Hello everyone!
In this article I want to share my personal experience when I was applying YSEALI Academic Fellowship Program to the USA. If you were not familiar about this program let me tell you a little bit. In short, YSEALI Academic Program is 5 weeks exchange program to one of university in the United State, this program was initiated by Barack Obama presidency to strengthen relationship between the US and ASEAN countries. If you need detail information about this program you can visit this link
There are three phases of process while apply this program : Phase one, writing an essay, submit the CV, including your experiences such as volunteering, working or organization. Phase two, if you were selected in phase one you will receive an email to do interview. Phase three, passport screening, if you passed the second phase the last thing you have to do is submit your passport and wait till final announcement, when you passes all of selection process it’s time for you to get ready to go to the USA!
I failed two times
I was really envy to some participant who just got selected in the first trial, unluckily it didn’t happen to me. I tried to apply this program since 2015 then I got selected in 2017, my first trial was in 2015, my second was in 2017 unfortunately on those years I always failed in the first phase. I was thinking to give up and won’t to reapply but I said to myself this year (2017) is my last trial, if I wasn’t selected I wont reapply this program. Fortunately in 2017 I got selected to be one of participant! My university that would stay at was Northern Illinois University.
After two times failed, then I tried to evaluate what things that made me failed in the process. And here some things that I highlight why I wasn’t succeeded in the first and second round :
1. Less experiences
In 2015 and 2016 my experiences such as volunteerism, internship, working and organization still not enough. I just joined some random activities not focusing on one field. If you are interested to apply YSEALI Academic Fellowship, you will be asked to choose one field, such as civic engagement, environmental or Entrepreneurship. In those years I still get confused what my focus was, I joined environmental organization, education and some random activities. So because this YSEALI Academic Fellowship requires us to specify our field, and unfortunately I hadn’t much specific experience so I failed. After my second failure in 2016, I tried to evaluate many things, specify my focus, join some organization and activities which related to my field. During that time i decided to focus on civic engagement, I focused on my project about bullying issue in Indonesia.
Besides, I also did an internship program in Ministry of Education of Indonesia, the reason why I applied in this ministry because I found correlation between my project and work in this ministry. I did this job for a month, then I also tried to attend some national and international event, volunteerism and so on. From this I can make conclusion that “being focused is so important”.
2. My essay is not based on the data
During my trial in 2015 and 2016 I wrote bad essay I guess, the reason why I call it bad essay because it was too simple and not based on data (I mean I didn’t put any data on my essay). At that time, I wrote the essay about my project to prevent bullying in my hometown, I just told about this project generally and how this project was going, I didn’t talk about why I choose “bullying issue” in my hometown, I didn’t do research about bullying case as well. I am very sure this part has really big impact to my essay. In 2017 I evaluated my essay, did consultation to some alumni and of course did some research as well.
