Hello everyone and Welcome to our study different majors in the USA series uh today we’re going to focus on study public relations in the United States my name is hany and I’m the education USA adviser in the chch Republic and today I have a special guest Sydney who is going
To talk about her experience with studying public relations major in the United States hello Sydney thank you for joining us hi so we can go ahead and started just to introduce myself a little bit um hi I’m Sydney ligher I am currently a Fullbright English teaching assistant in lit Slovakia I’m originally
From Florida in the United States but I attended the University of Georgia for both my graduate and undergraduate education so I got my bachelor’s degrees in public relations which we’re going to talk about today and sociology and I did my master’s degree in nonprofit management and
Leadership so just to start with kind of an overview of what public relations is um and I’m probably going to end up calling it PR a lot that’s the abbreviation um so just don’t want to get anybody confused there so PR is really managing how others see and feel
About a person or an organization and attempting to create a positive reputation so this involves a lot of writing working with the media so that could be traditional media Outlets like newspapers and magazines online media like social media or broadcast so a lot of TV stuff too uh graphic design social media as
Well as cultural awareness so something that’s I think really cool and really special about PR is that it exists in every industry so you can really combine PR with whatever you’re passionate about so for example I got my masters in nonprofit management I’m really interested in working for a
Nonprofit so I could go down the path of doing PR for a nonprofit or if you’re interested in politics you could do political PR if you like fashion you can do PR for a fashion company so there’s a lot of really cool ways to combine PR with whatever else you’re interested
In so a little bit of background about me and what I did in high school that helped me get into college in the US um and a lot of things that are on this list are kind of specific to the us so you guys will do different applications
As International students so for example we have GPA grade point averages in the US and that’s not really a thing other places um so you won’t have to necessarily worry about that uh but yeah so when I was in high school I had a strong grade point
Average I took 12 AP classes advanced placement classes which really just kind of looked impressive on my application and made me stand out a little bit um I had a good attendance record which is something that’s also really stressed in the US and I was pretty involved at my
School so I played lacrosse for all four years of high school and my senior year I was put in a leadership position so I was the captain of the team I was in my School’s art club for all four years and again I was in a leadership position so
I served two years as the treasurer of the club and volunteering is something that’s really important in the United States and most high schools do require it because again it looks really good on college applications so I did over 400 hours of service at both local organizations and international
Organizations so this picture is of me at Flamingo Gardens which was one of the nonprofits I volunteered with a lot it was a local nature preserve guys for watching us today this is what education USA advisors are for uh if you need help with your application if you need help with uh
Just going through the application process please let me know let us know uh as I am happy to show you what to put where how to boost your application with what you have you know what what kind of uh opportunities you have in the Czech Republic and if you reach out to me
Earlier a little bit like in your uh like let’s say sophomore or Junior year at high school I am happy to encourage you to take certain classes or do something meaningful throughout the summer so that that it looks very good on your application so this is what the education USA centers advising centers
Are for to help you uh go through and navigate the application process to the United States so this is the list of colleges that I applied for um or applied to so I applied for applied to seven uh universities so I applied to the University of
Georgia which is where I ended up going um University of Virginia North Carolina Maryland Duke Wake Forest and Williams college so kind of how I ended up with this list um originally when I was applying for college I was interested in studying either journalism or International Affairs so I was really
Looking at schools that had strong programs for one or both of those majors and ultimately I got to University of Georgia and I changed my mind a bunch of times and didn’t end up doing journalism or International Affairs but I did when I was making this list of colleges I
Also made sure that they were well-rounded universities so I knew if I did change my mind I would still be able to find a really good program at any of these schools Sydney do you remember how did you research those schools how did you come up with your college
List um so also part of it was my family um so my dad actually went to the University of Georgia my mom went to the University of North Carolina for her undergrad and then did her graduate school at University of Virginia um and I had visited UVA
University of Virginia a lot because my oldest brother also went there um so I had a lot of family connection to those first three schools Maryland I was interested in because it had a really strong journalism program and the location is close to Washington DC which is one of
My favorite places in the United States so that kind of attracted me to that um Duke and Wake Forest were kind of my like reach school so I wanted to apply to more selective universities as well just to kind of like see where I could get into um so that’s how those
Two ended up on the list and Williams college is like a really small liberal arts school in Massachusetts and I think I found out about them through either my high school or they sent me something in the mail that’s really cool and I’m sure like as as you’re going to talk about
You consider location and so forth but for you guys when you you’re are looking at your college list I advise you to use big future website from college for it because you can type your priorities there such as the major you are interested in or the location you would
Like to study or the type of school exactly if you prefer a bigger school or a smaller school and it shows you all the schools that would have a journalism major in undergrad and are located in Florida you know state so definitely but this is really interesting uh list did
You get into all of these um oh now I’m trying to remember I know I definitely got into the first four on the list uh um I got into Wake Forest I think I got weight listed by Williams and I I definitely did not get into Duke okay can you explain to our
Students what weight listed means so so weit listing is usually like you didn’t you weren’t you didn’t make it through the first round of applications but they still thought you were a good candidate so they put you on What’s called the weight list and then if students who did get accepted
Decide that they don’t want to go to that school they’ll pull people off of the wait list and give them an offer offer of admission okay and did you send any early uh decision or early action uh applications um I know I applied early to the first four again um those were
All on What’s called the common application so that’s like a really convenient way to apply to universities so I just wanted to get those done as soon as I could and they didn’t have what are called binding decisions so you could apply early and get your response
Early but that didn’t mean that you had to attend that school for sure so you guys if you would like to do the same as Sydney you’re looking for early action admission because early actions are not binding whereas if the school is has early decision that only limits you to apply
To one school and if you get in it’s binding you have to start the school so just a little terminology and sorry you can go on um yeah and I think the I think the final three on the list I applied regular decision but I don’t remember for sure that’s
Okay yes so another thing that I really took into consideration when I was making this list was location um I really wanted to stay on the east coast of the United States I’m from Florida that’s where my whole family lives so I wanted to be fairly
Close so that I could go home easily for the holidays my family could come visit me and also I’m from the south I’m from South Florida I don’t do super well in the cold so I focus mainly on Southern States um because I didn’t want to be
Anywhere where it was going to be like too too cold for me was it somewhat beneficial for you maybe to apply to a school in Florida because of that instate tuition yes um it definitely it it would have been beneficial but I I wanted to go out of
State um my parents my parents were kind of different than a lot of parents in the United States um a lot of parents do encourage us to stay in state because tuition is a lot less expensive that way um but my parents encourage I have two older brothers and they encouraged all
Three of us to go out of state because they wanted to make sure that we got different experiences and like met new people from different places and different backgrounds uh so they really encouraged us to do that and we’re really supportive of it and also helped us find different like scholarship
Opportunities to help with that tuition situation so for you guys because you know who are listening you are going to be International students which in like that equals out of state tuition if you’re looking at those prices is you either find a price for international students or out of state because you
Cannot really count for instate tuition yeah kind of the final thing I took into consideration when I was choosing where to apply was I was mainly interested in large universities um so definitely the first four on my list were big public institutions um the final three were smaller but they weren’t Williams is
Very small but Duke can wait for are small but not like terribly small and the reason I was focusing more on large schools is because there’s this saying I heard that um it’s easier to make a big school feel small than a small school feel big so this kind of means that when
You’re at a big school there’s going to be a lot of different people there from a lot of different places there’s going to be a bunch of student organizations and places to be on campus so it’s going to be pretty easy for you to find your place on campus because
There is so much diversity and so many choices so you can really find your Niche and where you fit in whereas if you’re at a smaller school it could be a little more difficult because there are going to be fewer options so that was just something that I was really
Thinking about I really wanted to make sure that wherever I ended up I was going to be able to find my place I would have a question because you know when you say a big school it has a completely different meaning when we’re talking about the United States and the
Czech Republic so my question is uh you said that you enrolled at in University of of Georgia so how big was your class like how many students or student teacher ratio um I think my graduating class at ug was 6,000 students uh somewhere around there um
Most of the classes I took when I was at ug were pretty small um so they were usually somewhere between 15 and 40 students I would say like once I was actually in my major and I was taking classes for my major the classes were usually around 20
People but there definitely are some very large classes especially like intro level or general education class classes that you’re required to take uh so these could be somewhere between like 100 and 300 students it is big yes um but I think I think I only took two of those really large lecture
Classes and they were still on the smaller side so I I never really felt like I was in like a huge class where I was overwhelmed and like wouldn’t be able to get help from the teacher if I needed it great so some universities that have PR
Programs and are really well known for these programs are Washington University in St Louis the University of Florida University of Southern California University of Texas at Austin New York University University of Illinois orbana champagne University of Washington Boston University Lehi University which I want to say is in
Ohio but I’m not confident about that I think it’s in Pennsylvania because I studied very close to Lehi I didn’t study at Lehi I was in Pennsylvania okay yeah I know it’s in that area somewhere um and ug which is where I went and one thing about PR is that it’s not
Always going to be its own major a lot of schools do have it as its own major but if you’re interested in this or you’re interested in a specific University and you don’t see a PR major at that University it might be worth it to look at the communications major or a
Journalism major uh because a lot of schools have those Majors with a PR emphasis or concentration rather than its own degree so and uh is it like just a concentration or emphasis or can you do it like a major and a minor so have it as a
Minor um I’m sure universities have it as a minor as well okay all right sounds good so these are the classes I took at for my PR major at ug um so we had six required classes where you had to take these specific classes um and then we
Had three I am choosing to call Choice courses because you were required to take these classes but you had like options within them and then we got to take three electives from the journalism College which is where the pr program was housed so this could be either other PR classes advertising classes
Journalism or entertainment media studies so we kind of had some Choice within the major so the required courses were really to try to give us experience in different areas of PR and also to just like really train Us in the skills that are required for this profession so introduction to PR just
Kind of explain what it was what options exist with it within it and everything that PR is about there was a research insights and analytics class which kind of taught us how to conduct research uh specifically focusing on PR and we actually completed our own research project uh so that we
Would know how to do that if our our uh job eventually requires it foundations of graphic communication so this was like the basics of Photoshop um how to make pretty graphics and how to really use visuals to tell a story public relations communication ations that was just like how to write
Specifically for PR um PR has like it has a very specific style of writing and this class really just like trained us on how to write that way and also gave us experience um working for a client So within this class we got to pick either a organization or a business that we
Were going to be working with throughout the entire semester and we were making actual like Communications pieces for them that they would then be able to use at the end of the semester so I was working with a nonprofit um and I wrote like a press
Release for them a blog post some social media posts so it really just gave us like a wide variety of experience with different types of communications within PR and also like learning how to work with a client you said Sydney that originally you were aiming for journalism though so
You could have gone undecided to a university and then you specialized by taking uh specific courses and like graduated as a PR major correct yes okay and so did you take you know because you also mentioned uh that you took some AP classes at High School uh did you take
Anything that was useful for you you know in that PR uh education so I took um two yeah two uh AP English classes so I took AP English Language and AP English Literature and both of those were really writing heavy classes so going into college I had kind of that
Experience with learning how to write and learning how to write for like a very specific goal so I think that was helpful when it came to PR because I was already a pretty good writer and I already kind of knew how to shape my writing for a specific outcome if that
Makes sense it does it does I’m just wondering you know if students want to do something extra before applying to school and if they especially if they already know they would like to go into public relations uh wanted to give them an idea what to do an extra so guys take
An AP class in English you know writing or history good luck with that all right um journalistic writing across platforms so this was like an intro level journalism class that again just was like teaching us how to write and teaching us how to write for again a bunch of different outcomes so we
Learned how to write like a traditional news story story a broadcast piece um how to interview people because PR and journalism are very related so having those like basic journalism skills was helpful in training us how to be good writers and knowing how to write for a bunch of different
Reasons and the final required course was principles of marketing um so marketing and PR are also pretty similar there’s a lot of overlap and a lot of times especially at like nonprofits for example because they tend to be smaller um a lot of times PR practitioners are also doing marketing
Or PR might be housed in the marketing department so it was just kind of useful to have that like basic knowledge of marketing and then for the choice courses uh you could take either crisis communication or public relations management I chose PR management which was teaching us how to be leaders and
How to use our PR skills to be good leaders within whatever company we’re working for uh I took PR e ethics diverse cultures and cross-cultural communication over law of mass communication um and I chose this class because again I was interested in working for a nonprofit so I thought
Knowing how to communicate ethically and with people from different backgrounds and doing it in a very like sensitive way could be really helpful for a career in nonprofits because a lot of times you’re working with people from different backgrounds and from different communities and then the like big final
Capstone course of the pr degree is the public relations campaign class um so you had there were some different options within this category but based basically this class was the entire semester you were working on a group project with the entire class and you were actually doing PR work for a client
So we had again my client was a nonprofit so at the beginning of the semester they came in and they told us what their goal was for their organization and how they saw us helping them and then we spent the entire semester doing research and creating different social media graphics and
Fundraising ideas and like all different stuff and we having good job it’s like having a job while studying wow okay so that class was really like designed to show us what it will be like to actually work as a PR professional and again to just give us
Like the actual Hands-On skill where we were we were doing everything like it it really was like having a job uhuh you just didn’t get paid for it right yeah great and then again we got a choice of three electives from any Department in the journalism school so I took media
Entertainment and pop culture environmental communication um which was teaching us how to communicate about different environmental issues especially to people who don’t have a background in science and I took a fundraising class that was in the PR department because again I was interested in nonprofits and fundraising is a huge part of nonprofits
And it goes it really does go hand inand with PR so you mentioned a lot of nonprofit here so do you actually use your PR skills that you gain uh in your undergrad studies in nonprofit management nonprofit organizations I would say yes so when I was
After I finished my PR degree I stayed at UG and I did my masters in nonprofit management and there were a lot of times in my classes where I was like oh I know how to do this because I took these PR classes or like I knew it was especially
Helpful in like the grant writing class I took because I knew how to write and in the fundraising class that I took and then when I was actually like working in nonprofits and doing nonprofit internships IED used PR a lot um so I did a lot of writing a lot of graphic
Design a lot of fundraising so PR really did come in handy when I was doing nonprofit work and that’s the the rest of the class you know that studied an undergrad with you did they go uh to study Graduate Studies in PR or did they go different
Ways so people went a lot of different directions this um so a lot of people graduated with this degree and just immediately entered the workforce um so they graduated and got a job in PR um some people did choose to do a graduate degree in public relations to really
Just like help them get more experience in it before entering the workforce um I know people who did this and then went to law school um I did this and then went to nonprofit management um yeah there people really took this degree and went so many different places with it that’s what I’m
Interested in and like interesting it that you mentioned that they went to law school because I always thought that it’s better to go to get a pre-law you know at an undergraduate degree and then go to law school but now you say that it’s fine to get a PR degree and then
You can get to law school which is amazing and I I would say that PR is probably pretty helpful for law school because there is so much communication involved with law um and PR it’s all about training you and how to communicate so there’s there’s just so many things that
You could do with a PR degree for sure yeah that’s that’s what I wanted the students to hear that you don’t have to be stuck in that one thing because communication is the key and if you can really say and if he can really talk with different group categories and if you
Can uh speak in English actually is very helpful so uh PR is great and then you can take a different route if you want yeah definitely oh that leads perfectly into the next slide um the job opportunities with NPR um so if you’re public relations itself has kind of four
Traditional Pathways within it so there’s PR agency which is you are working for like a PR Company and other organizations hire the agency to do their PR work for them so you’re working for an agency you might get put on a job for a nonprofit or a company or a
Corporation and then going to be working for them but kind of from the outside a corporate PR is you’re actually going to be working for a company and doing their PR from within a government is there’s a lot of different ways to do PR in the government capacity so this could be
Like running a political campaign a working for a specific politician um or it could just be like working for a government agency so if you’re in the US one of like the Departments so one of the cabinets um or in Europe I think it’s usually called Ministries or ministers so working in
Like some form of government agency and there’s nonprofit PR which is working for a nonprofit and doing their PR for them and that’s usually going to include fundraising maybe event planning um a lot of marketing so nonprofit PR is going to be it’s usually going to be broader than the other
Categories um you could go into digital marketing or social media because social media is becoming so important and just like having a really strong online presence a lot of companies will hire people specifically to do their social media so if this is especially like if you’re interested in graphic design and
If you’re more artistic this could be a really good path uh community relations so this a lot of times is going to be you’re working for a company or maybe a professional sports team and you are building relationships between that company and the community it exists in
So maybe like the local schools or local nonprofits so you’re really working kind of as like an in between from the company and the community and trying to create some form of bond there uh you could become a full-time fundraiser if that’s something you’re interested in um because fundraising a
Lot is about communicating and being able to like talk to people so that could be an interesting job opportunity and then also event planning I know quite a few people who went from their PR degree into planning maybe weddings or just events in general oh that includes a lot of communication and a
Lot of patience and understanding of those Brides you know and everything so yeah definitely awesome so now I’m gonna switch a little bit and tell you about uh life at a US University and specifically at University of Georgia which is where I attended so a little about ug um it is a
Pretty large University so we had 40,000 students including undergraduate and graduate it’s located in Athens Georgia which is known as kind of like an Arts and Music town in Northeast Georgia really close to the South Carolina border uh ug is the birthplace of higher education we were the first Public
University chartered in the United States uh so that our school dates back to 1785 so it’s a really historic really cool place um our motto is to teach to serve and to inquire into the nature of things and we are really big on school spirit um that goes for a lot of
Universities in the United States and I think UGA did it really well so I wanted to include that our colors are red and black and our mascot is the Bulldog so here are some pictures of our campus um this upper left picture is the arch it’s kind of the iconic Landmark at ug it’s the symbol of University and the entire state of Georgia the three pillars are for wisdom Justice and moderation and probably my favorite
Tradition at ug involves the arch um so it’s kind of a tradition to not walk under the arch until you graduate and then once you do graduate it’s kind of this big exciting moment where you line up with a bunch of other students and you finally cross under the arch for the
First time that’s not any bad luck if you accidentally walk through there even during your studies so The Story Goes that if you walk under the arch before you graduate then you won’t graduate oh okay so it is bad luck so that’s that’s the story um and a lot of people just
Like are too scared to go against it and also it’s just kind of like a fun thing to look forward to but I I know plenty of people who just like accidentally walked under it and they still graduated on time right thank you um this upper right picture is the
Journalism college so that’s the building where the pr major is housed so most of my classes were in this building um it has this really nice outdoor area with like grass and some tables so a lot of events were held there and it was also just like a nice place to hang out
And study this bottom left picture is the Tate Student Center so this is kind of the center of student life at ug’s campus there were some restaurants in there a cafe a movie theater an arcade a lot of places to just kind of like hang
Out get some food see your friends um a lot of student organizations had meetings in there so there’s always stuff going on in that building and it was always kind of fun to just like go in there and see what was going on what’s in
Our oh um it has like a bunch of video games okay is it is it like the play time you know where you can just relax and okay yeah so it was just like a little room and you could go in there and there were some like traditional
Video games and also some more like old fashion ones that you could play um I only went in there a couple times but it was it was really fun okay and then this bottom right picture is the main library so this is the I think it’s the biggest library on on
Ug’s campus it was my favorite one it was my favorite place to study um it was always really quiet there were a lot of different areas where you could kind of plant yourself and just crank out whatever paper or project you were working on I me there was also a cafe in
There so you could get coffee and a snack to help keep you going and is University of Georgia like all Impact together so you are like a small City inside of a bigger city and if you want to you actually don’t have to leave the campus because everything is there
Um so you could pretty much stay on campus and get anything you needed um if you were really trying to get like full groceries you would need to leave campus but we were really close to like downtown Athens it was basically right across the street so anything you could
Get on campus you could pretty much walk across the street and get it oh that’s great because they know that many internet National students don’t usually have cars and I am pretty sure that you know you guys if you’re going and you know that you don’t have car first of
All it’s so close by and second of all all the Americans who do have cars usually they will be so friendly and so helpful I’m talking from my own experience they usually gave me a right to Walmart or to Target you know and showed me around so don’t worry this is
Amazing that it’s so close yeah I didn’t have a car my first two years at UG and it I don’t think it was ever once a problem like somebody was always either willing to take me where I needed to go um I could walk pretty much anywhere I needed and EJ
Also has a really good bus system so I was able to hop on a bus and either get around campus or even get to downtown aens nice good it’s really funny that this city is called Athens because you know the usually is like oh aing grease yeah
Yeah and Georgia also has a city called Rome so oh I think the whole state we were just like let’s name after historic cities other places I guess that’s funny um and dormatory so this is going to be where you’re living on campus um a lot of us universities require you to
Live on campus your first year uh ug does and I lived on campus for two years I really enjoyed it um ug has 22 different dorms each one is kind of set up a little different so whatever living situation you’re looking for you’re probably going to be able to find it on ug’s
Campus my freshman year I lived in a dorm called keswell it’s kind of like the traditional college dorm um so that’s this upper right picture I shared my room with one other girl um and then we had a communal bathroom so it was in the hallway and the entire Hall shared
It but it might sound a little intimidating but it’s not at all it was cleaned every day um it was really big so I never needed to wait for like a shower or a sink or anything um so I really enjoyed that dorm setup and then my sophomore year I lived
On campus again and that’s this left picture and a dorm called Rutherford um so it was a similar setup where I shared a room with one other girl but that year we had our own bathroom so in our dorm we had a private bathroom for
Just the two of us and were the dorms also like mixed gender that you could live with the boy or was it just like girls together and boys together so within your actual room it’s just going to be like if you’re a girl your roommate
Is going to be a girl if you’re a boy your roommate to be a boy and and in the dorms where you have a communal bathroom your entire floor is going to be the same gender so like this the floor I lived on in Creswell everybody was a
Girl but within Creswell there were like girls floors and then there would be a boys floor so the dorm was co-ed but then the floors weren’t uhuh uhuh um and then in Rutherford so when I had a private bathroom my roommate was a girl and like everybody had a s
Roommate but each room like was whatever so I think in Rutherford across the hall was boys and I think next door was also boys okay yeah cool so dining Halls are also a really big part of college life in the US EJ had five dining Halls um you could get
Pretty much whatever type of food you want wanted in these places um I thought the food was pretty good I never really had a bad experience in the dining hall and it was also like a fun place to hang out with your friends and maybe meet some new people especially during like
The lunch and dinner rush when there were a lot of people you might end up just sitting with strangers but people were always really nice and really help like really open to talking to you so it was kind of a fun experience to just like hang out in the dining hall and so
Do do you have uh an experience if even if a person is a glutenfree or if he is a vegetarian can this be accommodated at a dining Pole or do they have to cook for themselves those can definitely be accommodated um I know especially for a vegetarian like the food would be
Labeled um and if you had like a food allergy I think it would also be labeled um for something more restrictive like glutenfree the dining hall still had options for you but I think sometimes you would have to like go to like a little room in the
Dining hall and like they would have a special meal for you and then you would take it and you would still be able to like sit in the common area with everybody else okay you didn’t have to sit alone and eat it alone yeah you weren’t like I but you you sometimes
Would have to like take an extra step to get your meal uhuh and I see that the the bottom right corner is probably the dining hall but up right it seems like restaurants but can you use your me meal plan to go to a restaurant or do you have to pay
Extra so there were kind of options when it came to the oncampus restaurants so we also in addition to the dining Halls we had a bunch of restaurants and cafes on campus so the way our meal plans worked where like you would buy what we’re called swipes to get into the
Dining hall and then you could also purchase what ug called PA points so that would be like money on your meal plan that you could use either for the dining hall or for the on campus restaurants but if you didn’t have that you could also just pay normally at these restaurants
Okay say Student Life at ug um this was definitely my favorite part of being a student there uh we were such a huge university so we had over 700 student organizations pretty much anything you’re interested in there is a club for it and if you somehow found something
That didn’t exist on campus yet you could also start your own student organization and these were a really fun way to meet people and get involved on campus some of my best friends are people I met through student organizations so the picture on this slide is from swab Shop with a bulldog
That was one of the organizations I was involved with for all four years um it was a student run nonprofit where we partnered with the local schools and we would take children from Athens shopping for the holidays so we would spend the entire year fundraising and then we had
A big event day where the students got matched up with uh the students from Athens got matched up with students from UG and we spent the day together we would go to Walmart and had a budget and they were able to pick out like toys and clothes and whatever else they wanted
For the holidays and it was just like a really fun day in the community and the people in this organization were wonderful and I had such a great time it was a wonderful event uh sports are also a really big thing especially at ug uh we had
Different levels of sports so there were what we called club sports so that’s going to be a little more competitive but not at the level of like what you’re seeing on TV so usually like there’s a ug team and then they’re competing against other schools
Uhuh so is ug a division one school yes so our like televised sporting events are division one and then Club is below that okay and I remember you mentioned you played lacrosse did you continue with sport at a university level I did not um I had kind of had enough after
High school and once I got to college I decided I was just gonna be a sports fan and not play anymore uhuh but you have or you know students who got into ug with sports scholarship if they were playing you know competitively and so forth yes um I didn’t personally know
Anybody but the people who are on like the real really competitive division one teams they pretty much were all on scholarship oh that’s amazing okay um intramural sports are really casual really laidback it’s usually like you and a group of friends and you’re competing against other ug
Students that was just kind of like a casual way to be involved in sports and then we had the division one ug Sports which are like the football soccer volleyball um things like that and as a ug student you got to go to all of these events for free football you did
Have to pay for but it was only like $10 a ticket which is a huge discount so that was a really fun way to like enjoy UG and show some school spirit I’m going back a little bit because I’m sure that students would be interested uh we talked about the sport scholarship but
Does UG offer any married based or need-based scholarship do you know yes um there are a ton of scholarship opportunities at ug so I they definitely have a lot of need-based um I got a merit based scholarship so because I was applying as an out of state student I got a
Scholarship that allowed me to pay instate tuition instead of out of state tuition uhhuh so and that was all Merit based so there’s definitely a lot of scholarship opportunity ities and ways to make College more affordable at U uh did you also do any work on campus the work study opportunities where you
Would earn a little bit to pay for your student you know tuition or whatever books I had it was a very casual on campus job so it didn’t pay much um but I did have I was a peer learning assistant which is similar to being a t a um but I was
Working with students my own age which is why it was pure learning instead of teaching um and I did that for three years in a Native American studies class and I got a I think I got $500 to semester for it so it was definitely enough to like
Cover my books and some school supplies and even some of my like rent or dining hall cost oh it’s very good thank you going back to student that’s more funny than uh than money you know yes um and we also have a lot of Greek life organizations so this could be the
Traditional social sororities and fraternities that you’ve probably seen on TV and in movies but then there’s also a lot of different types of Greek life organizations at ug so there’s Multicultural um which is people from like a similar background or a similar yeah similar background or
Culture and they’ll have have all of the same social events but also just like bonding within that culture and then we had academic and professional fraternity so let’s say I don’t think there was one for PR but I know there was definitely one for business so like if you were a business
Major you could be in a business fraternity and then we also had service organizations that were Greek life because they used the Greek letters and they had that like social aspect as well as the service aspect we do not have Greek life here is sorority just for
Girls and fraternity just for boys or no so in the that becomes a complicated question so in like the traditional social ones a fraternity is just for boys and a sorority is just for girls but then once you get into like the Multicultural or academic or service
Ones a lot of those are Co so it’s going to be girls and boys together and a lot of times they’re they’re called fraternities but girls are allowed to be in them too that is complicated okay yes really the only ones that I know of that were like segregated by gender were
The traditional social ones where they also live together right in that yeah okay got it yeah and it’s kind of impossible to talk about ug without talking about what us Americans call football um so it’s the biggest sport on campus it’s what we’re really famous for um we’re back-to-back
National champions and are really like kind of obnoxiously proud of that so this was really like the thing to do on Saturdays in the fall so our Stadium holds 93,000 people and it sells out pretty much every week it was a lot of fun to go to these games and really like
Embrace that school spirit and cheer on our team and hang out with your friends um and even if you don’t know anything about football and maybe you don’t even like it that much it was still a really fun environment to be in and yeah it’s just
Like I to me this is like what I think of when I think of student life is like being at these football games with my friends and just like really cheering on my school and just like a little overview of my ug experience outside of the classroom um
So I had the opportunity to do internships as an undergrad um so I did three internships while I was doing my bachelor degrees um I did them all at nonprofits because I knew that was kind of the path I wanted to go down so during the Summers I would be working at
A nonprofit and just really gaining that experience um student organiz organizations I talked about that already but um I was really involved in two student organizations for all four years and I got into leadership roles in those and really just like fully dove into them and that’s
How I connected with UG and the Athens community and I made a lot of friends through that um I talked a little bit about being a pure learning assistant again or or already um so I did that for three years and that was so much fun
That was something I was really glad I got the opportunity to do is it something similar to tutoring the peer learning assistant so um yes so some there were like different types of peer learning assistants at ug were some that were tutors um mine was more of a teaching assistant role so
I went to the class and I helped run like a role playing game that the professor did so I was just kind of like an extra set of eyes to work with like a small group of students and help them understand how the game worked and how did you apply for such
Job um I I got lucky with it so I took this Native American studies class my freshman year and the uh peer learning assistant who had been working with the professor was graduating oh a new one and I asked if I could be his new peer learning assistant and said yes um and
Then because he had already said yes to me I just needed to like submit there was an application but it was like I already had the position because he wanted me um but there were people who didn’t go down that route so you could just like apply to be a pure learning
Assistant and there were a bunch of different opportunities and I think you could either like pick a specific one you were interested in or just kind of say that you were open to whatever they wanted to match you with okay cool and studying abroad is a really big
Thing um at us colleges so I was lucky enough to get one in before covid um so I did a service learning study abroad for four weeks in stellos South Africa which is close to Cape Town so I took two classes with ug professors and other ug students and it was Service Learning
So we would take our classes and then we would go work with a local NGO and help tutor uh middle school students from the community and then once we were done with classes we got to do cultural trips to batswana and Zimbabwe before returning to the US oh it’s amazing I’m
So happy for you yeah and that’s all I have um thank you guys so much for listening thank you so much Sydney for walking us through public relations major in the United States guys if you have any questions for Sydney feel free to email me at
Advisor fb. CZ or you can send me a message on education USA check social media account I’m happy to connect you with Sydney and I’m sure that she will be able to answer any of your questions regarding the major regarding studying at University of Georgia or regarding whatever work experience she had on
Campus so thank you so much for watching Sydney thank you again it was very informative and uh I’m looking forward to your questions take care
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