40 replies to this topic

[dubyawhy]

Arrowhead, on Sep 22, 2011 - 17:34, said:

ishaan =3, on Sep 22, 2011 - 17:15, said:

Point taken, however from whatever i've gathered from my friends who've gone for both GYLC and/or NYLC they've all said that MUN's have been a lot more productive.

Oh and i find it VERY hard to believe that Yale or Brown would have shown interest in GYLC. I mean after all what's so great about it? You don't learn ANYTHING new nor do you gain any sort of life skill. Its all socialising and thats it..

A Social service/RSIS/Round Square trip to any location is much more worth it. A fellow classmate went to Brazil to help rebuild parts of the favelas and helped villagers construct sanitary houses. The international students he met there and the stuff that he did was much more worthwhile......and a lot more cheaper. two even went to Peru and built a schoolhouse.

GYLC is a total scam targeted towards those kids who can't get an international experience anywhere else. It's only worth doing if you have no other decent extra curricular activity under your belt.

Again, why can't you do it all? If you don't have the money or it is a huge issue for you, then most definitely, don't go for it, I said that before as well.


I haven't gone to Brazil (that's the one country I want to see!!) but I did the social work in Romania and the house building in Portugal for Habitat for Humanity and teaching children in India and I went to GYLC in New York. None of this stuff necessarily takes up all of a summer or a summer at all, most of my social activities were done in the Winter or Spring Breaks.

Also, Yale and Brown were interested, I don't remember the interviewers' exact words, but both said something along the lines of, "That sounds fascinating," and we talked about my experiences there for a few minutes. It doesn't matter that you find it hard to believe, that's what happened. *shrugs* I find it funny that you can assume that Universities know everything (good and bad) about all the little High School events that we engage in. The mere fact that most Unis in the US list the IB Diploma's achievement and receipt as "an extra curricular activity" (to quote the representatives from Florida and...Boston I think), tells you how much they know and appreciate the kind of stuff we do. When they interviewed me, I reckon they knew next to nothing about GYLC or HMUN or BEARMUN (both did nod once at the mention of THIMUN though). So it came down to me to talk up GYLC (and the other smaller conferences I attended) and make them seem like important events in my life. The level of prestige of the event is not important, what matters is what you gained out of it and how well you can talk about that achievement in the context of you bettering yourself as a prospective student and a person in general.

Arrowhead.

Oh, trust me. Uni admissions at Yale and Brown would definitely know what GYLC is. Or at least its stateside counterpart NYLC. A representative from Georgetown(widely considered an inferior school to Brown and Yale) came to our school and specifically mentioned programmes like "People to People Ambassadors" and "NYLC" as worthless in the eyes of admissions officers.

Of course your interviewers would say "that sounds fascinating"...can you really conceive of an interviewer being so impolite as to saying "thats a scam, you shouldn't have went. talk about something else, we don't give a damn."?

They know how international students fall for these American scams, and they know how GYLC and NYLC can be mistakenly seen as a prestigious opportunity elsewhere. Congrats on the admission to Yale, but GYLC had nothing to do with it.