FOUR hundred of Jamaica’s brightest young minds, from a single institution, will leave the country September to begin undergraduate and postgraduate studies in North America, and 95 per cent of them will be doing so on scholarships.

The students, who all attended Versan Educational Services and who had a collective exam success rate of 92 per cent, will each receive between US$25,000 and US$85,000 in scholarship monies.

Versan is a private institution which prepares students for studying overseas. The range of courses on offer include the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for undergraduate students, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) for graduate students pursuing arts courses, and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), which targets graduate students going into business.

After successfully completing these courses, 50 more students opted to study abroad this year than in the previous year.

“It’s a big increase over last year’s 350,” said Versan’s founder Sandra Bramwell-Riley.

“A lot of people would see it as a brain-drain but I view it as a sort of ‘Western Union’ where remittances will be sent back. They are not going to America to plant their seeds and not come back, they are going so they can return and give back to their country,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“It’s only 0.001 per cent of the Jamaican population that goes overseas to study so the brain-drain theory is just a sensational fix on things,” Bramwell-Riley said.

The 400 students represent 80 per cent of Versan’s enrolment for the 2006/2007 academic year. Half of the remaining 100 have opted to go to local universities while the other 50 have chosen to go on to sixth-form.

The students, several of whom cited a change of environment as the reason for opting to study overseas, are excited.

LSAT student Sasha Robinson will go to Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport Florida. She was awarded a full scholarship of US$85,000 for the three years.

“I’m very excited. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer and I’m ready and rearing to go. I’m looking forward to starting in August. I’m already in contact with the student organisation so if need anything they can FedEx it,” the 23-year-old said.

If she had not received the scholarship, Sasha, who got an LSAT score of 156 of a possible 180, and who did better than 75 per cent of the students who sat the exam this year, said she would still have gone because her parents are committed to education.

For 17-year-old Stephan Hawthorne, who will be studying chemical engineering at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a scholarship valued at 90 per cent of the total tuition cost, everything is surreal.

“It feels like a dream but it’s really happening,” he said.

“Everything all leads up to one final step, to my ultimate goal. My dream is to be immortal, to leave something tangible behind by which I will be remembered. This is just another step in that process,” the deputy Wolmer’s head boy said.

The scholarship awarded to Justine Stewart, who earned a total 2200 of a possible 2400 on the SATs, is about three quarters of the required $42,000. But she says she doesn’t feel cheated not having got a full scholarship with her score.

“Although it’s a good score others got it too and it’s an Ivy League school, so the competition was really fierce. Seventy-five per cent is good,” she said. She said her parents would fund the rest of the fees.

Justine said, however, that although she wanted to go away to experience something different, she probably wouldn’t have had the chance had it not been for the scholarship.

GRE student Michael Ryan who goes off to Drexel University in Philadelphia was not awarded a scholarship, but he wants to study abroad for the mere fact that his chosen course, environmental engineering, is not offered in Jamaica.

“I did my undergrad degree in microbiology. but most of my career has been in quality control and environment and I started an environment consultancy. So I’m going in order to put myself ahead of the game by increasing my qualifications,” 35-year-old Ryan said.

One of the good things about so many students going off to study in North America, according to Bramwell-Riley, is that everyone now realises that they have an option whether they are smart or whether they are slow.

Another good thing too, she said, is that more and more Jamaicans are taking the top places in many American schools.

“The Sun Sentinel newspaper out of Florida reported (recently) that 22 per cent of Jamaicans are taking the spots in the top schools. It’s a good thing that we can do it and it’s a good thing that America is realising that we are doing it,”

“At Versan we don’t believe that only bright children can succeed. There is a school for everybody. We need to realise that everybody doesn’t learn at the same pace and the system in Jamaica is not set up that way. It’s unfortunate. (However,) we’ve been successful in widening those markets.

“I don’t like to see any child slip through the cracks,” the Versan head admitted. “I like to follow up with my students.” For this reason, she said, each student can repeat the system for up to three times without paying extra.

She said they charge a one-time fee for classes and consultations. “If you run through the system once and you don’t get the right score, you can return to the classes (without paying) to get it right,” she said.

Bramwell-Riley, who also heads the international chapters of several US educational bodies such as the Ohio Association for College Admission Counselling (OACAC) and the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), takes the interest of her students to heart and focuses on satisfying their needs. She personally visits each school in which the students express interest before she sends them there.

“(It’s) so I know which school matches who,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“When it comes to education, you have to do right and the money will follow. because once your customers are satisfied, they will pay.”

Versan started in 1995 with only six students preparing for SAT. But Bramwell-Riley, who was a teacher at Wolmer’s High for girls prior to starting the private institution, decided to broaden Versan’s offerings to provide other specialised entry examinations such as the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, and MCAT.

Versan, which rivals Dennis Minott’s A-Quest, also offers counselling and assists candidates not only with choosing schools but also with writing the essays and résumés required for the applications.

Bramwell-Riley said counselling plays a major part in what the educational institution does. “There is a need for educational psychologists in Jamaica. because a lot of children have been called dunce when if the child received the proper psychological evaluation, they would become geniuses.

According to the educator, some of the cases she has seen include manic depression, attention deficit disorder, bulimia nervosa and asperger’s disorder (a milder form of autism characterised by social isolation and eccentric behavior in children).

In order that the students be better prepared for their stay abroad, Versan organised a seminar for them two Saturday’s ago, where they talked about, among other things, ways to identify behavioural/psychological problems in roommates and the appropriate steps to take to deal with it.