The month of April is surely a tough one for a substantial number of applicants to US universities. Some have been rejected down the line, a corollary of exponentially increasing competition to access the land of opportunities they are left speculating about other options and how this bad news will affect their future life. Ironically, some are admitted to top-notch universities and yet face a daunting amount of speculation too, especially international students like myself whose main tool for choosing one school over the other remains the internet, replete with student reviews as dubious as they are insightful...

Applying to the US as a Mauritian (international) is, indeed, a lot of hard work and this doesn’t end until you are certain about which school you will be attending. I applied to 13 schools in total mainly because the US has become too competitive. Out of the 13 schools, I was accepted to 6 of them-University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign, Northeastern University, University of Southern California, University of Delaware and finally Brown University. I was waitlisted at Johns Hopkins University and rejected at Princeton, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, UC Berkeley and Cornell. Since the day I received all my decisions, I have spent most of my time on the internet trying to eliminate universities and have managed to do so leaving solely the university of Michigan and Brown University, two excellent universities.

The first reaction of most Mauritian students who have been granted admission into an Ivy League University is to respond positively to this ‘honorific acceptance’. Ivy Leagues are known for their amazingly inhumane admission rates (7 percent this year for internationals having applied to Brown) and I will not deny that I was, at first, lured blindly by the aura of prestige that surrounds such institutions. However, it struck to me that I ought, for my own good to carry out a systematic listing of the pros and cons of each university and attribute a specific weightage to them based on my idea of what the characteristics of an ideal undergraduate education entail (a strong analytical foundation in math, engineering and physical sciences while at the same time a broad based, flexible education that would enable me to view things from different perspectives) as had been the case earlier. But where to get such valuable and accurate information about schools so remote and education systems so different from our own ?

Of course, the internet was helpful during such a task but it was time consuming to weed out comments about the schools which arose from frustration or unhealthy competition between them. I looked at the rankings (both worldwide and in the engineering discipline) for each university and found out that Michigan outweighed Brown in that respect. I also sought direct advice from friends and family who had pursued their undergraduate education in the US. I received the first counsel from a friend, Stefanos Polyzoides, who went to Princeton University and who, without a doubt, recommended the excellent liberal arts education at Brown. He spurred me to go to Brown for an undergraduate degree because it would help me develop a well-roundedness that would be absent at Michigan where engineering is considered in a very pointy fashion like at Imperial, a UK university I received an offer from. At Brown, engineering is interdisciplinary and, in Stefanos’ words, hence ‘prevents individuals from focusing their learning too early in life and helps them to understand the consequences of their actions in the context of human cultures and economies’. According to him, it would also ignite a sense of creativity and uniqueness which hardcore and specialized engineers lack tremendously. As a man who went to Princeton with a view to studying engineering but who wound up studying architecture and urban design, Stefanos described the flexibility and non-restrictive nature of the curriculums at liberal arts schools as a big advantage for not only the undecided but those who come to university with a false preconceived notion of a subject.

I also received advice from a friend who goes to MIT, Rachel Ah Chuen. She told me that she would choose Brown over Michigan because she viewed education as ‘ not only about academics but as a means of making one grow and build one’s character and vision’. Going to Brown would help me not to become “a robot mechanically studying and not wanting to explore beyond that”. She also underlined the prestigious alumni network that you get access to once you enroll into an Ivy League university and which will open so many doors after graduation. As for the rankings, she said that one ought not put too much emphasis on the latter at the undergraduate level because education at this stage remains broad. However she believes that at the graduate level things become different and re- cruiters start to value students from highly ranked graduate schools. Among the factors that led Rachel to opt for Brown was it’s crazy overall admission rate: 9.7 percent compared to 41 percent for Michigan. This would ensure that everybody you would be encountering at Brown would be exceptionally brilliant in his or her field and would influence you to aim higher in whatever you plan to undertake. The student to faculty ratio at Brown also spurred her to choose the latter over Michigan: Brown would enable me to build an intricate relationship with professors and faculty that could lead to research because of its small community. The only advantage of going to Michigan according to her would be “that you would benefit from a more structured and pointy form of engineering with possibly better hands-on experience”. It would also be difficult, in her opinion, to change majors at Michigan.

My cousin Avnish Gungadurdoss, who went to Dartmouth and Harvard, was also at the forefront in helping me choose between the two. He said that he would “lean heavily towards Brown given the name recognition and the truly liberal nature of its education. It''''s an awesome school I think. I don''t know much about Michigan though and you should investigate the choices further for sure”. To “investigate the choices further” he connected me with two people, one from Brown and one from Michigan, with whom I had skype conversations which also led me to think that Brown was a better deal for undergraduate and that Michigan was better at the graduate level.

Kavita Arora, from Carnegie Mellon university, also recommended Brown university for the simple reason that the people there would all be of a very high intellectual ability and that because of the very small and select community at Brown, I would not drown among the masses of students and would not have to forsake my identity. She also spoke about the well-roundedness that comes with a Brown degree.

Last but not least, I spoke with my cousin at Cornell University, Yashna Gungadurdoss, who made me connect with engineers at Cornell and at Michigan, many of whom advised me to opt for Michigan if I was dead set about wanting to pursue engineering (which I am not). Most importantly, she advised me that the university you will be choosing depends largely on “what your priorities are”.

Choosing from and applying to US universities is never an easy task especially for internationals who are kind of disconnected with what is going on in the US. I wrote this article to give Mauritians an insight into the tedious but nevertheless rewarding US application process to show them that it requires a lot of work and most importantly a lot of feedback from those who have already encountered the US.

What is important to understand is that Brown and Michigan are both excellent universities and that what it all boils down to is to what extent the university fits your requirements. Do you want a pointy and specialized education or a more broad based one? What I am sure though is that communication and the right connections are indeed the secrets behind solving this riddle, this university conundrum...