Saudi Gazette

RIYADH — The King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity (Mawhiba) is holding this week a workshop for students enrolled in its “Excellence Program” in preparation for qualifying to get enrolled into prestigious world-class universities. As many as 181 outstanding male and female students will be provided with intensive and integrated training to sit for the standardized SAT test.

The training program will be implemented in cooperation with a specialized American consulting company. The workshop aimed to train students in advanced skills to pass the SAT test by introducing them to different strategies that enable them to perform the test with high efficiency. The Mawhibah’s “Excellence Program for Admission to Prestigious Universities” is an integrated training program to prepare outstanding secondary school students who are qualified to be sent under the Foreign Scholarship Program to prestigious American universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, MIT, and other universities ranked among the top 30 universities in the world.

The one-year training program would start from the end of the first semester of the second year of secondary school and continue until the student obtains admission to the international university, where the program is implemented in a combination of in-person and distance learning. Among the terms and conditions for enrolling in the “Excellence Program,” the applicant must be a second-year secondary school student, and the student must obtain a score of no less than 1000 on the SAT test, or obtain a score of no less than 80 on the TOEFL iBT test, or 6.5 on the IELTS - Academic test. The student must obtain a grade of no less than 90 percent in the third intermediate year and the first secondary year. Also, the student must obtain a grade of no less than 90 in the science subjects, computer and English language in the third intermediate year and the first secondary year, besides passing the personal interview.

The program also provides many other services, including a training workshop on university application procedures in essay writing, extracurricular activities, and filling out the form to obtain recommendations, and four counseling sessions to follow up on the student’s performance, support and guide him to ensure that he meets the requirements for admission to prestigious international universities, and to support the student fill out application forms and submit all requirements on time.

It is noteworthy that the number of students who have participated in the program since its inception in 2016 has reached 1,108 students, of whom 648 applied to the best international universities, including 550 male and female students who have been accepted in high-ranking universities.