We as Student Deanery are very proud of  Tishk International University’s students and members of our team. here are some experience of how they apply to IYLEP Programme,  how they travel and their experience in their mouth directly.

We are 2 students from Tishk International University and members of “Future Builders” accepted in IYLEP UG 2017 talking about how we applied and got accepted and what we did in America and how we spent our time there.

For introduction our names are Mahmud Fadhel studying business and management in Tishk International University and Suraiya Mohammed studying ELT in Tishk International University.

Steps of applying and getting accepted:

As a start we both applied through online forms that IYLEP program provides for us and that’s the only way to apply for it, we had our IYLEP interview in divan hotel, we went to the interview then after the IYLEP interview comes the visa interview which was much easier than the first one you only needed to be calm.

 

Our travelling and host states:

Our journey starts from Erbil to Turkey, France and to America, the total of 18+ hours of being in air plane usually makes someone way too tired and getting jet-lagged which was true for us. Our first four days in America we spent in in Detroit – Michigan all of 100 IYLEPers stayed at Wayne state university they provided us with food and dorms, every day we had tours around Detroit and workshops in the morning.

Then the next 18 days the program started for real the whole 100 students were divided to 4 teams.

1- Public administration in the state of Massachusetts

2- Public health in Washington State

3- Environmental and cultural preservation in the of Montana

4- Science and technology in the state of Arkansas

Each theme had total of 25 students, ours was public administration in the state of Massachusetts, where we stayed at Umass Amherst one of the state’s biggest universities and had the biggest library in the whole country, we were also provided with food and dorms for the whole 18 days.

And our last stop in America was Washington D.C in there the whole 100 students gathered up again and we spent 4 days in there and stayed in a hotel named Home wood suites by Hilton. We were having workshops and tours every day. Of course shopping and going to down town was our everyday thing in all the states that we stayed in.

 

Our experience in our team:

Our team was public administration which you can tell by the name it was more about politics and how politics work in America and other countries. We had to make a political campaign for two candidates the candidates were chosen for all the teams by the mentors and we had to make a campaign, presentation on why our candidate is the best and then came the debate between the teams which was a fun and eye opening experience for us.

Then we had our host families which each 2 or more students go to have dinner with an American family and talk and get to know each other’s more and more and learn each other’s cultures.

Then we had the senior center where we met the elderly people and knew how they were spending times and the reasons why they were there, and our last activity in our theme was a fundraising activity for the senior center which was really successful for us.