A teenage genius might have to drop her studies at Concordia University in Montreal and head back to Iran due to high tuition fees for international students, and is urging the government to renew her papers.
Sara Saedi says returning to her home country could put her life jeopardy.
At just 15 years old, Saedi’s CV would make anyone’s jaw drop. She finished elementary school at the age of eight and graduated high school at 13. She speaks five languages (her English is first-language quality), plays three musical instruments, can shoot an air rifle at a competitive level, has a red belt in taekwondo, is an advanced swimmer and intermediate chess player – and now she’s looking to pursue a career in biochemistry.
She said she’s been interested in medicines since she was nine and wants to help develop antibiotics.
“It’s about kind of like studying their behavior and their response to them, and that’s particularly what I’m really interested in, because it’s really futuristic, and it could save us from a possible apocalypse of bacteria that I don’t really want to have,” she said.
After being the youngest person admitted to Concordia’s biochemistry program, Saedi finished her first semester with straight As, keeping a 4.0 grade point average. Her professors have said they had no idea she was much younger than their other students and she shows great promise.
But Saedi is worried her efforts will go to waste if she has to go back to Iran, where she fears for her safety.
“Things are not good there for a woman, for young women specifically, and they did not recognize my talent, and they did not recognize my capability,” she told CTV News.
“And that’s why I came here, because I wanted to be recognized. I wanted to be appreciated.… I just can’t go there. It’s not even safe for me to go there as a woman, and that’s why I’m really trying to stay here, and it’s been so stressful.”
Concordia is a well-recognized university internationally. But it is an English-language university in a province very concerned to maintain its French language. The provincial government has recently tightened the rules on English universities and does not appear to like seeing more foreign students drawn to them.
Saedi has some outstanding fees to pay the university and as a result can’t get the papers she needs to continue her studies, she told CTV, Canada’s largest private television network and one broadcasting only in English.
Saedi moved to Canada with her mother, who took on work as a caregiver, while her father stayed back home and sent money to help with tuition and living costs. With Iranian currency depreciating and tuition for international students having been raised up to 20,000 Canadian dollars (US$14,000) per year, it’s not enough to make ends meet.
“It just doesn’t work anymore because it [the rial] is basically worth nothing. And so that’s something that we didn’t expect,” she told CTV News.
As a result, the university blocked her from enrolling for the coming semester and Saedi can’t renew her student permits, which she needs to reapply for by this spring. “And if I don’t get this done, I wouldn’t be able to renew my immigration documents, my study agreement and my [Quebec Acceptance Certificate]. And, because I’m a minor, I have to renew them every year.… If I don’t do that, I can’t stay here anymore, and we don’t want that. We don’t want to go back there.”
This isn’t the first time Saedi has struggled securing paperwork to study in Canada – she had to defer her first semester at Concordia due to bureaucratic delays.
“Here, I cannot make mistakes. Every single step that I take, every single grade that I earn, I can’t mess it up,” she said. “I have no choice. And that’s a lot of stress on a 15-year-old to, you know, think about bills and the rent and how I should get them for the next month. And, like, how much is the income? And I filed the taxes.”
She’s been applying for scholarships, but isn’t eligible for all of them after just one semester.
A spokesperson for Concordia said that in order to get the proper papers, international students must show the provincial and federal governments that they have sufficient funds to study. As such, “international students should not have outstanding fees.”
“When tuition fees are unpaid, we do our utmost to assist students by establishing a payment plan for their tuition debt and, when possible, we can also provide financial awards,” said university spokesperson Vannina Maestracci.
