<p>I’m not sure if you fully understand how the US system works. The USNWR aren’t as important as high school seniors say they are. To say that you’d attend schools ranked #1,2,3 (HYP) but not a school ranked, in, say, the 20’s is silly. They are all excellent. Don’t get blinded by the ratings; they are only relevant to high school seniors.</p>
<p>You certainly can re-use your SAT score and all other test scores then, I think in most cases, you can re-use them as much as you want in the rest of your life (ofc, in some cases, universities/companies only accept recent test scores, in other words within 2 to 5 years) If you scored high already, don’t bother to retake the SAT, I have heard that it is better to score high in one sitting than doing it tons of times to get a superscored result (not sure if it’s true though). </p>
<p>btw, since you are from Australia, I have some questions. I got an offer from the ANU and I was willing to accept it. It ranks as high as Stanford according to the QS World University Ranking and I am sure that it’s a great university. But when it comes to prestige, it is pretty much unknown by everyone I know (including employers and professors etc), most of them know about the University of Sydney/Melbourne but no one knew about the ANU, despite the fact that the ANU is ranked much higher. What do you think about the ANU? I might go to an American university which is ranked slightly lower but better known. (I know that ranking is not as important as I think it is but I have no other information available)</p>
<p>I have to respond to the offer no later than 20th of April so I’m not sure what I should do. </p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>pizzagirl- yeah i know what your saying, but i’ve actually been researching heaps of american colleges and the only ones i like and conveniently the top ones, i love everything about harvard&princeton so much and to a lesser extent yale (still incredible). and also quite like northwestern, upenn, cornell and chicago. these are the ones i will apply for!</p>
<p>empereur- thanks for that information, wow that’s awesome i didn’t know i was allowed to do that! i’ll defintely try and do well on my first sitting but i have other huge exams around this time so may be difficult.
okay, yes ANU is known as the top university in the country, however it’s just what the rankings say. ANU actually has lower requirements then some of the other Go8 unis (pretty much australia’s equivalent of the prestigious Ivy Leagues) and Melbourne/Sydney are much more difficult to get into. ANU has a fantastic array of programs, research facilities and teaching quality and so on, but most people prefer other universities as they don’t like the state ANU is located in. It is the Australian Capital Territory which is renouned for being quite the dry scene with not much to do there… Melbourne/Sydney is much more exciting. What course was it for? Quite a few top achievers go to ANU for their “Bachelor of Philosophy” honours program in science or arts which seems to be well liked. And the people i’ve spoke to who go to ANU seem to love their course and studying there, and admit that it can be a bit boring which can be good if you want to do really well (little distractions)… but most don’t like where ANU is… maybe visit it first.</p>
<p>Maybe Brown and Dartmoth can be right for you as well. There is no doubt that HYP are the most prestigous university in the world but when it comes to undergraduate courses, it seems like Brown and Dartmoth are better since that’s their focus whilst Harvard is concentrating on its graduate programs.</p>
<p>I’m about to study for Bachelor of Commerce/Economics, however I might switch to Bachelor of Business Management. I know, that is so confusing, every ranking says that the ANU is the best in Australia yet it is pratically unknown in the rest of the world (I’m talking about Europe and Asia). Do you know where you can find the acceptance rate of the ANU and that of Sydney/Melbourne?</p>
<p>I’m fine if it’s just a bit boring, I mean it’s still the capital of Australia so I suppose that it’s much better than the city where my HS is, it was a tiny Scandinavian city with a population of 150,000 and I survived. I’m more concerned about the opportunity to get internship and job practices since I heard from employers that internship experience is way more important than which university you went to.</p>
<p>I just researched Brown and it looks very interesting and probably will apply now that i’ve looked around, but i still favour HYP, even though i am quite sure i won’t be accepted.</p>
<p>Well ANU’s humanities/business type course are meant to be very, very good so gladly you are choosing to go there for that.
There isn’t really admission rates for those courses as they rely solely on a score to get in and not much else, so it’s different to the states. There are few courses that have admission rates due to their long application procedure and so they can pride themselves on, for example, having an admission rate lower then 4.5% not including international students (not surprisingly an undergrad med school).</p>
<p>Yeah it’s also one of the smallest cities, there are frequent debates here about why it should be the capital since its just a political scene. There are much less than half a million living there which is actually not too many more than your city, whilst all the other capital cities have in the millions.</p>
<p>I see, I thought the city of Canberra was just slightly smaller than Sydney/Melbourne but I just read about it and it seems to be surprisingly small for a big country like Australia. I guess I will call the universities and find out more about them.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help, and sorry for the little diversion of the focus of your thread there. 
Good luck with HYP, plz post the decision here when you know it. I hope you get in!</p>
<p>Thanks:) Goodluck with ANU.</p>
<p>It’ll be a year until i know though haha.</p>
<p>It is extremely hard to transfer to H or P. If you get rejected, I suggest to focus on making the best out of the college that you will attend.</p>
<p>If you are trying to improve your chances, don’t do several things during your gap year, do one thing in depth.</p>
<p>Travel will not impress unless it’s unusually done and you creatively raised the money to do it. Any activities paid for by parents are not going to help.</p>
<p>Getting into a college a year after a rejection is hard. I would add several schools you didn’t apply to last year.</p>