Applying to UWC
If you’re thinking about applying to UWC, be prepared for
stress. The application process changes from country to country, so I’ll be
talking about the Canadian application process. I believe applications open in
August, and they must be submitted by the end of November. The first year I
applied, the application form was about ten pages long, (excluding things like
parental consent forms, basic medical information, and contact information). By
2017 the application was about six pages long. The questions included things
like, ‘what do you think the most pressing issue facing your part of Canada is,
and how would you propose to solve it?’ and ‘what would you be able to bring to
UWC?’ There were questions about your day to day activities, volunteer work,
and school subjects. It’s a challenging application, but it’s also a really
good opportunity to solidify your own thoughts on why you want to attend a UWC.
In late January, you find out if you’ve been accepted to the
interview stage. They interview across the provinces, with one selection
committee per province. In B.C., the interviews occurred in Vancouver. There
were about twenty-four applicants. The interviews took place over a two day
period. You’re there for the entire day, so you have a chance to interact with
other applicants and chat to alumni volunteers. In groups, we had debates,
planned grassroots charity projects, and participated in various moral
simulations. (An especially memorable exercise involved picking and choosing
people to save from a zombie apocalypse based on their skill set and
background.) The individual interviews were about half an hour long, and you’re
interviewed by roughly four alumni volunteers. Basically every UWC blog or
forum I’ve read suggests this, but it’s really good advice. Be yourself.
They’re not testing you, or trying to trick you. They’re honestly just trying
to get a good read on your personality and motivations. If you try to impress
them by pretending to be someone you’re not, they won’t look favorably upon it.
If you treat the interview like a discussion, (albeit, an extraordinarily
stressful, one-sided discussion) the whole process goes a lot smoother. Most of
the questions were focused on your written application, so it’s a good idea to
have a copy of your application to practice with. Doing practice interviews
also helps, because you may have difficulty articulating some of the things you
want to touch on.
After that, they try
to match you with a school based on your financial information, school
preferences, and what they saw in the interview. You’re essentially ranked
according to these factors, and they try to place the more favoured applicants
first. This process takes about four weeks. However, they send email offers out
in batches, so it can be very stressful. I was in a group chat with the people
from my interview, and it was really hard to watch everyone else getting
offers. However, the people that I met during the interviews were all
absolutely amazing, so I’m really happy that they all did so well.
Initially, they weren’t actually able to find a place for me
and I was informed that I had been rejected. However, the girl that was
initially offered a spot in UWCSA rejected her offer, so they offered it to me!
Unfortunately, these offers still don’t actually count as acceptance. These are
simply nominations from your home selection committee to the committee at the
school you’ve been offered to.
The nomination confirmation process took about a week for
me, (but I was told that it was a really fast nomination, so it might be slower
for others.) In the end, there were thirteen people selected from B.C. I think
about forty five people were selected from Canada in total, which was in
increase from other years. I’m not sure how many people applied in total, but I
believe it was about two thousand applicants.
It’s a long, stressful process, but the good thing is, it’s
probably the most rigorous application process you’ll ever go through!
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