Hey I hope I will get a perfect answer for my question. My son is currently studying in std 12th from Bihar State board and he had secured 9 cgpa in class 10th.But now he is under depression because he wants to make it to US universities for Engineering and he is in Bihar board. As we all know the even the state topper’s score every year is only 85% and a average student can hardly score 67% . Even my elder son secured 65% and he was the best student among all childrens in our family. Now please tell me what he has to do, do we need to justify low grades in application form or University self checks the percentile. If university checks out the percentile which doesn’t comes up with marksheet or not??? Please answer do he need sacrifice his ambitions that is quiting is the only thing left. I hope for a positive answer thanks a lot.
Hi!
I hope it works out for you!
Ok so find out of your school provides ranking (most Indian schools do not)
If it does then it’s good as the evaluators will know his standing among his peers.
If not then also avenues are open.
Most college applications have an ‘other info’ section where this can be discussed.
Moreover you can also ask your counsellor to mention this in her recommendation.
Lastly is his application complete otherwise? Most application deadlines have passed so he’d better hurry.
Can you afford the cost? Also with trump’s election Canada is a better option.
It is cheaper with same level of education.
Deadlines have not passed yet.
Tolerant society.
You can remain there after education and easily obtain work visa, PR etc
Let me know how it goes!
What US universities need is 1° letter grades and 2° SAT scores.
Something like top 20%=A, next 20%=B, next 20%=C, etc.
OR
have the principal or guidance counselor provide the scale: top scorer in state 85%, top 10% 73+, top 20% 65-80, top 30% 60-64, top 40% in state 55-59%, etc.
Some American universities are used to Indian students, especially technological universities, and they may not need the conversion, but don’t trust that universities here will automatically know - always provide a scale or letter grades.
Has he applied anywhere already? Has he taken the SAT? Or would he apply next year?
No matter what, he needs to decide between Engineering (not offered everywhere) and CS (offered about everywhere). In addition, get a book called The Fiske Guide or Princeton Review’s Best Colleges. There are many excellent colleges in the US, many more than in India, and many which aren’t known in India. Applying to a good university that Indian students haven’t discovered yet will help him too!
I can’t add anything about providing the information that would be helpful to universities in evaluating your son’s academic transcripts. I do want to emphasize how the helpfulness of MYOS’s comments. Some engineering/science schools will be very familiar with Indian grading systems. But provide as much information as you can about the scores he will be providing.
As importantly, there are many, many outstanding universities/colleges in the U.S. (And for undergraduate studies there is no difference between universities and colleges–universities just also tend to have large graduate programs, though colleges can as well.) There are easily hundreds of schools where your son could get a top-notch engineering education.
Most states have a large public university that specialize in engineering/science/agriculture. This is the result of a 19th-century land grant law that encouraged states to create them. These often have “State” or “Tech” (for Polytechnic) after the name. For example, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, Michigan State, Oklahoma State, California Polytechnic (Cal Poly), and Texas A&M (Agricultural & Mechanical). Others include Auburn (in Alabama) and Clemson (in South Carolina). Sometimes the flagship state university is also the engineering school, for example the University of Maryland and Penn State. All of these are very good schools, where your son can get a very good education in engineering. They also welcome international students for diversity and because they will almost always be paying full out-of-state tuition rates.
Very good private engineering schools that are not as well known internationally include Worcester Polytechnic University (WPI), Lehigh University, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Stevens Institute of Technology, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and Case Western Reserve University. I personally have always been impressed by WPI–nice campus and program has a very hands-on approach where students learn by working on projects. It also has great ties to businesses in the region (so do many of the other schools). I could name many more. A few of the most competitive schools–like MIT–accept well under 10% of students overall, but most on this list accept 30 or 40 or 50% of applicants (I’m not sure about international applicants). The same is true for most of the public universities I listed. (Except for price (obviously important) there’s no real important difference between public and private in the U.S. The most prestigious 20 or so schools are private but beyond that publics can be more prestigious that privates and the opposite is also true.)
Final point, if your son plans to work internationally, he might want to look at international rankings. Otherwise he might want to check out USNews rankings, which are more reflective of how schools are perceived in the U.S. But please understand there are many, many good choices, especially in engineering, where graduates can get great jobs. It’s not just about going to the 2 or 3 top schools that everyone knows around the world, even though those are obviously great as well. Good luck!
I should also have included Georgia Tech and Purdue University (Indiana) in the list of large public universities that specialize in engineering/science. Both are outstanding.
It was interesting to read that WPI was not very well known by the international community in engineering.
On February 7th, WPI announced their selection as one of the 20 finalists in the NASA sponsored space robotics challenge to develop robotics to solve repair problems on Mars. When I went into the website (wpi.edu/news/wpi-robotics-team-has-mission-mars) I saw nothing but an extensively international team. Two faculty, 3 PhD, 15 MS and 4 undergraduate students from US, China, India and others.
Evidently talent is not restricted to the US.
@retiredfarmer, thank you for that update! I’m a huge fan of WPI. I think it a fantastic choice for STEM students, especially those that learn better in a hands-on environment. Its graduates do better in the job market than the vast, vast majority of students. I love the campus, local neighborhood, city (redeveloping), and region.
WPI is not as well known in my region as in New England, which is unfortunate. A neighborhood friend’s kid did visit this fall. He was looking at a lot of very well-known schools (Ga. Tech, Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon), and WPI was his favorite. Not sure if he’s decided. But he’s still among a relatively modest–but rapidly growing–number of local families interested in WPI.
Prospective international students often don’t have the same knowledge of U.S. schools as U.S. families. Often they know few schools beyond the blockbuster names: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, CalTech, etc. My goal was to point out that many, many other schools offer top-notch engineering/science educations. Certainly WPI is one of them. That way this student, and others, might find their way to perhaps more accessible U.S. universities/colleges and not despair at being unable to gain admittance to MIT, Harvard, Stanford, etc.
(Unfortunately, our family ended up with no official connection to WPI–S ended up choosing a another fine school–still a fan though.)