Hi,
I am an international student who had applied for Fall 2017, but due to certain financial reasons I will not be attending college this fall in the States. Instead, I’ll be attending a college in my home country, which is obviously not US accredited (accredited by my country’s Ministry of Education nevertheless). Although, I do not expect to get a ton of credits since it has its own core curriculum which does not align with my major.
I am currently on the lookout for colleges that would accept me as a freshman in Fall 2018 (eg. Grinnell, that allows internationals to apply as freshman as long as they’ve completed only one year) and that offer significant aid to internationals (or with tuition that’s less than $33-34k).
PennState is another that I’ve found that allows 17 credits to be transferred from another institute without students having to applying as a transfer. Ones that allow around 20-24 credits seems like a good shot because I don’t expect too many.
Also - if I take a few APs next year, will that affect my admission besides giving my more credits? They won’t be considered from the college I’m attending right? So I could still cover up credits that way, I’m assuming.
If you could help me out, I’ll be grateful.
Also, can someone give me info on SUNY Stony Brook? They say if the student has fewer than 24 credits they’ll have their highschool and standardized test scores evaluated. However, will I still be a freshman?
For state schools or schools w a tuition of <$35k specifically - it’s alright if they don’t consider me a freshman as long as they don’t have strict transfer course requirements for Computer Science since I do not know how many courses I can take for subjects besides CS and Math. If APs can make up for those requirements, I’m willing to give those.
Penn State will be ~$45k/yr for an international student.
Why do you have to go to school this year? It would remove a lot of the limitations you’re placing on your search if you could stay a freshman for any new application
@bodangles yep, I’m only saying 35k as tuition not cost of attendance. And well I’m basically trying to save a year’s tuition, I already have the chance to attend a diff school in the States at the moment. As long as the tuition is around 30k it’s not an issue, just that this year it’ll be slightly tough due to certain family limitations (which won’t be an issue afterwards).
@bodangles yep, I’m only saying 35k as tuition not cost of attendance. And well I’m basically trying to save a year’s tuition, I already have the chance to attend a diff school in the States at the moment. As long as the tuition is around 30k it’s not an issue, just that this year it’ll be slightly tough due to certain family limitations (which won’t be an issue afterwards).
How would you save money by starting over?
I’ll take PSU as an example since I’m familiar with it. If you take the classes marked for freshman year on your major’s Recommended Academic Plan (https://dus.psu.edu/recommended-academic-plans), and they all transfer properly, then you would be on track to graduate on time, in four years. But if you do that, you’ll have way more than 17 credits. Two semesters of the absolute minimum credits as a full-time student would be 24.
And if you DON’T take the classes you’d take as a Penn State freshman, then you’d be behind when you got there and possibly delay your graduation.
@bodangles Ah well, if I can transfer 17 credits from college here (as I said, I’m not sure I’ll be able to transfer my year’s worth of credits anyway), I’d be left with 103 credits which I believe should be over in 3 years, hence saving me a year’s tuition. A higher cap (20-24) seems like the best option tbh. But let me know if this makes sense - I’m very new to this transferring credits stuff.
Are they the right classes though? Transferring 17 credits that don’t count towards any of your degree requirements would not help.
Assuming that you stay on track, 103/6 = 17 to 18 credits a semester, which could be a heavy load if the classes are difficult. You would not have room to drop a class and try it again the next semester, unless you took summer classes, which also carry a price tag.
I would just continue to investigate all of this.