American Universities Education Fair 2006

Come July, prospective university students in Malaysia will benefit from the first of its kind American Universities Education Fair in the country. "Another Education Fair?", you might like to ask sceptically. Yes indeed, but this one has a critical difference. This fair is organised and manned by current students and alumnis of the participating American universities.

That simply means that you won't have to listen to salespersons attempting to outsell each other on how "world-class" their colleges are or be unable to extract meaningful information on what's life like at the particular college.

It would also mean that, probably for the first time, you get booths from representatives from the top universities in the United States, instead of the 3rd liner colleges whose key objective is to boost their foreign student population and of course, your most valuable foreign currency.

The following top universities have indeed confirmed representation at the Fair entitled "Experiences-KL 2006":

• Brown University
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Cornell University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Harvard University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Northwestern University
• Stanford University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Chicago
• University of Pennsylvania
• Yale University

The full list of participating universities (39 of them at the moment) is available here. Currently, the only top universities not in the list that I can think of off my head are Princeton and Duke (Kian Ming?). Trust me, you won't get the presence of so many top universities at a single location in Malaysia at any other events!

I dare say that it's an event where you can pick on the top Malaysian brains all within a single hall. There will be past and present students of these universities giving you first hand accounts of all the goods and bads, the truths and the falsehoods with regards to their respective universities, to help you make a more informed choice in your university applications.

Yours truly here is also honoured to have been invited as a speaker at the event (despite not being the biggest fan of the United States as well as being an alumnus across the Atlantic :-p). For those interested, I'll be speaking on "Choosing the Right Course", particularly targeted at those who thinks that life at university is only about medicine, engineering, law and maybe accountancy. The other speakers include Mark Chang, CEO of Jobstreet.com as well as Dr Ewe Hong Tat, both alumni of MIT.

There is no entry fee charged for visitors as the hardworking committee members have managed to secured a fair bit of sponsorship from schools and corporations to defray the expenses. So kudos must go to the committee members who have volunteered to this thankless task for the benefit of young Malaysians :)

The event is being held at Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre on the 16th July 2006 from 10am-6pm. Spread the message and see you there! :)