I am a student from Germany who already applied to several US colleges (all regular decision). Everything is going well so far, yet, I have an important question that nobody has been able to answer me. I’ve read posts saying that international applicants generally need better test scores than Americans but also some that claimed that the colleges were aware of the fact that the tests are more difficult for international students. Personally, I’d think that people from countries with non-recognized curriculums (Asia) need better test scores because they don’t possess any other comparable mean of showing their academic strength. However, the Abitur being an internationally recognized curriculum, would I be able to get in with lower (decent) scores on the ACT (in my case a 30)? I have a German 1,0 GPA which is frankly a lot harder to acquire than a 4.0 in the US, especially since I live in Bavaria (most competitive Bundesland in Germany).
Pardon me, but did you just crawl out of a cave from 1943? Who are you kidding. You are going to compete with the advanced countries like Japan, Korea, China (that consistently do better in international standardized tests)…There are far more students from China, Korea, Japan, India represented at schools like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Yale than from Germany…sorry to wake you up to reality!
But you’ve weakened your argument with your ACT score which is well below the average at Ivy league schools. Why should they accept you, an international applicant, with your lower ACT score? If your academic performance is so superlative (as you describe) you should have scored higher on your ACT.
Students from these countries (Korea, Japan, China, India) being well represented, they do need better test scores since they have a lot of “internal” competition.
The central question is: Do great grades make up for modest test scores as long they are somehwat in the range? This question has certainly been posted countless times regarding US grades. Yet, US grades are widely considered to be inflational. Sure, standardized tests do test abilities that differ from school work. But they also exist to distinguish among applicants with stellar grades, imho.
Since it is hard (almost impossible) to get individual country representation for the colleges mentioned…there is at least one school that actually publishes the data. And you can take MIT as a proxy for the other schools: http://web.mit.edu/iso/stats_14-15/total.shtml)
You will notice only 1 student from Germany in the college…sorry to say…there are even better representation from third-world countries in Africa and South America than Germany…
@TheTreetop. I believe you don’t understand how the elite schools here in the States work…if you are from an industrialized country like Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, United Kingdom…they expect the highest standards in grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities/achievements (because you are expected to have the same opportunities as those living here in the US)…but, if you are applying from a very poor country like Sudan, Nigeria, or Ethiopia with limited educational resources…they are more willing to bend…and understand their test scores may be lower, outside activities/achievements may be limited…
…Elite American schools make decisions holistically…looking at the “big picture” not just black and white test scores and GPA…it is a different way of picking the “best” students than the way the Asian and European universities admit students…
@gravitas2 I do understand. I hope that my other test scores, grades, essays and extracurriculars can make up for the poor ACT score. I do know Germans though who got into Ivies with <30
Same opportunities? For students who aren’t native speakers, the tests are certainly a lot harder than, say, for Brits. Furthermore, the American high school curriculum covers different fields than the German one. Yet, the college curriculum seems very similar to the German university curriculum. This is quite strange.
Well, how do you explain your “lower” ACT score? Why should schools overlook that “lower” score when they consider your application? They may not fully comprehend the difficulty in obtaining your GPA in Germany, but they do understand that you scored well below their average on the ACT.
Top schools know that getting a 1.0 is exceptional. So, you’ll make the first cut. Then comes the second cut.
Universities might somewhat take into account whether a student comes from an essay-based curriculum (France, Germany, Italy…) or a standardized-test-based curriculum (South Korea, China, Japan) - after years getting applications from all over the world, they know what’s “normal” and what’s “average” for your country. But the key criterion is that, of course, they want to know whether English is a first language. They’ll cut you a bit of slack there - of course, taking the tests in a foreign language is harder than in your first language (and since the tests do not in any way resemble a college test, they don’t really indicate whether you are bilingual or not). Finally, it’s not so much the curriculum is recognized (because gaokao is recognized, JEET is recognized…), it’s whether 1° there’s a national exam board and 2° there’s corruption or widespread cheating at any point in the exam process.
Overall, though, you have to be within range both for your region and for the university overall.
30 is top 10%. So, that’s good. But for the Ivy League, you need to be top 2% at least.
For the Ivy League and equivalent, 32 is bottom 25%. So, for an international, 32 is okay if English isn’t your first language, 31possibly if something makes up for it in your application. 30 is unlikely to be sufficient, UNLESS you have something extraordinary (ie., national award winner, international competition-level athlete, published writer, recorded musician…)