at the gym I decided to go there yesterday. I could only run for 40 minutes this time though but at least I got some exercise.

I have gotten a few messages about how you apply to an American school from abroad. I’ve decided to tell you my story and hopefully you can learn something from that.

My whole life I have wanted to come to the States and study or work. Before I came here I was working and had been doing so for three years. Before that I went to high school in Sweden and studied media and journalism.

I worked in a factory which is producing car windows. It was a physical job where you had to do a lot of monotonic work. I learned a lot about myself and found very good friends there though. After three years working there, I had saved a lot of money and enough to do what I had always wanted, studying in the USA.

I tried to find information on the internet about how the college system works in the States. I couldn’t really find it though. I looked up different colleges but everything seemed too hard. I had to do tests, apply for a visa and get several other approvals.

After searching a while on the internet, I found a Swedish organization called GoStudy. They are really helpful. I booked an appointment with them and before I knew it, I was on my way to Lund for a meeting. They explained to me how everything works and what I had to do to send in an application to a college.

What is also very good about this organization is that they help you for free! When they had helped me pick a college and a major, I had to wait a couple of weeks to see if I was accepted at Berkeley College. This organization helps you with all the information you need. When I received my letter from Berkeley College announcing to me that I was accepted, I had to arrange my visa preparations.

The organization also helped me with this. What was very good was that I didn’t have to do a TOEFL or SAT test. I simply had to translate my Swedish grades. That’s what’s very good about this school. Everything went smoothly actually, a lot thanks to the organization GoStudy.

The organization didn’t help me to find a place to stay though and neither does Berkeley College in NYC. The NYC campuses are the only ones where you can’t stay in a dorm. I asked my way around and got a tips that craigslist.org is a good website to find apartments.

I searched there for a couple of days and finally found a place that would fit me. I called up my current host and we made all the arrangements together. I think I was a little lucky too though. It’s important to be careful and since I couldn’t see the place for myself I didn’t know if this guy was scamming me or not. Luckily, he didn’t.

Having a cold...

I have a cold right now and it’s terrible. I haven’t been able to go to the gym for four days now. I feel kind of week. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow. It’s not fun to do homework when you don’t feel good and on Thursday I have a midterm in accounting. I feel good about it.

Yesterday I went to see NHL. That was really cool. The game was very one sided and the Rangers won with five to zero. The Swedish goalkeeper became the star of the game. I would have wanted it to be a little bit more aggressive but there were a couple of fights breaking out which was fun.

The feeling of being there is really amazing. Some tacklings are really hard and you realize that it’s a somewhat dangerous sport. Not to think of Zednik, a Florida Panthers player who got his throat slit about two weeks ago. It’s a very fast game and the audience was very engaged which created a great surrounding.

I had oral communication today. We have to create a poster for our speech. I really don’t like that. I hate using glue, scissors and other designing objects. It’s simply not my thing. It’s fairly easy though since we only need to put up typed words on it.

The snow is beginning to melt now and that feels good. I’m really looking forward to the spring now. I want to take walks around New York and enjoy the warm weather. It also makes it more comfortable for me when I take pictures.

I have a big thing coming up now. I’m going to move out from my apartment and move in with my girlfriend at her place. I’m really looking forward to that. We come along very well and we are already planning in going to IKEA to buy some book shelves and other furniture. The place is more modern and clean than the one I’m in right now and that feels good.

The room we need to share is a little small but I don’t care much about that. We have a big living room and the kitchen is good. I think it will be perfect and I will save a lot of money each month. What I’m mostly looking forward to though is to be able to wake up with my girlfriend every morning.

I sent in my iPod to Apple, hoping they would replace it with a new one, but they didn’t. If you some day accidentally drop it off in the laundry, don’t bother to send it in, they will see that it has been abused. I will have my last test in my computer class next week. That will be great. If I get an A on that I won’t need to take the final. So that means that I don’t need to go to class after next week. I will have one extra hour off three days a week.

Right now I’m downloading my pictures from my camera to my computer. I will post a picture from the NHL game here.

Snow chaos!

This morning when I woke up, I discovered that it had been snowing, a lot! I thought it was going to be chaos on the streets and in the subway but the traffic actually ran smoothly. My girlfriend skipped school and I skipped my regularly Friday studying. Instead we spent a few extra hours in the bed and planned the rest of our day.

My girlfriend got us tickets for a tour at the Federal Reserve Bank in Downtown Manhattan. It was very interesting and fun! I got to see gold bars for the first time in my life. I’ve only seen it in movies before. It’s amazing, one bar weight around 26 lbs.

The vault where the gold is kept is located five floors below ground. It’s further down than the subway. The steel door is huge and the security is amazing. Anyway, it was a very interesting and instructive tour.

After the tour we went to pick up my pants. I had to shorten them a little and now they are perfect. In Sweden most stores will do the shortening for you, but I’ve learned that it’s not very common here. Luckily, most laundromats do it, and there are a lot of other tailor shops that offer the service.

Our next task was to go back to Queens Mall to return the shoes I bought the other week. I realized a couple of days ago that one shoe was black and the other one was blue. The return went good and we later had lunch at Taco Bell. I love their burritos. I also ended up buying another pair of shoes which I really like. My girlfriend also bought shoes and after that, we went home.

Tomorrow I will go to my school and do my homework. After that I will probably go working out since I skipped today’s spell. I’ve been running for every other day now so I’m thinking about doing something else tomorrow. I could use a machine where you have to use your arms and legs at the same time in what would look like skiing movement. That would be great exercise.

In the next blog I will write about my first NHL experience. I’m really looking forward to that!

RIP iPod!

The weekend is coming up and I’m really looking forward to the hockey game. Last weekend I went out with my friend and had American breakfast. I had pancakes, maple syrup, sausages, scrambled eggs and bacon. It was a lot! I didn’t have to eat anything more for the whole day! I love the breakfast in the States. They definitely serve the best breakfast on the planet!

I also went to Queens Mall with my girlfriend. I bought slippers and we ate Texas Barbeque there. It was great! I’m in love with the food here! I’m happy I’m working out though. There are a lot of calories in these dishes. You only live ones though!

After our shopping tour in Queens, we went back to Manhattan and checked out Century 21. It’s a great department store. They have great brands for the best prices. It was President’s Day this Monday so there were a lot of discounts everywhere. Great day for shopping!

I have a midterm coming up next week. It’s in accounting and it will be the second one this quarter. I don’t think it’s going to be very hard, but I definitely need to review some of it this weekend. We are also getting closer to our final speech in oral communication. I’m getting better for each class in making public speeches. I didn’t feel that nervous today. It’s a very good class and you learn a lot from it.

I did a terrible mistake this weekend. I have always been dropping off my laundry at a Laundromat. However, this weekend I decided that I was going to do it by myself. I will save some money on that. The problem was that when I opened the machine to take out my laundry, I noticed I had forgotten to take out my iPod from my pant’s pocket.

The worst thing wasn’t that I lost my iPod, but the fact that I had to go back in to school and redo a lot of assignments. I had to do my Excel work, my English paragraphs and my oral communication speech. Funny thing is that when I got up the next morning to go to the gym, my iPod was working. The screen was flashing but it was working. However, when I arrived to the gym it died again, and that was the last time I saw it alive.

I’m looking at it from a positive perspective. At least I learned how the laundry machines were working, and now I can do my own laundry. That will save me around $6 a week. I only need to do my own laundry for 42 weeks, and then I have saved enough money to buy a new iPod. Kidding! I will probably buy the iPod Shuffle instead. It’s better for me, especially when I work out.

Hockey coming up!

I bought hockey tickets today! This will be my first live NHL experience and I’m really looking forward to it! I will see the Rangers against the Tigers at Madison Square Garden. The game is in two weeks and I will go with a couple of friends. I’ve been talking a long time about this so it feels good that it finally is going to happen.

It’s going to be fun to take some good photographs of the game. I will bring my professional camera and try to take some good shots. I have a test coming up this week. It’s the computer test. I still don’t feel worried about it and half the class took it today. The teacher split the class in two to make it easier for him to organize.

This Monday is Presidents’ Day. The college is closed and that means I have four days off from school. It’s going to be really nice! Me and my girlfriend will go to the beach in Long Island. We have never been there and we both want to know what it looks like. It’s going to be fun!

I’m also planning on going to Century 21 in Lower Manhattan. It’s a huge cloth store and they have some good brands for affordable prices. I need to buy jeans and some shirts. I’ll bring my girlfriend to get some supervision from her.

I just finished my book for my English class. It was about Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was an interesting book to read, however, not that fun. I’ve learned a lot about him though and I think my final paper in English, which will be about him, is going to become really good. I’m really into American history right now and New York has a lot of stories to offer.

I asked my English teacher about good history books. He gave me a few advices and I will definitely look them up. The first book is called “America” by Alistair Cooke. The second one is “Don’t Know Much about History” by Kenneth C. Davis. Most books you read about history are really boring. That’s why I asked my teacher for suggestions about entertaining history books. I think these ones will be great to start with because I don’t know much about American history.

It’s really cold this week! Today it’s snowing and a lot of cars got into trouble. I like snow; however, I’m really looking forward to the spring. It’s going to be nice to be able to take walks in the city without freezing your brains out. It’s also a lot more comfortable to take photographs when it’s warm outside.

Last summer was a little bit to warm though. The subway gets terrible in the summer. It gets to warm down there and if you have to wait more than five minutes for the train you start sweating a lot. They have wonderful air conditioning in the trains though. I have air conditioning in my room too, which is good!

A Chinese Weekend

I had a very relaxing and cozy weekend. I celebrated my girlfriend’s birthday and we spent the whole weekend together. We cooked Chinese food together and it tasted amazing! We also bought a big box of chocolate ice cream. I love ice cream! We shared and finished it over the weekend. I guess I have to do some extra work out this week.

We also went to the Chinese parade in Chinatown, Manhattan. It wasn’t that good. I love all the parades in New York City but it’s almost always too crowded. This time it was so packed so that when we tried to leave, we actually couldn’t move because of all the people. The situation got a little dangerous since there were kids and elderly people in the crowd.

I was also a little afraid that my camera would break. The pressure from the crowd behind me squeezed me really hard and my camera is a little fragile. It cost me more than $3500 so I’m trying to be careful with it. I got out of Chinatown without any scratched though, on neither me nor my camera.

I had a test in mathematics for business last week. It was really easy. Not only did we review a test with similar questions two days before, we also had multiple choices on the test. I used our online intranet to check my grades this weekend. I got twenty out of twenty and it really made me happy. I want to remain on the president’s list this quarter too!

All students who get a 4.0 GPA will show up on the presidents list. You will also receive a congratulations letter from the principal. It makes you feel really good and it’s something that is very good to show a future employer.

I’m doing well in school right now. I don’t have too much homework. The only class I don’t really like is oral communication. It puts a lot of pressure on you and you have to make speeches in front of the class. I wish that I didn’t get nervous every time I have to do public speaking. I know that there is nothing to be afraid of and my class is good. I just get nervous when I get up there. It’s really good for practice though and I think I will learn a lot from it.

On Thursday, I will have the next midterm in spreadsheet and databases. I don’t feel nervous about it. I’m actually looking forward to it so that I can make up for my last bad test. I’m really going to do it slow and think about every step I make so that I won’t make any silly mistakes.

I have gotten into a pattern when it comes to working out now. It feels really good! I’m running one hour every second day. Every week, I increase the speed a little so that I will improve. I can really feel the difference in my stamina. My girlfriend also tells me that my face has gotten thinner. I think so too.

Got back my tests

I got back my tests this week. I have mixed feelings about it. The accounting was great! I was second best in class and ended up with 195 out of 200 in score. That really made me feel happy because I was a little worried about accounting, especially since I didn’t study for the test more than half an hour the day before.

The computer midterm really made me feel upset. I know everything about Excel. I also used to work in a computer store back in Sweden. I have grown up with computers and I know a lot about it. It’s sometimes hard to understand my teacher in spreadsheets and databases. He can’t always express himself in a way that makes you understand.

Among other things, he wanted us to do a chart in Excel, more exactly, a clustered column bar chart. I did that and since there are two, one in 3D and one in 2D, I picked the one in 2D since that one looks better. I got 12 points off because of this! He did not specify if he wanted a 2D one or a 3D one but he wouldn’t change his mind. So I ended up with 82 out of 100 on the test! I had one other mistake that I accept. I printed in landscape instead of portrait.

This is unacceptable but I have to forget about it. He won’t change his mind and I am positive that I will make up for it. Together with my homework assignments I now have an average of 89%. So I’m very close to an A and I won’t have any trouble in getting it. There will also be a next test next week. I am not worried about it but it made me very upset since I know a lot about it. And why would it really matter what chart you use? It shows that I know how to make a chart.

I went to the BB King bar to see the Super Bowl this Sunday! It was amazing! Everyone should by this time know that the Giants won! I had school the day after but I didn’t really care about it. We had a few buckets of beer and ate some really good American food. Everyone screamed when we won and it was a really happy and exciting moment. After the game we went out on Times Square to celebrate. There were a lot of people and everyone was happy.

The day after, I didn’t feel very good. I got home fairly early though, at around 11.30. I went to school and it was kind of hard to concentrate in class. Everything went fine though. I was also lucky because the last class was cancelled!

I was supposed to go to the gym after school, but I had to skip it. Instead, I went home and fell asleep. I slept for two hours and woke up at around 6. Later that evening I ordered food and watched some Heroes. I fell asleep again at around 11.

I also registered for the next quarter this week. It got kind of stressful that day. My friend with whom I scheduled with had to change her schedule. She had an appointment earlier than me. After she was done she told me about it and I had to change mine too, to make it work. I made the changes though and my second schedule actually turned out better than the first one I made.

Superbowl coming up!

It’s finally weekend. I was supposed to have one midterm in spreadsheets and databases this Tuesday but it was cancelled so I had it on Thursday instead. This meant that I had two midterms the same day, the other one being accounting. It wasn’t that bad since I am very used to computers and Microsoft Word. I didn’t study at all for that midterm but I’m positive I’ll get an A on it.

I usually study and prepare myself for a test days before it. Before the midterm in accounting, I didn’t study much at all though. I reviewed the chapters the day before the test and it was as if I knew everything already. I ended up studying around thirty minutes. This has never happened to me before. It also made me nervous because it made me think that I didn’t study enough for the test. However, I took the test and it felt good. I can’t really tell if I will get an A or a B, but I won’t get worse than that.

It’s time to register for the next quarter now. I have an appointment with my student advisor the coming week. After the first quarter you make your schedule yourself and I’m already done with that. I actually scheduled with a friend so that we will have a few classes together next quarter.

I was first thinking of taking three evening classes a week. This would make it possible for me to be free from school three days a week. After a second thought, I rescheduled. The reason is that I really don’t want to stay home and do nothing. I understand that going to school is not that bad. I want to meet new people and find new friends. If I don’t do that, I will start feeling lonely, even though I have a bunch of friends already.

It’s Superbowl on Sunday! Me and a couple of friends have bought tickets at a bar to see it there. For $57 you get free drinks and free food! It’s perfect, and I’m really looking forward to it! They have big screen TV’s and I think it’s a great environment for watching the Superbowl. I definitely want the Giants to win! No doubt about it since I’m in New York!

Today is Friday and this is my day off. I went to school anyway to finish my homework. Now I don’t have to study in the weekend and it makes me feel more relaxed.

GO GIANTS!