Having arrived from South Korea ten years ago, Soh Myoung Lee has settled into the entertainment industry and found a place for both her love of digital media and her faith in God.

By Anne Su with Philana Ho

Soh Myoung Lee, Associate Director and Motion Graphics Designer at PPFF, has produced trailers for many popular films including Bride Wars. Photo courtesy of Soh Myoung Lee.

I came to know Soh Myoung Lee through my friends at the Pan Pacific Film Festival (PPFF), a Christian film festival dedicated to recognizing Christian-themed films and to globally spread the Christian faith through media.

Soh, PPFF’s Associate Director and motion graphic designer, is in charge of making trailers and putting together graphics to publicize PPFF. Amidst the busy week before PPFF, Soh took time out of her regular job and PPFF work for an interview. See more of Soh’s work here.

After arriving in the states ten years ago from South Korea, Soh went to high school in the San Fernando Valley and later attended the Otis College of Art and Design. There she majored in digital media, which broadly includes broadcasting, motion graphics, filmmaking, etc. When she graduated, she had only one year to look for a job, due to her status as an international student.

For the firm that hired her, it was the first time the company had ever hired someone of international status. After Soh worked there for two years, the president of the company told her he could no longer sponsor her.

“After those two years was the hardest time of my lifetime,” Soh says. To add to her job loss and the lack of money in her bank account, Soh accidentally broke her ankle. However, she persevered, even going to an interview at her second (and current) company on crutches. She got the job. However, two years later the firm had to cut down its employment due to the downturn in the economy.

When each employee was called into the president’s office for a round of “interviews” to help decide which employees to cut, Soh bravely articulated the absence of fear because of her faith and revealed how she had been praying to God consistently for the company’s well-being.

“Literally, my boss was crying on me,” Soh recounts. “And she was hugging me.”

Soh didn’t lose her job amid the ongoing wave of job cuts.

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Recalling her childhood, Soh always had a passion for drawing and painting.

“I wanted to always become a cartoonist, or a painter, or some kind of artist, or more specifically illustrator,” she says. “But God has led me to digital media.”

A ticket for the Pan Pacific Film Festival. Photo courtesy of PPFF.

Soh’s faith led her to work at her current company, an entertainment marketing firm, where the majority of her coworkers are Jewish-Americans or Caucasians.

“I’m really proud of being Korean and Asian. I’m proud that I’m one of only [a] few in our company too,” Soh says. “I believe in God in sending me to my company as a mission field, not just to make money, but because He wants me to show my life, not just my work, in spreading the gospel. Like being a good example. Not like obviously going to them and saying, ‘I’m a Christian, so I’m a nice person.’ Not doing that, but just showing how God is really great and [how] He made my life really full with light.”

Soh has even started a Bible study with one of her colleagues. They not only discuss their faith but also pray together for their company and its success.

In addition to Soh’s full-time job, she currently plays a big role in PPFF. In working with PPFF, Soh shares God’s vision for her, saying, “We have such diverse ethnicities here, so many other types of cultures. I think He wants me to be more globalized than being stuck in Korea.”

When I ask if she is planning to stay in the U.S., Soh confirms that Hollywood is where she belongs, where she continues to devote herself to God through digital media.

By Chloe Wang

USC almnus David Reynaldo co-founded College Zoom to help students get into top 100 universities at affordable prices. Photo courtesy of Reynaldo.

Many international students can likely still recall how expensive it was to pay the service fee for coming to the United States through an agency, which basically prepares you for the Visa officers, persuades you to apply to a few low-ranking universities and just rips you off. At least this writer can still remember paying an agency $3,000 just to get into a community college from China.

When international students apply to universities, many of them try to acquire outside help. At Santa Monica College, a community college attended by a lot Chinese students, there are fliers stapled outside of classrooms everywhere selling services to write your personal statements for you during the transfer season. The number of students who buy the service is nowhere to be found.

But they’re not all rip-offs.

David Reynaldo, a recent USC alumnus, spoke to Bamboo Offshoot about his brainchild: College Zoom – Increase Your Admissions Success, a service that helps international students transfer into competitive universities.

College Zoom first started as a school project, Reynaldo explained. Reynaldo and  co-founders Sean Bandawat and Ryan Christensen found their first customers at Santa Monica College: four Chinese girls who were trying to transfer that year.

Reynaldo said his team had no idea they would end up serving a predominantly Asian market. But as it turns out, international students were the ones who needed the service the most. International students are most disadvantaged because of the language and culture barriers they face, according to Reynaldo.

On average, it takes students 2 years to learns conversational in English and 5 years to master written English. Therefore, many international students who have studied in America for two years aren’t confident with the language when it comes to writing personal statements.

“It’s easy to see why having someone else write their essays for them is a safer option,” said Reynaldo. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The student gets an impersonal essay that will get automatically rejected when the writing doesn’t match the student’s TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score.”

According to Reynaldo, how students express themselves is more important than what they say.

“It is about selling yourself, and many international students are embarrassed to talk about themselves,” he said.

College Zoom charges $650 for assistance in applying to at least two universities. Covered by that amount is 33 hours of service at $20 per hour. Reynaldo said students can use the two applications to apply to USC and all the UCs.

“That’s our largest service offering and it actually provides everything that a student needs to develop two incredibly strong applications,” he said. “We also invest a lot of time helping students develop writing skills they’ll keep forever, which is something a lot of other services don’t do. They just make recommendations, but we hand-hold students through the entire process. Our service is extremely personal for the price we charge.”

Students who apply to at least two top 100 universities and don’t get in are guaranteed their money back.

Several other admission consulting groups – The Ivy Coach, Ivy Select College Consulting and College Consulting Services – refused to name a price without a completed application. Of the groups that listed prices on their websites, College Karma listed as high as $150 per hour and some packages as high as $4,000 for 6 months to a year of consulting.

Edward McDonnel, a private college counselor from Cincinnati, has among the most affordable rates in the industry. He also charges $650 but offers no guarantee.

“Just like China, America has counselors who are out to make easy money from worried parents,” Reynaldo said about why College Zoom’s prices are so low. “But we genuinely want to help and offer a service that most college students can afford with some help from their parents.  We are not out to rip anyone off or artificially inflate our prices”

It is still unknown how large the demand in the market is going to be since it’s only College Zoom’s second year of business. The four girls who used their services last year all got into top 100 universities in the U.S. Three were accepted by schools that are now ranked in the top 40 for 2011.

“Absolutely yes,” said Shiqiao Guo, now a student at UC Riverside, about whether or not College Zoom’s service was useful. “College Zoom was more helpful than my campus counselors and I learned a lot of writing tips I now use in college.”

Will College Zoom and many other services like it be put out of business if universities’ transfer centers begin providing more help to international students? Considering that many local community colleges like Santa Monica College are overpopulated and faculty are not capable of giving every student one-on-one help like College Zoom can, it seems unlikely that will happen anytime soon.

By Alyson Owyang

Julia Wong, an international student from Toronto, Canada, came to USC looking for the “Trojan Family.”

Since she graduated in May 2009, despite a number of internships and Trojan Family networking connections, she still doesn’t have a job.

During a time of economic recession and uncertainty, college students across the country are feeling the burden of having to enter the workforce, but if you’re not an American citizen, finding a job requires a lot more than an interview and signing a contract.

International students face barriers other students don’t have to break: ineligibility of applying for American loans, work visa sponsorships, and degrees of fluency in English.

International students made up nearly 17.5 percent of the total USC student population last fall, according to the Office of Academic Records and Registrar.  As USC continues to experience increases in international students, particularly those from Asian countries, international Asian-Pacific Islander students are weighing their career options more carefully.

The majority of enrolled international students and student visitors at USC come from Asian countries, including India, China and South Korea.  Compared to only 9 percent from Europe, 78 percent of all USC international students originate from Asia, according to the USC Office of International Studies.

Most international students at USC, particularly Asian Pacific Islander students, leave their homes and study abroad because of the wide range of majors offered at American universities.  They find they can better satisfy their academic interests by majoring in specific programs, such as communications and political science, at universities in the States.

“There aren’t any private universities in Canada, all schools are public, so I would just have been another number at any university in Canada,” said Wong, who majored in communications. “I really didn’t want that for a college experience. I knew USC was a small/medium sized college and I would have more interaction with my professors, smaller class sizes, and a tighter knit community.”

Although some financial options exist in the forms of scholarships and aid from students’ home countries, international students are ineligible for financial aid or work study from USC. Oftentimes, finding a campus job that accept non-work study students or applying to be a Residential Adviser in one of the dorms can be a competitive, time consuming process.  Moreover, most international undergraduate students rely on their families for tuition, whereas graduate students, comprising 46 percent of USC’s international students, tend to struggle more to finance their education, according to the Office of International Studies.

Even though American private universities cost more, there are more options and opportunities in the states for many API international students.

“I chose to come study at an American university because of the flexibility and choice offered here,” said Abhinay Jhaveri, a senior from Bombay, India, majoring in international relations and French with a minor in environmental studies.

Once an international student is about to graduate from USC, competing with American students for the same job position can be another wall to mount.

International students hope to be more marketable to companies in both the states and abroad with an American degree in hand.  However, having a degree from a private university in the States might not be enough when it comes to the international, and even local, job market.  For many international companies, such as those in Taiwan, students have better chances of being hired if they have a few years of work experience in the U.S. after school and not just an American degree.

Other roadblocks include trying to obtain a work visa or green card to stay in the United States.

“With this economy, [the] American government is taking more time and caution to process green card applications,” said David Cheng-Wei, a recent computer science USC graduate from Taiwan.  “This is understandable but nonetheless adds even more uncertainty to [an] already frustrating experience. I can’t even say all these problems I just described is the ‘tip of the iceberg’ because I have not even scratched the surface.”

Facing low levels of morale, some students turn to other post-graduate training programs, but even those can also restrict their pool of applicants to U.S. citizens, only furthering international students’ exasperation.

“Many IR undergraduates end up working in the Peace Corps or Teach for America if not pursuing anything specifically academic, [such as] Fulbright and Rhodes Scholarships, said Jhaveri.  “All these opportunities are usually reserved for American citizens as well, which makes it difficult for international students.”