EDUCATION REPORT - December 5, 2002: Foreign Student Series #12 >Financial Aid
By Nancy Steinbach

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

We continue our series of reports about how foreign students can study at an American college or university. This information also can be found on the Special English Web page at www.voaspecialenglish.com.

Today, we tell about financial aid. Most of this information can be found on the Internet. If you do not have a computer, you can use one at an advising center or local university.

Many young people want to study in the United States but do not have the money to do so. It is a good idea to research this question when you first begin to explore the idea of studying in the United States. The Association of International Educators says more than two-thirds of foreign students in the United States pay for their education using their own or their family's money.

That is because there is very little financial aid for foreign students in the United States. Foreign graduate students have more chances than undergraduates do, but it still is limited. Most financial aid from public and private groups is restricted to American citizens. Some countries provide aid for their citizens to study in the United States on the guarantee that they will return to their own countries to work.

The United States government provides aid for students from some countries. You can ask at the American Embassy or an Agency for International Development office if this is true in your country. A local university may also have such information.

Some American colleges do provide money in the form of scholarships to foreign students. A list of these can be found at a very useful Internet Web site. The Web site also provides information about where to write for scholarships and loans. And it warns foreign students not to pay any money for scholarship applications. Such requests are illegal. The address is www.edupass.org.

I will repeat this address again at the end of this report.

The same Web site also lists useful publications and tells how to order them. One example is a publication called funding for U-S Study -- A Guide for International Students and Professionals. It lists more than six-hundred places international students can get money to pay for their studies.

That Web site address again is www.edupass.org.

This VOA Special English EDUCATION REPORT was written by Nancy Steinbach.