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Formal Proposal

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100 views4 pages

Formal Proposal

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api-273138649
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chen 1

Lingjun(Ivan)Chen
Kyongson Park
ENGL 106I Formal Proposal
9/21/2014

The Love Story Between Scholarship and Me


With the development of globalization, the idea of studying abroad becomes
increasingly popular. Besides, studying abroad opportunities provide students chances to
see different cultures and interact with different races of people, and by studying under
these diverse environments, students are more likely to form a tolerant and patient
personality. However, every coin has two sides. One disadvantage of studying abroad
would be the heavy cost of tuition plus living fees. The tuition of international student is
always higher than domestic students; some times international students have to pay
twice the amount of tuition to get the same kind education. Moreover, the living costs
such as groceries or college dorm rents are expensive for international students as well.
Therefore, scholarships and any kinds of financial aid that can relieve some financial
burdens for international students become popular thus competitive to apply. And
personally, I am an international student as well, so any kinds of financial help I may
receive become interesting and important to me. Therefore, I would like to gain more
knowledge about this topic by doing research.

Chen 2
One main reason I am interested in researching for this topic is because I was
inspired by one of my friend, Cloud. I met Cloud during a community service summer
camp sponsored by a local church last year when I was a senior in my high school. My
first impression on him was a skinny, normal Asian boy, nothing special. However, we
were assigned to the same group to do community services and I started talking to him. It
turned out he was a college student already and I told him my concerns on whether or not
I should keep studying overseas on account of the high expense of studying abroad. After
listening, he said "I only spent a thousand bucks in total last year as a freshman in college.
You ought to do what I did do so you don't have to worry about money no more." That
was so wild and unimaginable to me1000 bucks could not even pay for my grocery
cost for a yearthat I thought he was playing some kind of joke on me. The truth was
he received a large amount of scholarships that set off his tuition and other academic
costs. He also worked at school 's library during spare time to earn extra dollars to pay for
his meals. Therefore, all he paid for in the entire year was the plane ticket that took him
back to China. I remembered that was the moment I was amazed by how scholarship was
able to make study abroad so easy and affordable for international students.
My family certainly played a significant role in my growth of interests in
scholarships. I was raised by the idea of the importance of self-independence. In my
parent's views, they have the obligation to guard and guide me as I grow up, but they do
not believe that doting on a child or helping a child once he or she encounters a problem

Chen 3
is beneficial for the child to be independent. As a result, they were fairly strict in
controlling the amount of my allowance when I was little, and If I want to earn extra
money I have to work for it, either helping my mom doing house work or helping my dad
washing his car. Maybe some kids would think this method of teaching being unnecessary,
but I am fond of gaining my allowance this way because it felt like I am rewarded for
what I had done and It's not just the money that made me happy. I was more in to helping
my families as much as I could. Therefore, when I heard the idea of scholarship, I
realized it could relieve a significant amount of financial burden off my parents. So I
started to look in to some scholarships since then.
However, things did not go smooth and easy as I expected. In my high school senior
year, I tried to research if my high school or other institutions have programs that help
international students to pay for their tuition. Unfortunately, my high school dean told me
that the school's fund was really limited due to the depressed economy so there were no
scholarships for exchange students. Besides, all the essays I turned in for online
scholarships were "disappeared" like when one throws a rock in to the sea, it never shows
up anymore. I did not have any feedbacks from any of the scholarships I applied. This
situation really disappointed me because I was fairly successful in both academic and
social fieldsI had a 4.0 GPA and participated in many school clubs. However, a
conversation with my academic advisor changed my view of scholarships. I remembered
she said to me that I was too focused on applying so many kinds of scholarships before

Chen 4
learning what are those scholarships target groups. For instance, the odds for me to apply
military scholarships would not be too high considering I am a foreigner. It was that
conversation made me realize that it is not enough for one to succeed in something just
by interests, it also requires the right strategy and a large amount of related knowledge.
As a student at Purdue, the resources and opportunities I have are way more than I
had in high school. So the idea of applying for scholarships reappeared in my mind that I
would like to do some research to understand the process of applying scholarship at
Purdue. It is not only beneficial to me but also to others, because other international
students could take my work as a guide or reference as they apply for scholarships.
Briefly, applying for scholarship is interesting and important for me because it can
relieve my family's financial burden. Besides, it would give me the motivation to keep
pursuing academic success and to remind myself that I am rewarded for being excellent
in certain fields so I should keep working hard. Due to my failure on applying for
scholarships in the past, I plan to focus my research on what types of scholarships that
Purdue University or its students' organizations provide for international students? What
are the requirements for those scholarships and how to distinguish myself from other
applicants? In addition, I plan to interview the ISS office employees to maybe have an
access to the answers of all my questions listed above since they are well trained and
have adequate experiences with international students. Hopefully, I am able to find out
answers for my questions from them.

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