Hello!

Hello! My name is Danielle, but everyone calls me Dani, and I am a hopeful exchange student for the 2013-2014 year, which will be my junior year of high school! I have applied to study abroad through two state department funded scholarships. My top choice scholarship is the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Scholarship (a.k.a YES Abroad). This scholarship sends 65 high school students to countries with significant Muslim populations. YES sends American students to Bosnia & Herzegovina, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali (semester only), Morocco, Oman, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, and Turkey and sends high school students from these countries and many others with significant muslim populations to the US. My top country choices are Thailand/India (tied for top choice), Turkey, and Malaysia. This scholarship started after 9/11 to start to rebuild American-Muslim relations. I really hope to receive this scholarship because it would be such an incredible experience! The second scholarship I applied for is the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program (CBYX). This scholarship sends 250 high school students (50 from each region) to Germany. I am in the Southeast region so I applied through CIEE. I hear back about semi-finalist notifications for both scholarships during the beginning of February, so wish me luck!

If you are a prospective exchange student and would like to learn more about YES Abroad and CBYX here are the links to the websites. I really encourage to apply for these scholarships because a year abroad is an incredible opportunity and it will change your life for the better!

YES Abroad:

http://yesprograms.org/

CBYX:

http://www.usagermanyscholarship.org/