Fanos College Application Assistance

Hi all! This is to remind you to send us your feedback on your essay review experience. Here's the link to the feedback form: https://forms.gle/LvLamPezpaK6uJjAA
You can also send your thank you messages to the essay reviewers using this form.

Thank you!

Hi again! Hope you are all doing well! This is to remind you to give us your feedback on the essay review experience: https://forms.gle/LvLamPezpaK6uJjAA. You can also send thank you messages to your reviewers through this form. We would love to hear from you! Thank you!

Hello everyone,

As most application cycles have now concluded, we've wrapped up our essay reviewing for this admissions season. We've done our best to review as many essays as possible, but regretfully, we couldn't get to all of them. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Now, we're eager to hear from you! Your feedback is vital for us to improve and make our essay review program even more effective in the future. Please take a moment to fill out this short survey: https://forms.gle/LvLamPezpaK6uJjAA. Your thoughts and experiences are incredibly valuable to us. The form also includes a section where you can write your thank you's and messages of gratitude to the volunteers who reviewed your essays.

Thank you!

Hi all! Hope you're all doing well! This is to just remind you all to not submit multiple essays or drafts within the same file. It makes it difficult for us to manage. So please submit them individually as separate essays. The form to submit the essays is: https://tinyurl.com/fanosessayreview

As we noted last time, please make sure to include the prompt of the essay at the top of the essay document.

Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or concerns.

Hi all! This is to remind you that if you have already started working on drafts for your college application essays and want to get some feedback, you can submit them on: https://tinyurl.com/fanosessayreview. We have several student volunteers from different schools here in the US who have been reviewing the essays that have been submitted so far. We do not guarantee if and by when we will have the essays reviewed, but we will try to get them done as soon as possible. If you have submitted a draft and are still waiting on the feedback, please be patient with us. We are trying our best to get them back to you.

If you have already received some feedback, look through the comments and suggestions and make the appropriate changes and feel free to submit your latest draft for review.

NOTE: Please include the prompt for your essay at the top of the essay document you will be submitting. That will help us in reviewing the essays faster.

Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or concerns.

Due to bad WiFi connection, I have moved the Q&A to the group chat (https://t.me/joinchat/E7mlIVWQUM2BDfLcfshbow). Feel free to ask any questions you have there. I will try to respond directly for the next 20 minutes or so.

Here's the link to today's office hour session: https://yale.zoom.us/j/91242056057

❗️IMPORTANT❗️ Sorry for being unable to hold the office hour at the newly scheduled time yesterday. Instead, it will be today at the same time: from 10:30 - 11:30 AM EST, which is ከምሽቱ 11:30 - 12:30 በኢትዮጵያ ሰዓት. The link to join the call will be shared shortly before the start. Thank you & apologies for having to postpone it yesterday without any prior notice!

❗️IMPORTANT❗️ Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, I will not be able to hold the weekly office hour tomorrow at the usual time. Therefore, for this week, I have decided to move it to Monday from 10:30 - 11:30 AM EST, which is ከምሽቱ 11:30 - 12:30 በኢትዮጵያ ሰዓት

Hi all! Thank you to those of you who came with your questions to the office hour earlier today. Here are two useful links shared in the chat:
Full-ride scholarships for international students: https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/full-ride-scholarships-international-students/
Test-optional schools for 2023-24: https://www.ivycentral.com/blogs/us/test-optional-2023#:~:text=Many%20Universities%20in%20the%20US,will%20be%20test%2Doptional%20permanently.

Will try to have such weekly sessions on Saturdays going forward. Feel free to come with any questions you have regarding the application process, essays, standardized tests or the Common App.

HI everyone! Hope you're having a great day! Here's the link to join today's office hour: https://tinyurl.com/fanosofficehour
Let us know if you are having any problems joining the call. Thank you!

One last thing, I will be hosting weekly office hours on Saturdays for the rest of the summer to answer any questions you have about the Common App and the college application process in general. I hope you will find it helpful. The link to join these sessions will be sent out on this channel.

We will also be starting the essay reviews as we have done last summer and winter application seasons. If you have already started working on a draft for your essays and want to get some feedback, you can submit it on: https://tinyurl.com/fanosessayreview. We do not guarantee if and by when we will have the essays reviewed, but we will try to get them done as soon as possible.

NOTE: Please include the prompt for your essay at the top of the essay document you will be submitting. That will help us in reviewing the essays faster.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Hello everyone! Hope you're all doing great! The 2023-24 Common App applications are open, and we wanted to share the prompts:

Below is the full set of essay prompts for 2023-2024.

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

You can start working on your Common App essay now by picking one of the prompts which you think will help you tell your story the best.

We asked chatGPT on how to best prepare for college applications as an international student, and here is what it said. You can try it out and ask any questions you have there: @ai_modern_bot. You may find some helpful answers (although not always correct and up-to-date), especially regarding the college application process.

Hi all! Hope you're all doing amazing! This is to update you that we have finished reviewing all the essays submitted for review this winter. Everyone who submitted a draft this winter should have received feedback by now. We hope you find the feedback helpful. We'd also like to thank all our volunteering essay reviewers for the time and effort they have put into reviewing these essays during their winter break. If you have anything you'd like to say to them, this form (https://forms.gle/tmE616AGAr67E8Wx7) is still open, and we'll relay your messages directly to them.

Thank you all! Good luck on your applications!

Hi all! Hope you're all doing well! We just wanted to update you all on the winter essay review process.
- We have reviewed and sent feedback to 83% of the essays submitted for review this winter. Hence, most of you should have already received feedback by now. We are waiting for some of our reviewers to complete the remaining couple of essays. We hope to send them back to you soon.
- We received an overwhelming number of essays to review this winter as well as this past summer. But our reviewers' hard work has been paying off as we have completed a majority of them (and still working to complete all). So we wanted to give you a means to send messages to those reviewing your essays. If you would like to say thank you or send your gratitude for the amount of time and effort they put into reviewing your essays during their summer/winter break, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/tmE616AGAr67E8Wx7. We will relay your messages to them. They are doing all of this out of their good will, and they would be delighted to learn how useful you find these essay reviews.
- If you submitted an essay under the name 'Hiruy Zerihun', could you please contact the admins of the channel directly? The file you submitted does not open properly. You can share it with us through a different means if you can contact us as soon as possible. We hope to hear from you soon.
- Finally, we know that regular decision application deadlines are coming up soon. So, we would like to wish you all good luck on all your applications!

Happy New Year! See you in 2023!

If you have submitted an essay to be reviewed under the name "Moges Getachew", could you please reach out to me directly with a valid email address? The one you've put on the form is invalid (the email address doesn't exist), and I don't want you to not get your feedback. So please contact me directly as soon as you see this message and send me your correct email address.

Join YEESA now on the following Zoom link: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78310415274?pwd=JVr5Y5Vje9p2kF3tV1EycBa5u02mTv.1
If it asks you for a password, it is YEESA.
Come and ask any college application questions that you have at this workshop. We hope to see you there!

Join the Yale EESA on Wednesday 8PM Ethiopian Time (ke mishitu 2 seat) for a virtual college application workshop. You will be able to ask questions that you have about your applications ahead of the deadlines next week. Come with all the questions that you have! See you there! The link will be on the bio of yale.eesa Instagram page. We will also send it on this channel some time before the workshop. See you on Wednesday!