At seventeen years old in Abuja, 尼日利亚, Ibukun Akinboyo sat down to browse the internet in search of a place to call home for the next four years of her education. She stumbled across 新濠天地app大学.
Ibukun finished her secondary education at a boarding school in Abuja 和 applied to everything from large state universities to small Christian colleges to Canadian schools, but the rapid response from Geneva’s admissions office caught her attention, 和, 视线看不见的, she chose it 和 prepared to pick up 和 move her life across the Atlantic.
She knew her fluency in English 和 experience in a British-based education system would help to lessen the culture shock she was bound to encounter, but one thing that nothing could have prepared her for, that one thing we all know 和 love, was Western Pennsylvania weather.
“I didn't know it could get this cold!她惊叫道。. “It was the middle of August 和 everyone else was in t-shirts; I was shaking I was so cold.”
After a quick trip to Wal-Mart for a fleece jacket to help her body adjust to its new environment, her mind had to do the same a few days later when classes started. It was her first exposure to what she calls “the American style of teaching.”
“Teachers here are more casual, more helpful, more approachable,” she says. Instead of professors simply lecturing 和 students furiously scribbling notes, “There’s more application 和 underst和ing.”
在尼日利亚, Ibukun’s father is an engineer, 和 she entered Geneva with the intention of following in his footsteps. But an opportunity arose for her to join a mission team going to Jamaica over spring break one year, 一切都变了.
“In Jamaica I decided I had to help people,” she remembers. “I knew I had to be a doctor. This is where I felt called.”
So Ibukun switched her major to biology, with a concentration in pre-medicine. Because she graduated from high school at only 16 (和 her dad pronounced her “too scrawny to leave the country”), she waited a year to apply for colleges. 在那一年里, Ibukun worked as an aid helping an elementary school teacher in 尼日利亚, where she developed a love for working with kids. Her passions fused into a dream of being a pediatrician.
But if she wanted to go to medical school, it was going to take some careful planning 和 rearranging of her schedule to fit in all the necessary requirements in time to take the MCATs. 幸运的是她, Geneva assigns every one of its students to a faculty advisor whose job is to do just that. 她的导师,博士. Essig, stayed with her every step of the way, walking her through the classes she needed, preparing her for the MCATs, 和 helping her research 和 apply to medical schools.
“In retrospect, I don't think I could have done this anywhere else,” says Ibukun. “Some of my friends went to big schools where they've gotten lost in the shuffle, but it’s like God just dropped Dr. Essig进入我的生活.”
This kind of personal attention was more critical for Ibukun than for most pre-med graduates. As an international student, state schools will not accept her on the chance that she will receive her education in the U.S. 和 then immediately put that education to use in another country. This forced her to limit her search to small private medical schools, where even then she had less than a 1% chance of getting in.
但是她进去了. Thanks to her hard work, Ibukun is currently attending Jefferson Medical School.
For international students thinking about pursuing higher education in the States, 尤其是在新濠天地app, Ibukun建议, “Consider the fact that as a small school, Geneva has that welcoming family feel. 也, you might be able to adjust more easily at a big school where there are more people like you, but that won't broaden your mind as much.”
Ibukun broadened her mind 和 took advantage of some of the many clubs 和 organizations Geneva had to offer. She was the president of the International Student Organization 和 was involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters, 对艾滋病采取行动, 和 various mission trips.
“It’s those little things that changed my life,” she says. “And I owe that to Geneva.”
- by Brooke Prokopchak ('08)
Ibukunoluwa Akinboyo graduated in May, 2008 with her bachelor’s degree in biology with a concentration in pre-medicine. She is in her third year of medical school at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. After medical school, she plans to stay in the U.S. for a few years before going on to do medical missions, traveling to different nations 和 caring for children who have no access to the medical care they desperately need.