Australian high school student looking to go to an American University

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I am an Australian student about to finish year 11. I know it might be kind of early but I have been researching different colleges in the U.S, as I have always wanted to study in America, as both my parents did (I am actually an American citizen).

Even though I’m an American citizen I’m still considered an international student as I have studied outside the country. My problem is that I have no idea what my chances are of getting into a decent school over there. I’ve been looking at the UC system but it seems so hard and very expensive to get in. Also I don’t know how to translate my Australian education credentials to the American.

I have a GPA of about 3.8, A LOT of extra curricular’s, awards and volunteer work. I also involve myself in the marine sciences by taking courses and an internship at an environmental company, as my desired degree is in Marine biology. But will they recognize this? Will I need to take an SAT or ACT test? Or do I have a chance of getting a scholarship?

2

As an international applicant, you’l face even longer odds than applicants from highly competitive states (CA, NY, NJ). That’s the bad news. The good news is that your courses and that internship will certainly help your application, and as a US citizen you’ll be eligible for financial aid at a number of schools where “true” internationals would get nothing.

You’ll need to take the SAT or the ACT (for some colleges, SAT subject tests are advised as well) before we can gauge your chances with any certainty. If you’re looking for a scholarship, there’s three ways to go:

  1. Get into a school that meets full need or something close to it (Ivies, Stanford, most private top 50 schools)
  2. Get into a university that offers automatic scholarships for applicants with an SAT/ACT score and GPA above a given benchmark. The University of Alabama is one good example.
  3. Attend a match/safety school, as they're liable to offer merit aid in the hopes of attracting a student who really stands out from their applicant pool. I've heard from a few of my high school's alums that the University of Florida is good with scholarships for international students, but I'm not sure how reliable that information is.
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I think you would be considered a domestic applicant, even if educated outside the US. So your chances and options are much better.

With citizenship and living abroad, you likely have no “state of residence”, so have no state school options that are affordable without aid, but that is all.

Of course you will need to do testing. Look into where in your general area this can be done. And study bc it may contain things you are less familiar with. (Maybe).

Depending on your scores, you would be eligible for scholarships.

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@HRSMom
While a lot of colleges consider US citizens abroad domestic applicants, their applications are generally read by the same people who handle international applications for their region (this is the case for the schools I’ve contacted to ask, at the very least). These readers’ standards tend to be higher, which doesn’t help admission chances. The main difference between US citizens living abroad and foreign nationals is that the former will be eligible for financial aid if admitted.

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[post went up twice - ignore this]

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Ouch. Does that mean they will be limited to the tiny numerous bet if admits that internationals are limited to? @NotVerySmart

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@HRSMom Not so far as I know. The universities carve the US and the world up into regions, each allotted a target number of admits (e.g. 300 students from New England, 250 from the West coast, etc). Many will be far more granular in their blocs - X students from the Pacific Northwest, Y students from California, Z students from the mountain west, and so on.*

Most colleges will treat US citizens living abroad as a separate region: not one with 200 spots available (giving the same number of spots to a US expat population of 7-8 million that you’d give to a cluster of states with about 5 times that number is hardly fair), but a region nonetheless.

The bar is certainly set higher for expat applicants, as US citizens applying from abroad tend to be more qualified than your average American for a number of reasons. Foremost among these:

-The poor - whose children tend to have the worst educational outcomes - rarely venture abroad. How many people do you imagine emigrate to wait tables or work in a factory abroad? Not a lot. Most expats are well-educated professionals who leave the US for a well-paid position in another country.

-These students have escaped US public schools. While the US has some good schools, the average is poor - we perform badly on the PISA year after year, and reports like the one following the 2012 PISA cycle (link below) are scary to read. Expats, whose parents almost invariably place them in private schools if local schools are lackluster, are shielded from the effects.

http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf

Overall, the expat pool is on a par with the tougher US states (CA, NY) at worst. The expats’ PSAT cutoff for national merit was 225 this year, and although I don’t know that there’s much data on US citizens abroad (I suppose it’s difficult to collect information on such a disparate population), I’d imagine they’re highly qualified applicants for the most part. Because their numbers aren’t comparable to the legions of applicants from China/India/Pakistan etc, however, competition isn’t quite as fierce for these students as it would be for “true” internationals.

*I gather the international regions are quite large by comparison with the US blocs; one college I’m applying to has a single counselor in charge of Western Europe and Turkey. The international pool will generally have a similar number of places to one of the US regions - about 10% of the freshman class - split between all these blocs, which is a large part of the reason international admissions are so competitive.

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Good info for expat kids to have!!