In Pakistan, educational guidance is an extremely novel concept, and for 99 percent of the population it does not exist at all. Only Pakistan’s most elite private schools have guidance counselors; most students who wish to attend foreign universities to receive a high-quality education are left to fend for themselves, and have no knowledge of how to write college essays, acquire letters of recommendation, apply for financial aid, or even sign up for the common application. Many for-profit counseling companies charge inordinate sums of money but do nothing more than provide a copy of the common-app.
As such, thousands of excellent Pakistani students are deprived of the education they deserve each year simply because they are unable to manage the increasingly complex college application process. In the summer of 2009, we founded Possibilities Pakistan to help remedy this problem. Possibilities Pakistan (www.possiblitiespakistan.org) is a non-profit organization that provides free college counseling to Pakistani students who aspire to study abroad. Our service is divided into two parts. The first is a personalized guidance service run over the internet by a team of over 200 Pakistani students already attending colleges and universities in the U.S., the U.K., Singapore, Canada, and many other countries. If a college applicant has a question about any aspect of his or her application, he or she need only e-mail us, and we will forward the question to an appropriate member of our network who has already dealt with a similar issue. Our team member will then respond directly to the applicant, providing a unique and experienced Pakistani perspective on navigating the perils of applying to a university.
The second half of our service is a 150-page manual on applying to college. It includes articles breaking down every facet of the college application process, written by Pakistani and American students who are already in college or graduate school. It also includes reviews of dozens of universities written by Pakistani students who attend them, to give readers an insight into their universities of interest from a Pakistani perspective. Finally, our magazine features advice provided by college admissions offices from schools around the world. Over the past two years, thousands have viewed our manual, and our team has advised hundreds of students on various parts of the college application process. We have also begun setting up partnerships with dozens of schools in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city. However, in Pakistan, internet connections are often very poor, and as such, to really make a major impact we need to distribute copies of our manual to our partner schools who can in turn provide our manual to their students. Unfortunately, as of yet, we have no financial support for our operation, and have been unable to print our manual. Our marketing team has lined up Pakistani businesses that are willing to sponsor us, but only if we achieve a certain level of distribution. For this reason, we’re applying for the Dell Social Innovation Prize, a $50,000 that our own Kennedy Odede [’12] won last year with the help of the Wesleyan community. However, we can’t win without your help.
If you have a few minutes, and you like our project, log onto http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com, create an account, and vote for Possibilities Pakistan. With your help, we will be able to reach out to hundreds of schools, expand our service to graduate schools and colleges within Pakistan, and attract the sponsors that we need to keep our project sustainable. Together, we can improve the lives of thousands of deserving students.
Feder is a member of the class of 2012.
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