Hi,
I am an international student who enrolled into a US University as a freshmen. For a variety of reasons, My Fall semester grades were below the requirements and I was placed on Academic suspension. The appeal letter was denied and I am currently in my home country.
I wanted ask whether it would be advisable to re-apply to my previous University?
I was enrolled with a scholarship and am unable to attend the University without the scholarship that they gave me.
While I am applying to online colleges with plans to re-apply to my previous university, I wanted to ask whether I should apply to other universities in other countries as a plan B.
My parents business always took the family to live in many different countries on multiple continents.
Thankfully I learned how to speak and use English but my native language is not on the level suitable for advanced education as I never got the chance to actively use it in my pre-college education years.
So unless I spend a few years improving my native language skills, English using universities are my only option.
You can reapply to your previous university. They might give you another chance after a semester or two off. Talk to your advisor or dean about this (email is fine too, since you are outside the country). I don’t think your chances of getting your scholarship back will be assured, though. That would be something to ask them. Better to know now than to make incorrect assumptions.
Can you afford to be full pay at any college in the US? Even a community college? Some of those have guaranteed pathways into 4-year schools, with minimum GPA requirements, of course.
Frankly my parents are missionaries and with my built up savings and their help, I can afford to attend a community college with maximum 24000 dollars payment per year. As such I can’t afford to attend a 4 year college without any financial aid. The only reason I was able to attend my previous university was due to the high SAT, Toefl, and GPA that got me a large enough scholarship to pay only 12000 dollars per semester with prospects of getting a job on campus to help with the payments.
You need to get more information from your university. One, what are the re-admission policies and, two, whether you can get your scholarship back.
Unfortunately, if you apply to any other schools, you would be considered a transfer student. And there is very, very little financial aid for international transfer students.
Many schools will not reinstate your funding until you can prove, academically, that you are performing adequately. Usually, you pay full fees until they decide to reinstate your funding, that’s IF they can continue to fund you.
You would need to file an appeal with the Financial aid office at your school.
As for work, to help with your tuition, as a non-citizen the conditions of your Visa do not allow you to work more than 10-20 hours per week. This rate of pay would not be significant enough to pay for your tuition. It might cover your health insurance fees.
Hi! thanks for the reply.
I emailed the different staff members about the specifics of my situation.
My school has 4 different types of situations where students must re-apply:
Medical or Personal Leave
When student has good grades and relations with the school and must leave due to personal reasons.
Academic Suspension:
When student does not meet the SAP requirements and has not appealed or the appeal has been denied.
The first instance of suspension allows student to reapply after 1 long semester (my school has 2 long semesters and 2 sub semesters)
-Second instance would be a period of 12 months before re-application.
and so on
This is the current suspension that I am on (first time being suspended)
Suspension due to breaking school law:
-Student has broken school laws such as plagiarism or excessive vandalism
-Student can only re-apply after 1 year.
Suspension due to addiction/inability to continue healthy lifestyle at school.
-Student can only re-apply after proper proof of recovery has been provided with to the school.
In all four cases different committees decide whether the student can be re-admitted to the school (1st case: school registrar/2nd case: Academic Committee/ 3rd case: Academic Committee and Vice President/ etc) and acceptance of re-application is not guaranteed.
I read up on and emailed multiple people about my academic suspension and the details of the situation. According to them, academic suspensions are common among freshmen in college and it is the repeating pattern of inability to meet the SAP standards that companies are concerned with rather than the fact itself that one was academically suspended.
Concerning the financial aid, the school staff has told me that I must re-apply for the scholarship and I wanted to ask about the chances of having that scholarship reinstated and quickly having it reinstated since my parents and I do not have the means to pay for the school fees without the aid of scholarship.
Is there anything I could do to prove that I am academically able to thrive and live up to the expectations that the school had for me when giving me the scholarship?
My academic adviser who I am still in good touch with told me that online schooling for credits are good as a starting point but attending proper institutions (in an environment similar to my universities) and doing well in those classes would be strong evidence for my preparedness to return to the university.
Right now, the opinion that I think the school has towards me is that I am an intelligent student who had difficulties with my mental health being in a new environment and was unable to perform to my best (Right now my parents and I are focused on recovering my mental health firstly while returning to school as my second priority). I had previously skipped most of my classes throughout the semester and obviously hadn’t turned in any assignments. The only saving grace was that I had regular visits with the school counselor who knew about my current psychological state and that during the last 2 weeks, I had managed to study the whole semesters worth of knowledge and received 88% on the final exam in hopes of receiving a passing grade (I had to get a 95% on the exam for an D).
Right now I definitely accept and understand that this situation is due to my own actions from the previous term and know that this time I have been given can and must be used for my own health be it physical or mental. I just wanted to know whether the people here with experience in such matters thought I could get back my scholarship with relative speed in the events that I am readmitted or I should start preparing for other opportunities to start completely fresh and attend a new advanced educational institute as a freshmen once more.
Also if there were any actions or courses I could take right now to help the school make the decision to reinstate my scholarship that you know of, it would be most appreciated if you could share those with me!
The college is the only one who can tell you whether there is a chance your scholarship could be reinstated. You haven’t mentioned the name of the college, and different colleges may have different policies. So while some folks on these boards may have had similar experiences, you must not assume your end result would be the same either way.
I think it will help if you have a formal diagnosis from a doctor and continue under the care of that person for a time. If you can take some college classes in the meantime, that will show you are ready to handle the workload again. Those actions show you are taking responsibility and trying to remedy the problem. Whether they are enough to get you a scholarship again is entirely up to the college, but doing those things won’t hurt.
Yes, you return after one long semester and pay full fees. Again, this is specific to your school. They will not want to fund you to return if they think they will lose more money. You have to have a productive semester, on your dime, so that you have evidence to submit to the university appeals committee.
This shows the university that you are invested in your education and that you are capable of having a productive semester. (This is how some of the schools in our state have students return and appeal.) I realize that you don’t have the money to do this, but this is the only way, that I know of, to prove that you are academically able to thrive and live up to the expectations of the school.
You cannot erase your previous college experience and begin again as a Freshman.
If you apply to another university and try to present yourself as a freshman, the colleges will screen your application by using a clearinghouse to see if you have previously attended another university.
If you “omit” your previous university experience, you will be caught and your information will be red-flagged. Once flagged, no university will admit you anywhere; universities will know that you were not honest in your information and WILL NOT admit you, no matter what you try. Forget about any funding or future visa.
So your options would be:
Firstly, take care of your mental health. You can’t function well in school if you don’t take care of your health.
Then, either:
-return to your home country for your education
-pay full fees, for 1 year or 1 semester of classes, depending on what your university dictates.
-Go to a community college and pay nonresident fees for two years and then transfer back to your university. You may, at this point, not receive any further funding, since transfer students rarely get financial aid at the universities.
Alternatively to the previous suggestions you could also try to look for opportunities elsewhere. There are tuition-free universities in Germany, but the thing is that you may have to join a language bootcamp until you are able to take the German taught programs, assuming the program that you want isn’t available in English.
What about going to Asia? There some English taught programs in Korean, Chinese and Singaporean universities.
Australia and New Zealand are also options to consider.
I’m just pointing at locations that you may have not considered before since it’s quite easy to limit your mind to North America/Europe and even more now that you are in such a tricky situation.