How can an international student play in usa college?

International Irish student interested in going to college in USA?

• I am 17 and am in my final year of school in Northern Ireland. I am looking to go to college in USA and am wondering how to apply and the most popular colleges in east cost. I would love to hear of some international student experiences on how they feel about studying abroad. I know the fees are very costly but there are so many scholarships i wouldnt know where to begin. Should I break the trend and follow my dream? The only thing holding me back is the difficulty of the process. My AS results are high and am unaware of how they would convert to American style grades.

• Answer:

  Definitely follow the dream - it's well worth it. The process is a pain in the **** with all the SATs, multiple application forms, financial aid, dealing with the US embassy etc. but I think it's worth it in the end! I graduated from Penn a couple of years ago (UK citizen, entirely educated in the UK system) and it was an amazing experience. If a liberal arts education is what you're after, you really won't find anything like it in the UK. The best thing I can recommend for you is to get in touch with the Fulbright commission's Educational Advisory Service, they're a brilliant resource and they helped me get started with the whole process - http://www.fulbright.co.uk/eas/index.html If there's any way you can get to London for it you should check out the College Day coming up in a few weeks, you'll be able to chat to loads of alumni reps from different colleges and pick up plenty of literature, as well as going to seminars to help you figure out the application process. A couple of quick tips - you can do a rough conversion of your grades to a GPA using the following scale: A=4.0 B=3.0 C=2.0 D=1.0 That's just a rough idea though, most colleges will actually add some extra weighting since AS/A levels are more rigorous than standard US high school classes. When you're looking at finances, it usually pays to focus on private colleges with a need blind financial aid policy for international students (sadly they're a bit thin on the ground, but most of the top ranked colleges offer this). The initial price tag may be eye-watering, but they're far more likely to give you assistance if you and your parents can't afford to pay - the "sticker price" for my tuition was about $27k a year, but I only paid about $4-5k. There are some non need-based scholarships out there, but in my experience very few of them are open to international students. As far as choosing a college, there are so many on the East Coast that it's almost impossible to pick ones to recommend without knowing more about what you're looking for (shout out for my alma mater though - www.upenn.edu!) I'd suggest trying a couple of college search programmes to throw up some possibilities for you, the websites below might be a good place to start (plenty of other useful info there too) http://www.collegeboard.com/ http://www.princetonreview.com/ Best of luck, whatever you decide doing.