 Okay, first impressions of SMU. Beautiful, friendly, diverse, and hot. Like really, really hot. But on the bright side, it's as beautiful, as diverse and as friendly as it is hot. So I think you're gonna love this one. One of the things I love already by SMU is that these buildings look beautiful and they have this amazing exterior, but you would kind of think that they're a little older, maybe they're not as modern. Go inside, it's totally different, right? So these are some of the most modernized buildings I've ever seen. In fact, a lot of these buildings have lead certifications, which means that they're certified to be sustainable. Lead buildings use less energy, less water, and therefore are better for the planet. And it shows that SMU has a lot of commitment to keeping their campus up to date. This right here, this is what I'm talking about. This is a perfect example of old building, modern interior. We're literally in Dallas Hall, one of the first buildings ever constructed at this university. And I'm in the Playhouse, which today looks like an awesome modern cinema complete with high definition projectors, fantastic seats, and yet still retains that old style of the building itself. It's that fusion of old and new that makes me love SMU. I haven't even talked about the name yet, because you'll notice that everybody refers to it as SMU, myself included, but the whole name is Southern Methodist University. SMU truly has no religious affiliation today. So now that you've had a chance to check out the SMU campus, it's time that we talk programs and admissions. I sat down with Jeremy Brown in international missions to learn a little bit more about the programs here at SMU and how you can get admitted. Hello, my name is Jeremy Brown, and I am the director of international admission here at SMU in Dallas, Texas. SMU has five undergraduate colleges, a business school, a school of engineering, school of the arts, school of humanities and sciences, and school of education and human development. Our most popular majors, business, it's ranked in the top for business programs. Dallas is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other city in the US other than New York City. AT&T, ExxonMobil, Toyota has their North American headquarters, Texas Instruments Calculators, our computer science programs. We actually own our own supercomputer. Cybersecurity, video game design and development. Engineering program actually is proud to boast one of the largest percentages of female undergraduate engineering students in the country. I'm gonna get back to Jeremy in a minute, but I gotta tell you guys about the food in Dallas because it is delicious, all right? Like one of my favorite Southern things is hot chicken. Like they just make really, really spicy fried chicken sandwiches. They're so good. That's why they got that Chick-fil-A on campus here, and you got this place called Lucky's that makes hot chicken. Like I might go in there and get some hot chicken right now. It's hot and it's chicken, like what more do you want? It's literally like two of my favorite things. Look, you got a ton of different cultures here in Dallas, so you've got Thai food, you got Chinese, you got Mexican, you got the most authentic stuff from all over the world because Dallas is an extremely diverse city. 60% of the students who attend SMU come to SMU from outside of the state of Texas. 8% of those students coming from nearly 100 countries around the world. The university's common curriculum is so flexible that it allows students to almost unknowingly pick up a second major. Students who are really ambitious and potentially bring in some additional credit, whether it be from IB or AP programs are able to then potentially even explore triple majoring. Traditionally, the majority of students who are admitted to the university fall into the top 20% of their class, so typically obtaining more of an A, B average. If you graduate outside of the US, you are not required to submit an SAT or an ACT. The middle 50% for the SAT is a 1360 to 1500 and the middle 50% for the ACT is a 31 to a 33. Jeremy didn't brag about the theater program but I feel I should tell you about it because in one of my student interviews with Monse, she told me all about her love for the theater program here at SMU and I got to go into the arts building. Unfortunately, a lot of it's still under construction because they're doing massive renovations. Again, old exteriors, new interiors. If you wanna see the video with the student interviews, then you should subscribe to the channel because next week, that's coming out. I'm gonna take you guys to the Meadows Museum right now. The Meadows Museum is a museum on campus. It contains a ton of Spanish art pieces. So I'm gonna show you guys what's going on at this awesome museum. You've seen the buildings, you know. I said friendly. Look, everywhere I go, every building I enter, there's some random person who stops to talk to me and asks me what I'm doing, not like because they're afraid that I'm doing something illegal, but because they genuinely wanna help me out. I go into the library and I see these awesome archives and they say, hey, you wanna have a look and Terry comes and walks me through the archives and shows me all these amazing old texts and different rooms that they have for video and for books and magazines and pamphlets and everything else. And it's just that kind of hospitality that you don't get everywhere else. Jeremy Brown is not the only person who sat down to talk to me today. Claudia Sotomayor, a Peruvian who came to SMU, graduated, did a master's, graduated again, and then became a US citizen, is here to tell us about her experience. She works with international students all the time in her office and she does a ton of stuff to help them get comfortable here in Dallas. So I'm gonna let her tell you a little bit more about what she does and how she can make your time at SMU even better. Hello, my name is Claudia Sotomayor Hart. I'm the director of the international office here at SMU. Very early on in the process, once you're admitted to the institution, my office comes in to provide help and assistance and answer any questions that you have about the visa application process. Being new in a different country can be overwhelming. So my office makes sure that we have programs that are gonna help you transition to life in the US and of course in life at SMU, orientation, social events, work visas. Many of you are investing a lot of money to come to the US and while you may have every intention to going back home and starting businesses or working in companies, you wanna have that option of maybe staying in the US. So my office helps you with that while of course we cannot guarantee that you're gonna get a work visa, we take pride in educating you on what your options might be. What is going to get you ready so that you can become the best candidate for companies that are working on sponsoring employees for a work visa. So the biggest thing that I always tell parents and I tell families is that when you come to SMU, you're going to have that one-on-one support from our team, from myself directly and of course I love to talk about I've done it. That was my journey. I came to the US as an international student, then went through the whole immigration process. I'm a US citizen and while I'm Peruvian and that's my heritage, I have now been in the US longer than I was in Peru. So I'm very much your normal Texan girl with a heavy accent which I'm proud of. But that creates a unique opportunity for me to connect with families that have questions. So when you come to SMU, you're going to receive that special attention from a team of experts, not only to talk to you about law and what's required of you as a student, but also a team of experts in understanding your background, your unique needs and how we can make you successful in all these areas. One of the things I really appreciate is how much Claudia and her team try to help students find jobs after college, which is essential if you're an international student and you want to stay in the United States. If you're thinking about coming here to study and you also want to have the rest of your life in the US, you need that kind of support. You need to get a job after you graduate. You need to take advantage of your OPT and you need to perform well so that you're ready for the working world and that those employers want to keep hiring you. And that's exactly what that team does. Claudia will prepare you for interviews, help you build your CV and make it so that you can get a quality job in the United States, one that could help you stay here. She's proved, she's done it. And that's just one example of the kind of personal attention you can get at SMU. I mean, there's an 11 to one student to faculty ratio here as well, so your classes are gonna be very personalized. You're gonna know your professors. That's something that the students I talked to told me about here and it's something that I think all students would benefit from. All right, leave the way. When you apply to the university, you are automatically considered for all academic scholarships. Financial aid is available to US citizens and permanent residents. The overall cost of SMU, tuition, room and board is about $70,000 range. Don't let the sticker price scare you, even though SMU might look a little bit expensive and it is compared to other universities, it's offering a lot for the money and they have a lot of ways to help you bring down that cost of attendance. Departmental scholarships, specifically there is a STEM scholarship that is available for students who are majoring in science, technology, engineering or the mathematic areas. With the IB scholarship, if you obtain the IB diploma, you will automatically be awarded that $30,000 scholarship that will be paid over four years. Students who are excelling academically, there are a lot of scholarships that can help bring down the cost of attendance quite a bit. We love to reward academic excellence and one of my favorite examples of kind of managing the cost of attendance and the expectations is one of my students from Latin America, her father had said that she could only consider state institutions because the price tag was much lower. She had fallen in love with SMU and she discovered that she really wanted to apply and thankfully her father allowed her to and in the end SMU ended up being the most competitive offer that she received for admission and the price tag was comparable to that of the other institutions that she was considering. So don't be intimidated by the price tag. If you're excelling academically and doing well, you'll be considered for these scholarships and you'll find out what your price tag will be after you've been admitted to then be able to determine if SMU is an option for you. SMU basically does two rounds of early action, early decision, one in November 1st and one on January 15th and after that, it's gonna be really, really hard for you to get admitted here because most of the class fills up by the end of the year. So if you don't get it together, you're not gonna get in. Applying to SMU is super easy. You have three different choices. You can use the Common App, the Coalition App or Apply Texas. So basically they're on every platform. All you gotta do is make sure that you apply early so that you have a good chance of getting in. Well, we really would love to see your application here at SMU. If you have the opportunity to visit, we would love to welcome you to campus to show you how beautiful our campus is, how wonderful the city of Dallas is and how friendly our students are here on campus. If you have questions, please go onto our website and type in the words meet my admission counselor so that you can learn who your admission counselor is and reach out to them with questions, schedule a one-on-one appointment virtually with them and or learn how to schedule a visit if you do have the opportunity to come to visit Dallas while you're visiting the US. So like Jeremy said, find your admissions counselor and reach out to them if you have questions or just go to smu.edu to look them up or if you need some help preparing your application to SMU, hit us up with purposecore.com. We can help you guys out, help you get your application together. So that is gonna be it for me at SMU. I just wanna say again, I thank you so much, Jeremy, Claudia, everybody else here at SMU who's shown me a good time. I've gotten so much access to so many cool places and it's really just made my trip special. So appreciate you, thank you so much and thank you guys for watching this video. If you're still here with me, I really appreciate it, means the world to me. I'll see you next week.