Crowds pack US education fair

Written by changthai11 on Sunday, October 12th, 2008

“The students can rest assured that there are no ‘fake’ schools attending the fair.”

— Patrick Fong, executive director of the American International Education Foundation Taiwanese hoping to study in the US packed the venue of the 2008 Fall American Education Fair yesterday in Taipei, where they not only received information on admission, financial aid and campus life, but also got a chance to talk face-to-face with representatives from more than 40 schools.

“The best thing about this fair is that students can receive correct and direct information from the schools they are interested in,” said Patrick Fong (???), executive director of the American International Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has been holding the fair for 32 years.

For students who are only starting to think about studying in the US, they can obtain “uncontaminated” and unbiased information because the foundation, unlike cram schools, is a nonprofit organization, he said.

For those who already have a school in mind, it helps to talk to school representatives, he said.

“The students can rest assured that there are no ‘fake’ schools attending the fair,” Fong said. “All are accredited educational institutions.”

Fong said a recession in the US was unlikely to affect schools in the short run because many of them have endowment funds and do long-range planning. However, he expressed concern that scholarship opportunities may be affected in the long run.

For applicants wishing to apply to schools in the US, the financial crisis may actually provide them with more opportunities, said Daniel Palm, China program coordinator at Northern Arizona University, one of the schools participating in the fair.

Palm said in the past schools may send out 100 admission letters and enroll 80 students, but now they may have send out 120 to 150 letters to achieve the same number of enrollees.

Tu Ya-han (???), a college sophomore at Tamkang University studying hotel management, said she visited the fair because her school requires third-year students to do a stint abroad as an exchange student.

“It’s really helpful talking face-to-face with [school representatives] because I can get answers directly from them,” she said.

The fair runs until today at the Howard Plaza Hotel in Taipei and will move to Kaohsiung’s Grand Hi-Lai Hotel tomorrow and Taichung’s Evergreen Laurel Hotel on Tuesday. Entrance is free.

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