We're students who became consultants

StudyU is an international agency. We help students get into universities worldwide; Turkey is our main focus and strongest destination because we studied here ourselves and know the system from the inside. At the same time, we support applicants in other countries too: our consultants are based in different locations, we have real student cases, and we use first-hand information for each admission route.

Our story

We created StudyU because we walked the study-abroad path ourselves - on exchange in the USA, Italy, the Netherlands and Canada. We know firsthand how hard it is to compare universities in a country you've never been to, in a language you may not speak. So we built the service we wished we'd had: honest answers, a real person beside you and clear support - for admission anywhere in the world.

Because we're a small team, the person who answers your first message is the same one who'll be with you until your first day on campus. If your route goes beyond Turkey, we bring in consultants with local experience and check the requirements by country, university and programme. It's not marketing - it's just how we work.

Who founded StudyU

StudyU started as a personal story. In 2020 Mikhail Matyushenko came to Istanbul as a student and walked the whole path himself - choosing a university, paperwork, relocation, the first semester in a new country. He graduated from Özyeğin University with High Honors in International Finance with a Computer Science minor, and now teaches engineering students there while finishing his master's in data science.

As a student he worked in Özyeğin's International Office, running education fairs and school partnerships - and saw applicants getting lost exactly where he once did. The student initiative grew into an agency: today the team has over a thousand consultations and hundreds of enrolled students behind it.

The numbers discipline isn't accidental either: Mikhail led the team that won Türkiye's CFA Research Challenge in 2022/23 against 42 teams and placed third in the MENA final in Dubai. That's why discounts, scholarships and terms get calculated upfront and fixed in the contract. The founder's profile is public on LinkedIn.

Alongside him, StudyU is built by co-founder Sanan Alizada and a team of consultants - each of whom has walked the international student path.