About
Overview
USA/USA (Ukrainian Students’ Association in the United States) is a program of the Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine (USA), Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization (See our profile on guidestar.org). It was founded by Dr. Bohdan Oryshkevich and Olena Prokopovych in 1992. See our board of directors. Seed money came from the Soros Foundation and the Ukrainian National Association.
Mission
The program aims to create a Ukrainian presence on the global academic, scientific, financial and political arenas as well as to develop a multidisciplinary brain trust for Ukraine. The USA/USA Program does so by helping highly selected young Ukrainian students compete for scholarships at the best universities in the United States of America and other English language countries. As part of this preparation process, we also help our younger students apply for full tuition, room and board scholarships at leading college preparatory boarding schools in the USA, Canada, Switzerland, England, and Norway.
Students & Alumni
Since 1992, fifty four of our highly selected students have earned and are using full four year college scholarships, including room and board, totaling in over nine million dollars. This represents an investment into a future Ukrainian brain trust by such universities as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, Brown, Dartmouth and many others.
Some of our alumni hold leadership or professional positions at McKinsey, Deloitte, JP Morgan and Suntrust, others are college professors at Brown, Dartmouth, and Tbilisi State University, or post-doctoral students at Stanford and Harvard. Others have returned to Ukraine and work at the United Nations Development Program in Kyiv, for international consulting companies, banks or for local institutions. Many of our alumni have continued their education in Europe and Asia including University College London, the University of Helsinki, the Indian School of Business, and the London School of Economics. One alumna is currently working for the “Teach for China” program in Beijing.
How it works
The USA/USA Program seeks to run a seminar every year for ten to twenty highly selected Ukrainian students chosen on a competitive and objective basis. Usually competition is over fifteen applicants per place.
Selection process ensures that chances for all applicants only depend on their talent, dedication and personal traits rather than background or obvious merits. That is why so many of our alumni come from small towns and public schools.
Selected students are invited to a two week long seminar in Ukraine on how to apply to American undergraduate colleges and preparatory boarding schools around the world. Our program also finances the application process of selected students.
Unlike similar for-profit services, we never write applications for admitted students ourselves, nor do we teach them anything considered “cheating”. Our job is to make sure that during the application process students do their best without violating the rules of fair competition, as if they went to a private American school with professional teachers and counselors.
Disclamer
USA/USA Program itself does not give out scholarships, nor does it sell any services. The Program does, however, completely sponsor selection and application processes (Common Application, TOEFL, SAT Reasoning and Subject Tests, CSS/Financial Aid Profile) as well as the seminar in August (including 2-week housing and food). Selected students only need to pay for transportation to the seminar venue (usually Crimea).
Also, only students applying to colleges and preparatory schools are eligible to participate – we do not provide assistance for students applying to graduate or professional schools. As a rule, however, after completion of college our students have no trouble getting into the best graduate schools.
Learn more about the process and apply for the seminar of 2012.