<p>Hi,
is it harder to apply to school out of the US, like in the european countries or great britian?
All the info i am getting is just really confusing. So anyone who has done this or knows anything that could help. please let me know.
thanks</p>
<p>I know for Irish colleges, we have a lot of US students there. The faculties love them as the graduate students tend to be extremely hard workers and pay more than Irish students (free tuition means universities love the chance to make extra cash)</p>
<p>Belgium is fairly similar, US graduate students left, right and centre.</p>
<p>Are you an American student looking to study in the EU?</p>
<p>Applying to college is far easier pretty much everywhere on earth</p>
<p>College admission requirements are standardized in most countries except the US. If your high school credentials meet the admission requirements, admission should be fairly straight-forward (easier and faster than in the US, anyway). If you do not meet the formal requirements, you could get lost in a lengthy process of translations and evaluations, testing and retesting, remedial coursework, etc.</p>
<p>
Care to elaborate? Is using common app that difficult?</p>
<p>Yes. The Common App is that difficult, what with the EC writeup, essay, supp essay, counselor rec AND teacher rec, sending SAT scores… multiplied by # of schools you applied too. I applied to universities in my home country and another European country. That was easy :P</p>
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<p>Are the universities you applied to in your country or elsewhere in Europe comparable to the ones you applied in US? Aren’t there are many many universities in the US that don’t require supplemental essays or recommendation at all. </p>
<p>I can understand the cost aspect.</p>
<p>I applied to 9 schools in in 6 countries outside the US and 10 American through CommonApp.</p>
<p>Added up, the first took me about 2 days, the latter took me weeks (testing, ECs, interviews, freaking essays, supplements, evaluations… hell).
For example applying to colleges in Germany takes about 30minutes each, filling out UCAS (for five UK colleges) is 3 hours including the statement. Application to Ireland just took me 20 minutes and so on…</p>
<p>And of course we’re speaking about the upper two tiers of US-colleges. The lower one’s aren’t really regarded as worth anything over here (as their education mostly covers stuff we do in hs).</p>
<p>@tobiz.int Thanks for the clarification. Part of the problem is that even within US there is so much variation in the standard of HS education that there is no common recipe for evaluating candidates. I don’t know what you consider as top two tiers of US-colleges. Are these the top-20 or 30 according to US News and rest are on par with your HS?</p>
<p>
I applied to Princeton, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Wellesley and Reed. As far as I’ve seen, those unis whose applications are less stringent/detailed are the less selective unis. I wouldn’t bother going to the US for /those/ unis when I can get a pretty good education somewhere else.</p>
<p>May I suggest Canada? If you’re going into Medicine, Canada is known for having the best medical schools outside of the top British and Ivy caliber/John Hopkins/UC Berkeley schools; they’re also very affordable, even for an international student. Canada isn’t quite Ivy caliber, but we have solid institutions for every major, many of our top graduates end up going to Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, and so on… for graduate school.</p>
<p>@ fiona_</p>
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<p>Good for you. </p>
<p>Like I said, I understand the cost associated with applying to multiple universities in US. </p>
<p>But I am slightly confused by your other statements. You are saying that applying to US is also difficult because of EC writeup, supp essays etc and at the same time you seem to imply that without these universities are not selective enough for you.</p>
<p>You are missing our point. Universities are not selective because they ask for the material, but they ask for the material because they are selective. Selectivity (is that a word?) comes from the quality of teaching. There are incredible selective colleges in the EU who couldnt give less of a crap about your ECs or the adversities you faced.</p>
<p>But I wouldn’t go through the whole process in the US if i wouldn’t think it was worth the work. I like the wholistic approach. </p>
<p>But you asked whether it was easier outside, and yes, it definetly is. I’m not saying it’s better, but easier.
I would say that the top 75 institutions are internationally competative and worth the effort for an international student. Anything below that you wont find a job here. There aren’t any Ivy-schools around my area, but 90% of them are up par with us state-flagships.</p>
<p>Again, I like the approach, but it really is a whole lot of work for something as comparably unimportant (over here) as the name of your college.</p>
<p>@ tobiz.int I understand what you are saying. fiona_'s statements were different but I will assume that you both are trying to make the same point.</p>
<p>@TippuSultan
As far as I’ve seen, those unis whose applications are less stringent/detailed are the less selective unis. I wouldn’t bother going to the US /those/ unis when I can get a pretty good education somewhere else.</p>
<p>I only applied to schools where I felt I could get an excellent education and those schools had complicated apps.</p>
<p>It takes a few minutes to apply to EU univs because for most of them you don’t need any recs nor they care for your EC’s. Some of them have entrance exams but it depends on country where the uni is. Sultan if you don’t know how the admission process goes here in Europe, why don’t you inform yourself?</p>
<p>I live in the U.S. and both my sisters go to colleges on the east coast. But I have been looking at other countries. I really want to go to a school with a good graphic comminications program. Has anyone applied from the US to another country school?</p>
<p>Big difference that seems to be between European and American universities is the application procedure.</p>
<p>I didn’t have to do anything like SATs, schools didn’t give a damn about my extra curricular activities, letters of reccomendation were unheard of.</p>
<p>Everything was done on your final year exams, where you get points out of 600 overall. It gets mental in Ireland (known as the point’s race) where courses set out how many points they require. Arts (humanities) courses usually require around 350, medicine usually something like 580.
I’d say it’s a bit different in Ireland as pretty much all the universities are state universities, so the courses are pretty much identical no matter where you go. The points value for a course is determined not by the course itself but simply by how many people applied for it the previous year.</p>