Real stories of students who successfully got into foreign universities
I am Mariana Espinoza, 18, from Quito, Ecuador. I taught myself web development to build a site for my mother’s bakery and wanted an English-speaking country with a strong tech scene but smaller than the US. Ireland — and Trinity, founded in 1592 — was the answer.
Університет: Trinity College Dublin
Країна: IE
I am Andrés Cabrera, 18, from Guadalajara, Mexico. My family runs a mid-sized tequila distributor and I wanted a rigorous, English-taught business degree in Europe to eventually take the company global. Rotterdam School of Management’s IBA is consistently ranked among Europe’s best.
Університет: Erasmus University Rotterdam
Країна: NL
I am Camila Vargas, 18, from Lima, Peru. I grew up surrounded by Lima’s colonial and brutalist contrasts and wanted to study where architecture meets a Mediterranean city. Spain was natural: same language, and Latin American students can enter through a special route without redoing secondary school.
Університет: University of Barcelona
Країна: ES
I am Santiago Restrepo, 19, from Medellín, Colombia. I grew up watching my city transform and became obsessed with how policy reshapes places. Sciences Po runs a campus in Reims dedicated to the Europe–Americas programme, taught in English and French — a perfect fit.
Університет: Sciences Po
Країна: FR
I am Valentina Rojas, 18, from Bogotá. I built water-bottle rockets as a kid and never stopped. The Netherlands attracted me because TU Delft offers a world-top-3 Aerospace Engineering BSc entirely in English at a fraction of US or UK costs.
Університет: Delft University of Technology
Країна: NL
I am Lucía Methol, 18, from Montevideo, Uruguay. I finished a Bachillerato with an economics orientation and competed in model-UN circuits across South America. Bocconi appealed because it is one of the few top European universities that admits undergraduates with the SAT alone, in English.
Університет: Bocconi University
Країна: IT
I am Sofía Giménez, 18, from Buenos Aires. I went to a public technical secondary school (ENET) and got into programming through the Argentine Olympiad in Informatics (OIA). My parents are a nurse and a primary-school teacher, so any US degree was impossible without full financial aid.
Університет: Stanford University
Країна: USA
I am Florencia Acosta, 18, from Rosario, Argentina. I fell for statistics analysing my school football league’s data and wanted the strongest possible Data Science programme. Berkeley’s is a flagship, but as a public university it gives almost no aid to internationals — so winning an external scholarship was the whole game.
Університет: University of California, Berkeley
Країна: USA
I am Diego Herrera, 18, from Monterrey, Mexico. I attended a CONALEP-linked science prepa and represented Mexico at the Ibero-American Physics Olympiad. My family runs a small hardware store, so MIT only became thinkable once I understood it is need-blind for everyone, including internationals.
Університет: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Країна: USA
I am Matías Fuentes, 19, from Santiago de Chile. I finished a bilingual school and scored in the top 1% of the national PAES exam. I wanted the tutorial system Oxford is famous for rather than a large lecture-based degree.
Університет: University of Oxford
Країна: UK