jdh

I'd have to agree. I did my undergraduate degrees in a commonwealth country, and our degrees are just as difficult, perhaps more in some regards (much more emphasis on exams than coursework). A 3 year BSc is absolutely equivalent to a 4 year BS from the US. I normally ignore the freshman year of college here when equating my education to the US system. From what I've seen of the courses, it's roughly equivalent to our final year of high school. That being said, we have a very good average standard of high school education compared to the US.

Agreed, it was much the same experience for me (also from NZ). I think I was informed about it late September, and heard from IIE not much more than a fortnight after that. I applied to a few universities as well as having IIE apply to 4 - I've heard back from most of them now (mixed results, as expected). The woman from IIE was quite helpful in recommending places based on funding options - a number of universities give tuition waivers to Fulbright grantees. The cost of tuition is obscene and hence I have no possible way of self-funding an MSc, so she advised me on which would be more likely to grant waivers (as an alternative to an RA/TA). As I've found, it doesn't help to get into a university if they don't tend to give research assistantship positions to Master's students in their first year. I find it bizarre how the process seems so different elsewhere...