Hi, my name is Aye Chan, one of the 350 Davis-UWC Dare to Dream scholarship recipients of the upcoming class of 2028! I am excited to be starting my new journey at UWC Thailand on the beautiful island of Phuket this August.
Independence at a Young Age
I come from a small town called Aung Lan in Magway Region, Myanmar. Fun fact: the region I grew up in has one of the hottest cities in the world!
I attended a public school in my town all my life, until COVID-19 hit in 2020. The pandemic meant most public schools without a proper system for online classes shut down indefinitely. When it was time for secondary school, my family made the tough choice to send me alone to Yangon to live with my mom’s friend for a better education.
Yangon is the biggest city in Myanmar. Bigger cities meant bigger opportunities. While I attended Hinthar Education for IGCSEs, I dived into the world of volunteering and youth organizations . Then one day, I found out about United World College. It was like finding out my true love. I really dreamed of studying at a UWC, so I began to work extra hard towards it by filling the gaps in my extracurriculars.
Prioritizing Valuable Experiences Over Grades
When the big move happened, I had been out of school for about a year, making the jump to IGCSE super challenging. I had to try twice as hard to get the same mark as my peers, and my grades were always fluctuating.
As I started preparing for the next UWC application cycle, I decided to shift my focus from academics to extracurriculars. All my grades went down, which was discouraging at first, but I stuck to my strategy. What mattered most in IGCSE was the final exam, and I planned to maximize my efforts near it. I even took school leave for extracurriculars. This is not advice to anyone, but my story of how experiences were more valuable to me than grades. My final score turned out to be a mix of A, A, and B* across six subjects. I was happy with it.
A Workaholic Year
My most time-consuming extracurricular was tutoring and teaching, which I did after my IGCSE exams. I worked as a science tutor and assistant teacher at my school, both in person and online, for about 3 months. I also had a paid internship at Gravity Science Center at the same time as the other tutoring gig. The internship required 5 days a week, 6 hours a day. It was like a legitimate job. I would go on my own by bus early in the morning and return late evening, followed by another round of online classes till 10 pm. It was an exhausting routine, to be honest, but I kept at it because I wanted to save up to travel the world.
My other extracurriculars include:
- Volunteering at a local School For The Visually Impaired every Sunday for a year.
- Earning a certificate from Red Cross Myanmar’s First Aid Program.
- Volunteering as a content writer for InterYouth, a local youth organization, where I gained new connections and knowledge about programs.
- Got selected for YA EAP, a leadership and civic engagement exchange program, funded by the U.S. Department of State.
- Led SPARK UP, a community project about entrepreneurship in Myanmar.
- Won a public choice award for an Eco-Campaign Film Fest, where I interviewed locals at one of Myanmar’s naturally formed blue lagoons to create a short film about environmental awareness.
The Essays and Application Process
To prepare for the application, I mainly watched videos about UWC on YouTube, attended webinars by Burmese UWC students, and talked to seniors for tips and tricks.
The written application included 3 essays of around 250 words. The first and main essay asked about one experience or discovery that led to an important revelation or change. I wrote about independence. Living away from family at a young age hasn’t been easy, especially when you are living with a non-family member. The important lessons I learnt about compromise, resilience, and adapting to an environment with new people pushed me to be confident in trying new things. The second essay centered around my motivation for UWC and my interest in how the UWC network was run. The last essay was about diversity, for which I wrote about my time volunteering at the school for the visually impaired, where I learnt to appreciate Christian students and their religious customs, despite being Buddhist.
I actually started the application a week before the deadline because of the community project I was leading. I dedicated the largest block of time to essays, and then only made the required video on the day of the deadline. I made sure every part of my application connected to the UWC mission and vision and focused on authenticity.
After the written portion and an English and Math aptitude test, I anxiously waited for interview emails. When the email came, I was most surprised that my interview was scheduled for Valentine’s Day! It’s silly to say, but it felt like fate.
Seniors and UWC alumni from Myanmar led the interview. It’s smart to mention in your introduction things that weren’t mentioned in the essays due to a limited word count. Be confident and let your personality shine!
The Unexpected Scholarship
Initially, I was offered a partial scholarship to UWC Dilijan with less than 3 days to decide. Due to my family’s financial situation, I couldn’t take the offer. It saddened me so much because my initial campus preferences were the UWCs in Europe. I knew lots of other applicants faced the same circumstances of being talented enough to get a place, but were limited by the high tuition costs. I understood that not all scholarships can be full, and not all deserving students get full scholarships. However, I did something unusual.
I wrote an email to my national committee (NC) and UWC International explaining why I could not accept the offer. I don’t know if this action caused it, but a week later, I received an email from my NC informing me about my nomination for the Dare to Dream Scholarship to UWC Thailand.
UWC Thailand, here I come!
I am looking forward to the UWC experience and definitely not the IB! Jokes aside, I truly cannot wait to get to know people and be part of the amazing UWC community. As for subjects, I am going for a mix of business and engineering. I also heard the outdoor education at the Thailand campus is stellar, especially the water sports and mountain climbing. A small note for future applicants, though: at UWCT, it is required to take a swimming test and learn basic swimming skills upon arrival because the campus is on an island.
Advice for Future Applicants
My application journey was a bit chaotic. The waits were long between each update from the NC, and to combat this, I created a Telegram channel for UWC applicants from Myanmar to share what’s happening in the process, which ended up gaining 160 members. Through the channel, I learnt that many people were astounded by the school fees and the unexpected campus locations that they were assigned to.
Here, I want to stress that it’s important to research tuition fees before applying to avoid the disappointment of having to turn down offers. Because UWC is a boarding school, it comes with a cost that might be unrealistic to most people in Myanmar and elsewhere, despite many donors and NCs supporting students financially. Moreover, you might not get your desired campus because the campuses usually give a checklist that NCs must allocate students according to. There may be limitations such as the gender, grades, interests that the schools want, and overall alignment.
Therefore, my final advice is to research tuition fees well and prepare your expectations beforehand!
