<p>Now is the time when many UWC applicants across the globe are being selected as finalists and/or being asked to indicate their preferences among the 14 United World Colleges. There are clearly a great deal of commonality across the UWC’s but there are undoubtedly some differences as well. </p>
<p>What is the inside scoop about the unique characteristics, culture, challenges, or qualities of the various UWCs?</p>
<p>How is a finalist to ‘choose’? (Or more precisely, how is a finalist to intelligently formulate informed preferences? The national committees choose which finalists to nominate to which UWC’s in the end.)</p>
<p>@theorist as you correctly mentioned, ultimately, the decision of sending someone to a particular UWC rests on the national committees’ (NC) hands. What seems to me is that the NCs choose people in an attempt to match their personalities with the region they are about to go as well as your particular academic or extracurricular interests. An ‘intelligent way of formulating informed preferences’ would be considering what you could get out of your UWC experience if you were to go that particular place (this UWC is the only one offering subject X, this UWC is located in South East Asia and I’m really interested in the culture and language, etc.) as well as what you could give to that place. Besides rumors and gossip, you don’t really know what you are missing on by attending a specific UWC and each one comes with pros and cons. I went to RCN UWC (Norway), what I can tell you is that it is really isolated, cold and there is little sun during the winter. On the other hand, the surroundings where gorgeous and there was a true sense of community (partly due to the isolation).</p>
<p>Frankly, just choose one that you believe will be best for you. If you don’t end up there, you will still end up in a top notch school with some of the most amazing people in the world. If you end up going, never, NEVER think about what would have happened had you gone to a different one, the experience is unique and amazing (also hard and challenging).</p>
<p>I wonder if any UWC national committees formally solicit applicant preferences about school characteristics to help them find better fits for students? Perhaps they could invite the applicant answer some questions about what environment or specific opportunities they are hoping for?</p>
<p>One aspect that surely varies between UWC’s somewhat is party school vs. stone cold sober schools. Unfortunately applicants may be reluctant to express their true preferences about this and the UWC’s may be somewhat reluctant to talk about these differences. This preference might be more important to groups that the UWC’s have had more difficulty including. If it was more clear to applicants which schools were more stone cold sober and less party schools, UWC’s might be able to attract more religious, Asian, and Muslim students, three groups that have been under represented at UWC’s.</p>