Can you even get a student visa for community college? You are not a resident of any state so international rates will apply at CC too. What uni’s are on offer to you in the UK? Realistically?
@intparent I know a British Nigerian girl from a catholic school that got accepted into Yale, Stanford and Columbia with a 2100 sat score. However, she had outstanding academic credentials and extracurriculars(She got to speak at the house of commons, tried to negotiate lower bus fares for under 18’s with bus companies, was the leader of the youth council in her city, won major national debate awards). I also know two other people with sat scores in the 2100’s that got into ivies both however come from top tier private schools. The average sat score at Harvard is a 2280 so this disproves your above average stats to get in assumption.
So she is going to be an under represented minority with citizenship in an under represented country, and 2 of those 3 colleges are need blind for internationals. Those top tier private school students were probably full pay. Go ahead… give bad advice based on anecdotes.
Are you determined to attend university in California or would you consider the midwest? I just checked our local community college (Tulsa Community College) and international students are treated as out of state with the addition of $50 per semester fee. Be aware that moving to the center of the US could have offsetting costs as public transportation is not easily available. What are you hoping to study and are you open to multiple areas?
It is crazy to think that picking a CC in some midwest town would be better than picking a UK uni and the generous loan system for UK students at UK rates. Get educated care of a country with decent loans and UHC, then come to the USA for a job. ,
Do the UCs even offer OOS aid? You are going to get very little aid from them (you may get some, but it most likely will not be the 100% aid you need).
@Ali1302 I’ve had a chat with my parents and they actually earn about £45,000 a year which google tells me is around $69,000. I don’t know what this means in terms of how much they’d be expected to pay. They can’t pay it all in full though, only if there were some kind of monthly plan. Unfortunately I think for visa purposes you have to show a bank statement with the full amount for the year when you apply for the visa.
@2stemgirls It doesn’t have to be california or arizona those were just my preferences, I’d attend anywhere in any state if I knew I’d be accepted and there was a way to pay for it.
@Alfonsia I can’t stay another moment in this country haha. I’m more about the experience of America rather than what job I’m going to get at the end of it.
You are looking at a potentially expensive and/or less than thrilling experience the way you are approaching this. Apply to a couple of unis in the UK as backup.
Community College is NOT a good idea for an international student because full tuition scholarships (which is what you need) are only available to freshmen.
It’s true that SubSaharan Africans get a pass on the SAT. Just studying for it and taking it requires MASSIVE amounts of ingenuity and resilience, far above anything anyone in a developed country can imagine.
The UK, however, is not a developing country, and British students are over-represented (after Indians, Chinese, and Canadians, they’re one of the largest groups).
You need to find merit-based full-tuition scholarships, whether competitive or automatic. The best one is UAlabama’s - Honors College is top-10 in the country, if you have 1400CR+M or 32ACT you’d automatically get a full tuition award plus Honors college and Honors dorm, and if you were to study CS or engineering you’d get a $2,500 stipend on top of it, plus you could apply to even more competitive honors (UF or CBHP). There’s also Temple University, Miami-Ohio, Truman State… St Mary’s of Maryland or University of Minnesota have OOS tuition waivers.
Then you have the colleges that are need-aware but provide full-need such as the ones listed above.
Definitely apply to some back ups in the UK, regardless of your plans. If you absolutely want to leave the UK, look into France (Sciences Po), Italy (Bocconi), the Netherlands…
Even if you went the community college route you’d have to budget for plane fares, health insurance, rent, food, public transport or car expenses. California in particular is a very expensive place to live. You’d be a great deal better off attending a UK uni and looking to have a year or semester abroad in the U.S. as part of your degree.
And really, your parents have 45K UK pounds a year gross? That is not much money to live in the UK. UK kids take out their own loans. Don’t confuse CC with the real world either. The fact is most students don’t have any real choice in where they go to uni. CC is full of outliers, some just outright liars, and optimists.
The charge s at my kids uni, just for health insurance, was over 2K/academic yr. Someone broke down the meal plan and made it $7 a meal LOL. (I can’t corroborate). If you enter the US on a student visa you will have to work out how you can work and get money. http://www.immihelp.com/visas/studentvisa/working-parttime.html.
All of this will be hard enough IN the UK, with a job, parents, somewhere to live and lovely, forgiving, student loans.
Thanks for your advice guys. I had until October 12th to choose 4 colleges to send my SAT scores to for free so (based on my chances of receiving aid) I chose Arizona State, Cal State: Fullerton, Florida Institute of Technology and Pitzer. I may have made some mistakes but I had to make a hasty decision.
Theres absolutely no way I’d attend university in the UK so I’m also looking at Canada as prices for the year are around the same as they are in the UK ($9,000+).
@MYOS1634 "British students are over-represented " that’s not necessarily true for all us universities however mostly true for ivies such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale etc…
The reason is most Brits that apply to the us only seem to consider the top 10 us universities and ignore the rest. This is because most British applicants come from top tier private schools like Harrow, Westminister or Winchester college where you have to pay over £30,000($45,600)worth of tuition fees alone. These schools have alumni such as prime ministers, major politicians, famous actors and celebrities and long histories dating back to the 1500’s, therefore are recruited by ivies aswell as other top 10 schools.
However, it is rare that a brit apply to a top 20-50 us uni or a top liberal arts college they’ve never heard of. Therefore there is a major shortage of brits in these universities so the uk is considered an under represented country. I know people with ABB or BBB on their a levels that got into NYU, Boston, Boston college who had 1900s sat scores. As well as others with AAB that got into UCLA, Michigan with AAB with sat scores in the 2000s and 2100s. That’s why I say british students have an advantage at most top 20 and top 50 unis because they’re underrepresented and at some top 20 liberal arts colleges it’s rare that a British student applies. That’s why "Zekkia09 has an advantage.
British b students with MONEY LOL.