US Graduate School Admissions: Advice for Foreign (African) Students

One question I get regularly from my friends and colleagues from Ghana is this: "Do you have any scholarships you will recommend for me? Remember us ooh when something comes around." I have often responded to people individually but I feel like I should post something publicly for everyone's benefit. In this post, I am going to go through how I got admission to my direct Ph.D. program and an insight into how you may also get in if that is your cup of tea.

First and foremost, most admissions here are unlike European schools where there is a fellowship or scholarship for you to go and apply to before your admission. I am talking about the likes of the Commonwealth or Chevening Fellowships in the UK. So if you want to come to the US, you generally should start from the Program & University you are interested in rather than looking for a scholarship. I will also add a disclaimer that European Schools are getting cheaper by the day in comparison to American schools. So you might want to start studying German or Dutch and look at getting into a German graduate school. That being said, the US still offers students great opportunities for funded graduate programs in fellowships and assistantships. So in a numbered format, let us go through what you might want to do if you decide you want to go to grad school in the US. It is not easy in graduate school. Unlike Ghana and especially your undergraduate level where you're generally spoon-fed and extremely corralled, in grad school, you're mostly left to make your decisions and to make your study plans and the like. You should not believe the hype in Ghana about the American education system being easy. It might be true for high school, but in your graduate program, there is a big shift in how education is done here. So don't come in thinking you're going to have everything easy. I topped my class in undergrad level at the University of Ghana but I am struggling here. Admittedly, it is partly homesickness and other issues at play, but graduate school here is tough. So you must ready your mind for a tough 2-7 years depending on your program of choice. So let's get into it.

1. University Rankings: Get quickly to the University rankings. The first thing I did in 2013 after graduation, and having decided with the help of my good friend, teacher, and mentor Dr. Adika at the English department, that I was going to grad school, was to look at the English Graduate School rankings. In my case, I looked at Faculty of Arts rankings. Here, what I did was go to the English Ph.D. admissions page of each school on the list. I decided that the top hundred programs were all fair game. So you might want to decide for yourself the range you want to consider. I think it is alright to go as far as rank 500. It is not about the school per se but what you do with it after you are done with your degree. But it is good to get a school ranked within the top 100. Given the way the other issues to consider might go, I suggest at least applying to 5 schools at the end of the process. Of these five, at least 2 should be among the top 20. These are the most competitive programs in the US and the world generally. So you might want to get into them. But you should be smart and apply to three others from the 40-100 ranked schools. You may get into any of them since admissions consider a lot of things aside just qualification accounting for them. So apply to these schools based on your instincts and my recommendation. 
2. Finance: When you get to the school's website, you might want to quickly go their finance section. Two things to look out for here: assistantships & fellowships. There are other categories here including loans but we're not used to that system so leave the loans section alone. You are unlikely to qualify for the loans anyway. So assistantships are internal department financial support for admitted students. You work as a research assistant or teach an undergraduate class in exchange for your fees and some monthly stipend (usually 9 months in a year) for your upkeep. Fellowships are extra funds that are not necessarily controlled fully by the department. Often you get these for one semester or one year. What you really want to focus on is the assistantship since this will sustain you throughout your program. 
3. Admission Requirements: The next thing to look for is admission requirements. Once you know that the program offers assistantship, you are now confident enough to go looking into applying to this program. You don't want to waste your time in other areas before finding out that you can't attend because of money. Generally, most schools will require 
• Transcripts: Your undergraduate transcript or additional Masters or MSc transcript if you attended graduate school before. Schools or particular departments or programs will have their GPA cutoffs. When I applied, some schools asked for 3.0 GPA whereas others wanted at least 3.6 or 3.75 GPA. I had an official GPA of 3.78 and unofficial one of 3.81. So when I applied, I didn’t have to worry about this section. You want to be sure that you meet the cutoff before applying. You don’t want to waste your application if you don’t meet the requirement. 
• Recommendation letters: The number varied from school to school. The lowest I had was 2 and the highest was 5. So you should check to see the number of recommendation letters each school wants. What I will advise here is that you should start being friendly to your lecturers now if you are still in school. It will come in handy when you need the recommendation letters. In Ghana, I know it is a hassle trying to get recommendation letters with some lecturers really uninterested in doing this for students. But I understand them too. Most students go through school without any close interaction with lecturers and out of nowhere come around wanting a recommendation letter. Hopefully this will change as class sizes reduce in Ghana. So even if you are not applying this year, rekindle your friendship with your professors. If you are still an undergrad, be nice to the lecturers and be active in class as this will help them to know you and be able to write good things about you in the recommendation letter confidently without feeling like frauds. This is to the quiet geniuses, please speak up from time to time and make good contributions in class even if you are quiet most of the time. Generally, if the school asks for 2-4 recommendation letters, try to get the 4. This will show you’re serious. 
• Test Scores: Generally, many US schools ask for a couple of test scores. We have the GRE and GMAT or LSAT in this category. There might be others I am missing but these are the tests generally asked for by top graduate programs. GRE is general for grad schools. Within the GRE itself, there are subject specific tests so if you’re applying for a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, you might be required to write the GRE Biology and or GRE Chemistry or GRE Physics as well as the general GRE test. So make sure you know whether your school or department requires the subject test. The GMAT is for people applying to business related programs whereas the LSAT is for law school related programs. 
• Language Requirement: I left this out of the tests because it is a huge issue here. Even though we study English in Ghana and basically have our entire education in English, most graduate programs ask you to write the TOEFL or IELTS to ascertain whether we can communicate in English or not. This is a big one. I feel it is an ideological and capitalist issue. I decided that come what may, I was not going to write any of that. American schools don’t require British, Australian, New Zealander or South African students to write these tests but require Ghanaians and Nigerians to write it. I may forgive leaving out the British and the Aussies but why South Africa and not Ghana? The simple answer is that there are white people in South Africa and not in Ghana. I speak better English than most South Africans but I have to write a TOEFL for school and they don’t? Nah! Not having it. Also, I think they’re just doing it for money to help the American economy. If I finish an undergraduate program in English and can’t communicate in English, then you’re telling me my country’s education system is shit. So I refused to write the TOEFL. You may not get that chance. I was stubborn and it paid off. I DO NOT RECOMMEND this to any applicant. So you might want to look for the TOEFL Centre in Accra, Kumasi, Lagos or Abuja and register, as many schools will require it. 
• Statement of Purpose/Cover Letter/Resume: Depending on your program, you might be asked to write a cover letter or a statement of purpose plus some other 500-1000 word essays. You want to look online for examples of these essays or very well, ask a student or a person who is in the same program for help or guidance on these issues. I went around the Internet looking for examples and asked my lecturers at Legon for examples. I remember asking Mrs. Moffat for her own since she also applied to and got accepted to a PhD program in Sweden I believe. So your friendship with current and past students will come in handy here. You will be asked for a CV/resume in all applications so get your CV/resume ready. Some schools ask that you add a video if you want so you might get your production gear sharpened and ready. 
• Application Fee: The last in this application checklist is the application fee. This is where many Ghanaian students will slink away. Some schools charge as much as $500 for an application fee. Now, that will be like two or three years school fees for most Ghanaians. But there are schools, which charge $25 or even waive it for you depending on your situation. Generally foreign students don’t qualify for these waivers. So remember I said you should apply to 5-7 schools. If you are applying to 7 schools, you sure don’t want to be paying $3,500 for just application. So you might again want to vary your applications based on how much fees each of these programs are charging. I applied to schools charging anything from $50 to $150. So use this as a guide as well. Many very top schools like MIT and Harvard have high fees so be adequately advised here. 
4. Faculty: Generally I ask students to email professors at the department you are looking at applying to. Tell them about your interests and tell them they will be great advisors for what you are trying to study. Ask for their advice. This will help acquaint you to potential members of the admissions committees in the schools you are applying to. If you leave a good impression on a number of them, this might be useful in their decisions. Be respectful and professional but also firm in these emails. 
5. Early Tests: Write your tests early so that you might be able to try again if you don’t do well on your first try. Don’t be afraid of these tests. They are just like or sometimes even easier than your undergraduate tests. You may be able to write them without special classes but many people attend a GRE or TOEF special classes before writing them. I did not attend any classes and did just okay with the test. I should have attended some math classes since I didn’t do well in the math section of the test but it didn’t really matter. But you might want to attend a short two-three months GRE/GMAT/TOEFL/LSAT class before taking the exam. I just got hold of the test books and independently studied them on my own and went and wrote the test. This might work for you as well. 
6. Courage: Be brave! All these requirements discourage many students especially the money bits. You should not get discouraged at all. Once you start plugging them one by one, you will see them get done faster than you would have thought. I know many students aren’t rich. I am not from a rich family myself. But I was able to do it. I saved my meager National Service allowance while living with a good friend in Accra. Thanks to Issaka Saani Adams and his wonderful family for hosting me for a year during my National Service year in Accra. Without them, I might not have got through this period successfully. Your bonds of friendships come in handy here. So be a nice person so that others will help you along the way. 
7. Admitted: When you get admitted. You have come a long way and almost there but there are still some obstacles here. Once you get admission, check to see if you have a full assistantship or half or 75%. This will be helpful so that you know how to plan and moneys to borrow and how to proceed with your admission. I applied to seven schools in 2013 and got admission to three. Two in the US and one in the UK. I ultimately chose to come to Texas A&M because they offered me full assistantship for the academic year. Other places like University of Birmingham in the UK offered full tuition but nothing else so I would have had to worry about my accommodation and other minor fees and the like. So be sure you know what you have been offered before accepting to go. 
8. VISA Issues: Once you have your admission, the other major problem is getting the visa. Another one of the money making scheme for advanced countries. Generally, an admission with full assistantship should make it a slam-dunk for a visa, but these are Americans and they leave it to the consular officer interviewing you to make that final decision. So she or he can refuse you even with your clean-cut documents. Sometimes they just go with their gut or sixth sense. The US ambassador to Ghana told me this when I asked him that question at a youth meeting with him at the embassy back in 2012. You may just rub him or her the wrong way. So try to be at ease. Don’t be too nervous when you go for your visa interview. Be normal. But before that, make sure your documents are picture perfect. You don’t want to come this long way to be refused based on a typo somewhere that rubs the officer the wrong way. You need not dress to kill. Just a normal t-shirt or long-sleeved shirt and trousers will do. If your school says you need $40 thousand for annual expenditure but the assistantship only amount to $30 thousand, you need to get a bank statement from someone in Ghana or the US who can make up the remaining $10 thousand. I had similar issues and one of my lecturers, Mr. Frimpong offered to give me his bank statement to help with that. This isn’t necessarily the best way to go. If your parents can put that up, then it is easy since they don’t have to write anything to add to that. Often times, as it happened in my case, the officer didn’t appear to even pay attention to the bank statement or any of my documents with the exception of the Admission/Acceptance letter and my I-20 sent to me from my school. Make sure to go for your interview with your I-20. This is important; perhaps most important document for the interview. 
9. Plane ticket & Taking Off: This is another exhausting time for applicants. Most Ghanaian students generally would not have travelled outside the country or even been in an airplane before this so the anxiety/excitement and most importantly the money to do this becomes a serious challenge. I faced that challenge and went through it successfully. So you will as well. So I had travelled to the US a couple of times before this so my main issue was just the money. There are a number of flights from Accra to the US with varying costs. From as low as $1,000 to $5,000. This is not small money for a Ghanaian student. So most of us will struggle. Again, this is where your contacts will be helpful. I have been friends with a few people at the US embassy since 2006 so I know a few things. The US embassy helps students with some airfare and the resettlement when they are coming for grad school here. So you might want to attend one of their seminars and speak to Bernice Affotey at the Education Advising Section there. Very wonderful and helpful lady. Again, here is where I thank my friends at the embassy for their support and guidance through this stage of my admission back in 2014. Thanks especially to Auntie Aisha and my friend Yao Kuwornu for their support. I am not sure if Tracy is still at the embassy since they are generally rotated after a couple of years but she was also very helpful. Also, you want to use your associations with people of influence in your community to help get you here if you can and if you don’t mind. Some people will rather not have anyone know about their journey so they will keep it under wraps. But for many people from not wealthy families, you don’t have this luxury. So you might want to see your member of parliament to ask for some support. They will generally offer some support though some would not mind you or the gatekeepers would keep you at bay. In my own case, my member of parliament didn’t really offer any support but others did. Lawyer Inusah Fuseini and Haruna Iddrisu were very helpful here. So I thank them again. Lawyer Inusah and Haruna especially hadn’t known me before and were rather very eager to help once they met me. My old friend Mr. Robert formally of AFS Ghana was also very helpful here. So don’t be afraid to go asking for help if you need it. The thread that runs through this section is being outgoing, being unafraid to put yourself out there, and being humble and respectful. My siblings were very helpful here especially my older brother as he introduced me to people I didn’t know and had never met thereby increasing my own network in the process. Some friends in this process chose to get loans from family members or friends. This is also doable. You can pay the loans off from your stipends if you starve yourself a bit. And you can do it. So that is another option. I have other things to do with the money I save from my starvations like helping with my siblings’ school fees and the like. So you can do anything here. The ball is in your hands. 
10. Once You Are Here: You will learn fast so I don’t really have much to tell you here. Everyone’s experience differs based on the State, City, School, Department, and friends he or she makes once arrived. So you’ll have to experience it for yourself to have your own testimony. Talking much here will seem not useful. 

So this is a long ass piece. If you read to the end, bless your heart. I hope I was able to offer some help and insight into the process of applying to a graduate school here in the US. Remember this was my experience. Yours might be very different and indeed, others’ have been different. For example, there are schools that waive GRE tests so you might want to look into those schools. There are schools that waive admission fees, so you might want to look into those. Whatever you choose, I wish you all the best. Graduate school is tough. But it is also exciting and enriching. It might not be for you or it just might. Good luck. You may ask further questions below this blog post. I will try to answer to the best of my experience. All the best.