University/Driver's License

[LvivLovers 39]

I'm happy to say my wife was accepted into the University she wanted to get into! I'll go into some details just in case it helps anyone in a similar situation.

We weren't really sure where to start and it seemed pretty daunting...we didn't know if she'd need to take the SAT, ACT, TOEFL, etc. and thought she might even need to get a GED or something like that first. She had taken some classes at a university in Ukraine (a distance learning program) but had to drop out for financial reasons after a couple years. Since it had been a few years since she dropped out of college, we were really worried about her getting up to speed for the SAT or ACT.

After some digging around at the University she was interested in attending, we found out that even though she was a permanent resident here, they treated her like an international student and she needed to demonstrate her English proficiency. There were a few options (like TOEFL), but we ended up going with GSTEP (Georgia State Test of English Proficiency). She did reall well on it, but didn't get the highest scores in every category so it wasn't enough to qualify meet the admission requirements.

Her University also offered an IEP (Intensive English Program) that had 5 levels and basically provides a path into the University. Once you have passed all 5 levels (each one is a semester long) at a certain GPA, you meet the admission requirement to get into the University. In addition to helping with English, the classes were designed to be like typical college classes...history, speech, psychology etc. from normal text books. We decided to go this route, so Oleksandra took another test to determine her starting level. I knew her English was very good, but the tests are also pretty hard, so we weren't sure how well it would go. She was just hoping to make at least a level 3 but would be extremely happy if she could meet level 4. Luckily, she actually tested as a level 5 which she didn't expect at all. The IEP really was intensive! It was like taking 18 hrs and she literally was working on it almost every night and all weekend. In the end, the hard work payed off and she got straight A's and this took care of the English requirements.

Since she had some college work from outside the USA, the University required us to get an evaluation of her coursework from their specific provider. Oleksandra had gotten official transcripts of all her work prior to leaving Ukraine, so that made things a lot easier. We got the evaluation and submitted them to the University. She got credit for a lot more classes than I would have expected...it ended up being 63 semester hours worth! Since it was more than 32 credit hours, the University considered her to be a transfer student and thank God, she didn't need to take the SAT or ACT. She was basically good to go at that point and we submitted her application.

She was accepted about 3 weeks ago and started taking her first classes this week during summer session (she couldn't wait until fall session started. lol)!

Another note on finances...seems like we lucked out again. Oleksandra's is attending a state University and qualified for in-state tuition as well as HOPE scholarship (based on GPA, not need), so it is really affordable. It looks like it will only cost a few hundred dollars if even that for fall semester!

Ok, as for the driver's license, I have to say overall I've been really impressed with how well she drives...I've seen some other beginner's in the parking lots last few weeks and they looked really bad by comparison (very intimidated and driving at a crawl, freezing up completely, etc.!

On my wife's 1st attempt, I think she got flustered a little bit and didn't do well on the parallel parking or backing into a space. She was expecting that the instructor wanted her to drive one way on the course and was sort of positioning the car that way when he instead told her to back into a space or parallel park or something like that. The car was angled the wrong way and she tried to do it from that position...then started to get confused which way to turn the wheel to correct things. Fail! We worked for about a week driving in reverse, parking in reverse, and parallel parking and she seemed pretty comfortable with it so she decided to try again.

On her 2nd attempt, there were no problems on the parallel parking or backing up, so they had her head over to their little driver course. Everything was going well until she came to a mock railroad crossing. She didn't realize what it was since it was drawn on the pavement and not an actual sign like she expected to see. As a result, she just drove slowly, and didn't stop to look for trains (good thing it was a mock railroad). The instructor asked her what she thought it meant and she didn't even have any idea. Fail!

As a result, we went back during Sunday when they are closed and walked the whole track to make sure she knew everything she was looking at! She practiced another week and was all fired up to take the test again. The day of the test it started raining pretty hard, so I was starting to worry a bit whether she could handle that added distraction or not. BTW, in our state if you fail 3 times, you have to wait a month before repeating it, so I was tempted to try to get her to delay taking the test. But she felt confident so she decided to go ahead and give it a shot. She was a little nervous again on the backing up and parallel parking, but got through it. No problems on the driving course this time. Finally, they took her out on the actual road test. Mostly good, but one big problem. Apparently, she had only used her mirrors when changing lanes and hadn't turned her head to look.

When they got back to the dmv, the instructor got out of the car and demonstrated blind spots to her by standing in them. He was giving her a pretty big lecture and she was prepared for failure number 3. Finally, when the instructor was all done he asked her one more question..."How do you say in Russian?...You passed anyway!". Oleksandra completely freaked out and stunned the instructor with a big bear hug, thanking him profusely! lol

So it's been a really big week for her! She's taking her first classes as a full-time student and has her driver's license. It's been a really big week for me too! No more giving driver's lessons every day and no more having to take her to the grocery store to buy her fresh fruits. vegatables, and other helsy foods!!!

[payxibka 10,047]

Cool stuff!!!!

[Brad and Vika 129]

Big steps!! Congratulations to Oleksandra for her achievments, and to you for your help and (above all) patience. Good work

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I'm happy to say my wife was accepted into the University she wanted to get into! I'll go into some details just in case it helps anyone in a similar situation.

We weren't really sure where to start and it seemed pretty daunting...we didn't know if she'd need to take the SAT, ACT, TOEFL, etc. and thought she might even need to get a GED or something like that first. She had taken some classes at a university in Ukraine (a distance learning program) but had to drop out for financial reasons after a couple years. Since it had been a few years since she dropped out of college, we were really worried about her getting up to speed for the SAT or ACT.

After some digging around at the University she was interested in attending, we found out that even though she was a permanent resident here, they treated her like an international student and she needed to demonstrate her English proficiency. There were a few options (like TOEFL), but we ended up going with GSTEP (Georgia State Test of English Proficiency). She did reall well on it, but didn't get the highest scores in every category so it wasn't enough to qualify meet the admission requirements.

Her University also offered an IEP (Intensive English Program) that had 5 levels and basically provides a path into the University. Once you have passed all 5 levels (each one is a semester long) at a certain GPA, you meet the admission requirement to get into the University. In addition to helping with English, the classes were designed to be like typical college classes...history, speech, psychology etc. from normal text books. We decided to go this route, so Oleksandra took another test to determine her starting level. I knew her English was very good, but the tests are also pretty hard, so we weren't sure how well it would go. She was just hoping to make at least a level 3 but would be extremely happy if she could meet level 4. Luckily, she actually tested as a level 5 which she didn't expect at all. The IEP really was intensive! It was like taking 18 hrs and she literally was working on it almost every night and all weekend. In the end, the hard work payed off and she got straight A's and this took care of the English requirements.

Since she had some college work from outside the USA, the University required us to get an evaluation of her coursework from their specific provider. Oleksandra had gotten official transcripts of all her work prior to leaving Ukraine, so that made things a lot easier. We got the evaluation and submitted them to the University. She got credit for a lot more classes than I would have expected...it ended up being 63 semester hours worth! Since it was more than 32 credit hours, the University considered her to be a transfer student and thank God, she didn't need to take the SAT or ACT. She was basically good to go at that point and we submitted her application.

She was accepted about 3 weeks ago and started taking her first classes this week during summer session (she couldn't wait until fall session started. lol)!

Another note on finances...seems like we lucked out again. Oleksandra's is attending a state University and qualified for in-state tuition as well as HOPE scholarship (based on GPA, not need), so it is really affordable. It looks like it will only cost a few hundred dollars if even that for fall semester!

Ok, as for the driver's license, I have to say overall I've been really impressed with how well she drives...I've seen some other beginner's in the parking lots last few weeks and they looked really bad by comparison (very intimidated and driving at a crawl, freezing up completely, etc.!

On my wife's 1st attempt, I think she got flustered a little bit and didn't do well on the parallel parking or backing into a space. She was expecting that the instructor wanted her to drive one way on the course and was sort of positioning the car that way when he instead told her to back into a space or parallel park or something like that. The car was angled the wrong way and she tried to do it from that position...then started to get confused which way to turn the wheel to correct things. Fail! We worked for about a week driving in reverse, parking in reverse, and parallel parking and she seemed pretty comfortable with it so she decided to try again.

On her 2nd attempt, there were no problems on the parallel parking or backing up, so they had her head over to their little driver course. Everything was going well until she came to a mock railroad crossing. She didn't realize what it was since it was drawn on the pavement and not an actual sign like she expected to see. As a result, she just drove slowly, and didn't stop to look for trains (good thing it was a mock railroad). The instructor asked her what she thought it meant and she didn't even have any idea. Fail!

As a result, we went back during Sunday when they are closed and walked the whole track to make sure she knew everything she was looking at! She practiced another week and was all fired up to take the test again. The day of the test it started raining pretty hard, so I was starting to worry a bit whether she could handle that added distraction or not. BTW, in our state if you fail 3 times, you have to wait a month before repeating it, so I was tempted to try to get her to delay taking the test. But she felt confident so she decided to go ahead and give it a shot. She was a little nervous again on the backing up and parallel parking, but got through it. No problems on the driving course this time. Finally, they took her out on the actual road test. Mostly good, but one big problem. Apparently, she had only used her mirrors when changing lanes and hadn't turned her head to look.

When they got back to the dmv, the instructor got out of the car and demonstrated blind spots to her by standing in them. He was giving her a pretty big lecture and she was prepared for failure number 3. Finally, when the instructor was all done he asked her one more question..."How do you say in Russian?...You passed anyway!". Oleksandra completely freaked out and stunned the instructor with a big bear hug, thanking him profusely! lol

So it's been a really big week for her! She's taking her first classes as a full-time student and has her driver's license. It's been a really big week for me too! No more giving driver's lessons every day and no more having to take her to the grocery store to buy her fresh fruits. vegatables, and other helsy foods!!!

Great! Our experience was similar. Alla got her education evaluated, took the TOEFL and enrolled for a semester in IEP. She started at level 5 and finished with a 3.93 average, and worked like crazy to excell in her school work, usually up until midnight or later studying and up at 6am to get ready for class. Now she will start her teaching certification classes in late August. She is going to be an ENGLISH teacher. LOL

Her experience with driving sounds the same also. Damn parallel parking! She passed on the second try.

I am happy to hear you are doing so well together, it is a very rewarding challenge. Best of luck to you always.

[Corey-Mariya 14]

Congrads!!!!

It took 3 months of stress to get transfered to PennState University from my russian school I failed parking once as well, everybody has to go throught that!

[chili74 0]

Great post! Thank you for the helpful info and congratulations to Oleksandra on all her success (and to you for supporting her and helping her find her way!!!)

[slim 1,530]

On my wife's 1st attempt, I think she got flustered a little bit and didn't do well on the parallel parking or backing into a space. She was expecting that the instructor wanted her to drive one way on the course and was sort of positioning the car that way when he instead told her to back into a space or parallel park or something like that. The car was angled the wrong way and she tried to do it from that position...then started to get confused which way to turn the wheel to correct things. Fail! We worked for about a week driving in reverse, parking in reverse, and parallel parking and she seemed pretty comfortable with it so she decided to try again.

For some reason, my wife also had problems in reverse. She kept stopping to think about which way to turn the wheel instead of just turning and going with it. We worked for quite a while to correct it too.

I'm glad to hear your wife passed. It's such a relief to know you won't have to do anymore "training" isn't it? After driving for a few months, she'll be great. I still don't like to ride with my wife driving, but then again, I don't like to ride with anyone driving.

Have fun!

[LvivLovers 39]

Thanks, everyone, and it's great to hear all the other successes!

Great! Our experience was similar. Alla got her education evaluated, took the TOEFL and enrolled for a semester in IEP. She started at level 5 and finished with a 3.93 average, and worked like crazy to excell in her school work, usually up until midnight or later studying and up at 6am to get ready for class. Now she will start her teaching certification classes in late August. She is going to be an ENGLISH teacher. LOL

That's how it was for Oleksandra too. She worked her butt off in IEP...and she's working her butt off again now in her summer classes. Wow...that's awesome Alla is going to teach English! She must have mastered things pretty well!

For some reason, my wife also had problems in reverse. She kept stopping to think about which way to turn the wheel instead of just turning and going with it. We worked for quite a while to correct it too.

I'm glad to hear your wife passed. It's such a relief to know you won't have to do anymore "training" isn't it? After driving for a few months, she'll be great. I still don't like to ride with my wife driving, but then again, I don't like to ride with anyone driving.

Have fun!

Yeah. I thought we had reverse covered already to be honest. I had her just drive around the parking lot in reverse for an hour or so at a time, circling various obstacles. I thought she'd developed a good feel for it. We ended up coming back and spending about 10 hours on specifically backing into spaces and parallel parking. It seemed like in the beginning she was trying to just turn the wheel and see where she'd end up and adjust her calculations...she wasn't really actively steering.

As far as actual driving...we had a few oh s!@# moments like others have reported. lol I was telling her to make a left turn ahead of some traffic that was really far away, but she was really timid and didn't do it quick enough. Once I realized it was starting to get a little too close, I told her stop stop stop! She was a little slow doing this also, and kept rolling until we were directly across the oncoming traffic lane befor she came to a complete stop. I then had to reverse again and start screaming GO GO GO!!! Ah...good times.

You're right though. A huge burden has been lifted not having to give the lessons any more. Now maybe we can find time to make it into the gym again instead. And I'm the same way...I still sort of dread it when she's going to drive. She drives well, but a little cautious. I'm trying to have patience and let her drive whenever she wants, but sometimes I just want to get there!