I’m not sure about how competitive my application is for universities in the UK. I want to apply for Business or International Business. I’m looking at St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Durham and (maybe) Oxbridge but the last one is a stretch I think.
AP Scores:
Psychology 5
World History 5
Biology 4
Language 5
Human Geo 5
GPA: 3.89
SAT Score: 2130
Subject tests:
World History 790
Chinese 700
Math II 660 (going to try getting that one up)
I also am fluent in Russian and am okay in Chinese.
Neither Oxford nor Cambridge offers Business. The closest at Oxford is Economics & Management, but you would definitely need Calculus AP with a 5 as well as two other harder APs with the same; it’s a shame you only got 4 in Biology, but the history and English would count. At Cambridge you can do Management Studies for Part II of the tripos, but if you choose Economics for the first part you need Calc as one of your APs, and you need 5 overall. They don’t consider Psycholgy or Human Geography sufficiently rigorous.
Ok so I will be honest I know nothing of the American score system since I studied in the UK (actually just finished my master’s in Edinburgh). There were two American students on my master’s (out of 12 students), which I guess is high, and the truth is it will always depend who applies the year you apply. I think your chances are automatically higher than for UK students, and this is the sad truth, because your fees are 3 times higher than UK fees. Yup, things are messed up here too. Therefore, just give it a go.
Agree with @Conformist1688 for Oxbridge. For the others your scores look good- but you need to spend some time reading the websites carefully. There is a lot information on each subject course, and the classes that you take within that subject.
In the UK you apply to specific subject courses, and if you are applying through UCAS (the UK version of the Common App) you can only apply to 5 subject courses. That can be one course at 5 universities or, 5 courses at 1 university or any combination therein (with the exception that you can only apply to Oxford OR Cambridge, and only 1 course at them).
The subject courses are pretty specific. For example, at Edinburgh there are 19 “business” courses and at St Andrews there are 72 different “management” courses (though most of them are the same course paired with a different language). Similar subject courses might have different entry requirements (for example, anything with ‘economics’ in the name is likely to have a math requirement for admission).
It is important to get familiar with the subject courses, as within each course there are many fewer class choices than the US, especially in the first 2 years. The Scottish universities have more class choices within the subject course than the English ones (b/c it’s 4 years not 3), but even so your options are much more narrow than you might realize. And all your classes will relate directly to your subject. Although I know of students at each of those universities who have succeeded in changing their course, in all cases the changes were within a subject grouping, and usually were adding or subtracting a joint course (ie, from history to history + italian by somebody who already met the Italian requiremnt, or from Econ + Mgmt to just Mgmt)- and none of them found the process fun. So do some good homework when you are choosing exactly what subject course you apply to.
Also, @cinniminni’s point about fees is true- and by extension you need to be prepared to pay full fees- except for FAFSA there isn’t going to be financial aid.
Isn’t there a new business school at oxford, though? http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ I think my dad’s friend’s son works there as a lecturer.
That’s all graduate level, except for the (existing) E+M that @Conformist1688 refers to.
Edinburgh takes a lot of American studentslol
I’m pretty confident you’ll get an unconditional at Edinburgh and St. Andrews. I don’t know much about Durham. I think you can’t apply to both Oxford and Cambridge in the same year though, or have they changed that rule ?
@Qwerty568, Durham is probably easier for an American to get in to than Edinburgh or, at the most, just as difficult.
She’d pretty much have little trouble getting in to any UK uni besides Oxbridge & LSE, IMO.
SHould a US student applying to St. Andrews use the UCAS or the Common App. Looks like they let you choose?
You get to choose.
OK. already doing both for other schools, so I guess it doesn’t matter.