Admissions International Students

<p>Hi,
I would like to know if for international students, even freshman and sophomore grades matter during application process.
I'm from Italy and we have 5 years of HS, not only 4 and during my first and second year i didn't do so well. So i'm a bit worried about the application . If anyone know anything about it, please don't esitate to reply.</p>

<p>My counselor sent my 10th 11th and 12th grade transcripts to the Common App system because I was at a different school for my freshman year. Two of the colleges I applied to sent me an e-mail asking for my 9th grade transcript. I had to travel 300 km to retrieve it from my old school.</p>

<p>So apparently, yes they do want our freshman transcripts. That said, I don’t know what they would want from someone who went to high school for 5 years.</p>

<p>The answer is that they want to see all of your high school transcripts. You might even be able to argue that your additional year could be partially counted for college credit in the U.S. In Italy (ans Europe in general) college students do not have to take general education courses like in the U.S. and the first degree (laurea “breve”) takes only 3 years with the Masters (laurea magistrale) an added 2 years so it is reasonable to argue that some AP-like credit could be granted. I was able to do this for my spouse when she transferred to the U.S. from an Italian university.</p>

<p>Thank you very much. So, i have to ask if they could count my year as partial credit or they will do this on their own if i tell that i’ve done 5 years ? </p>

You would need to send all 5 years but the first 2 years would not count for much.

Hi. I’m from a country where high school lasts 7 years and our trancripts show all grades received from Grade 7 all the way to grade 13 . Adcoms who have visited have explicitly said that they start at te most recent year, and back-track for 3 or 4 years (depending on whether the school looks at freshman year or not). So in your case, if they look at freshman grades they would asses your 2nd to 5th year, if not, then they would look at your 3rd to fifth year for admissions purposes. So either way you tame it, even though it will be on your transcript, they will not even look at your first year (just like in my case they said that they literally would not care about my year 1 to 3 [or 1 to 4] grades). It would be as if they didn’t exist in their eyes. I hope this helped you.

Thank you so much . You’ve been very helpful