@mclmom I totally agree about the acknowledgment!
Were they just summer decisions which were released today? Did anyone get a school year placement?
@dowzerw summer programs came out based on program all of March with summer rejections coming yesterday. Year notifications begin this coming week and will all be out along with rejections by April 23rd
@names47 Thanks so much. Waiting for all the final pieces to fall in to place to start to know what next year will look like.
Regarding diversity, from my experience of having followed my kid’s summer and now Academic Year Program (gap year) in China, most participants are whites, few Asians, few Indians, fewer blacks. Some of them are well off and some are not, but none are from poor families. I heard for Academic Year Program in China, Beijing one makes you study the most. For AY Program, they do have quite a number of activities. The quality of your stay and improvement in your speaking and listening partly depend on how well you get along with your host family members. Gotta say for some reason almost all kids at my kid’s China AY Program will be attending great schools. My kid really glad he took a gap year to do AY Program but they make you study a lot. Our kid’s improvement in Mandarin has been incredible, maybe equivalent to taking 5+ years of college classes in the language. I have a feeling several of them will pass HSK Level 6, which is the highest level of equivalent to TOEFL. This does not mean your speaking and listening is better than someone who passed HSK Level 5 though.
Songdo, Korea is a relatively a new development area near Incheon Airport. Good and bad points about the area. If I was a foreigner studying in Korea, I rather be in Jeonju area. But 7 weeks go by so quickly that I don’t think it will matter that much.
@websensation What’s the difference between the Songdo and Seoul programs? I wanted Seoul so bad but I’m thankful for even getting accepted.
@cucumberz7 I’m a Seoul finalist rn, and from what I’ve heard, Seoul is a mix of all the levels. Songdo/Jeonju are only complete beginner cities. Songdo is the only city, however, that the students can leave (they’re allowed to go to Seoul). Seoul has supporter meetings w/ college studnts and I think they allow you to pick one specific cultural activity to do (cooking/fan dance/etc). Songdo I’m pretty sure everyone has to do the cultural activities as a group.
++ Songdo is fifteen people and Seoul fifty. We’re also leaving later than you guys and our PDO is in Seattle.
@shakuton
Thanks for the info. Oh man! I really wanted Seoul but Songdo has its advantages too I guess. I mainly wanted to meet a few of the Seoul finalists that I’ve become good friends with.(Which I can do lol, didn’t know that) And, having supporter meetings would be so cool. But, I’m so excited to even get this opportunity. Good luck in Seoul!!
I’m a Korean summer alternate! I hope I get bumped up soon!
@cucumberz7 Honestly it boils down to if you put that you had experience with the language on the original application. Seoul people are usually the ones who put they did. Yea, you can definitely meet up with your Seoul friends. Have fun in Songdo!
Does anyone know how many applicants there were this year?
I think somewhere around 3000-3200.
A few hours after I posted on Friday, my daughter got the rejection email for Korea. She was very heartbroken. At the final stage, does anyone have any idea how many finalists there were and how many got accepted?
Yeah I got my rejection letter like March 30th ( i think ) for Turkey 
@ccgamer So we generally think that from a total applicant pool of ~3200 that 1200 or so became semi-finalists. Of that, approximately 600-660 get scholarships across all the programs combined. Korean has about 80 spots for the summer. While general wisdom is that all programs are equally competitive, I have a suspicion that Korean might be slightly more competitive from what I’ve heard regarding the spots:applicants ratio (but I can’t be sure.)
At the end of the day, these are extremely competitive scholarships, and there are probably more qualified students that apply than they can accept. Of course it’s disappointing to get rejected, but I’d hope you’re daughter isn’t taking it as a reflection on her.
My daughter was accepted to the Hindi program. This year, there were only 20 students accepted. Do you think all programs were reduced in number, maybe due to State Department cuts?
@thatsanna I think everyone for Turkey got a reject if they didn’t get in their second choice earlier. They are not going to Turkey it seems. I personally think it would be nice if they just acknowledged that.
@izzalu Are there typically more than 20 accepted?