Applying to US colleges during 2nd gap year.

Student Lounge International Students
1

<p>Hello everyone, here is my story:</p>

<p>I'm a prospective international student and I'm applying to US colleges during my current 2nd gap year.</p>

<p>At high school, I was always top of my class. I had been working hard during all four years to get a scholarship upon graduation to study Engineering in Germany. This scholarship is only awarded to the top 15 students of the whole country. At that time, I believed I would definitely get it. </p>

<p>I graduated top of my class in 2012 (5th in my school). I didn't get the scholarship however, which lead to my being devasted for the whole summer. I was so disappointed and lost I decided to take a gap year to figure out what to do with my life (it was dramatic back then, hah.)</p>

<p>I will not go into details, but let's say I spent the first 7 months (September to March) learning as much as I could about everything. (Including but not limited to Anatomy, College level maths and physics, economics, computer science etc ...)</p>

<p>And then I heard about students from my country studying in the US while receiving generous financial aid packages. (This was March 2013)</p>

<p>That information was a godsend. After all the only reason I wanted the Germany scholarship was that it would give me the opportunity to go to a US grad school or even work there. (We have the general idea here that once you're in the developed world, all the doors would be open to you)</p>

<p>So this was March 2013, after 7 months of extensive learning trying to figure out what road I should take, I realize that I can go to the States. I didn't have a hard time deciding, so I jumped into the application process.
By now you would have realized I'd be applying for the fall of 2014, which means two years after I graduated from high school.</p>

<p>This leads us to my question:
How will this influence my admission? Or rather my acceptance chances? Is there a certain policy concerning this kind of situations?</p>

<p>I will be applying as a First-Year student (of course) and I will be applying for financial aid.</p>

2

<p>It should have no impact on your eligibility - as long as you can show that you did something productive during your 2-year break. Did you work? Did you study? Travel? Volunteer? American schools want to see that you made good/interesting use of that time; you can write about it in your essay. Just don’t say “I didn’t get a scholarship to Germany so I was depressed and stayed in bed for 2 years.” (Even if it’s true!)</p>

3

<p>Well it’s not true :wink: I made incredible use of my time.
Thank you a lot for your answer :)</p>