canadian citizen (non-resident) transferring to Canadian/US schools

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hi guys, this is my first time posting on here.
My story is really complicated, so I'll just cut the long story short.</p>

<p>I'm Vietnamese by birth and when I was three, my parents divorced (I have never seen my dad since then), and my mum remarried to a Canadian man a few years later.
I took my stepdad's surname and I got my Canadian passport and became a Canadian citizen when I was about nine or ten.
Later on, we moved to Italy because my stepdad works there and we settled down in Rome. I studied in an American curriculum high school in Rome and eventually I went to the American University of Rome for college. My stepdad changed his status into Canadian non-resident and he has not been paying tax to the Canadian government since we moved to Italy</p>

<p>After a year of college in Rome, I think I've made a wrong choice, I don't want to stay in Rome anymore and I want to go for college somewhere else. The recognition and the general quality here we get is nothing compared to a mid-tier school in US/Canada, and locals here thinks people going to an American university in Italy are kinda retarded! </p>

<p>Currently I'm undecided and I did pretty well in my first year (3.87 first semester, 3.85 second semester. (I took all those General Ed courses). I plan to major in either International Business, International Relations or Economics, and minor in History or Italian. My high school record is sort of horrible though -GPA 3.5 UW and SAT 1590.... out of 2400. Should I retake my SAT? </p>

<p>I'm thinking of transferring to a Canadian university or a US university after my second year.
One of the reasons I want to transfer out is that the price that my parents pay for the college I'm attending now is too unreasonably high (oh gosh, we pay the tuition in Euro!).</p>

<p>I'm hoping to get some financial aids from a Canadian college, or probably from a good US college. I'm just quite unsure will the 'non-resident' title affect my possibility on getting aids or not.</p>

<p>Here are the colleges on my list:
-U of Toronto
-McGill
-Queen's</p>

<p>(dream)
-Brown
-Columbia
-Penn
-U of Chicago
-Cornell
-Northwestern
-Rice
-Vanderbilt
-Georgetown
-Amherst College
-Williams College</p>

<p>(reach)
-UVA
-UNC Chapel Hill
-W&M</p>

<p>(backup)
-U of Rochester
-U of Miami</p>

<p>Thank you very much for reading my story and answering :)</p>

2

<p>You would absolutely want to take the SAT again if you’re applying to McGill/dream schools/reach schools because that would simply slaughter your application there. I’m not sure about the others. Your GPA is excellent, though, so at least you have that on your side.</p>

3

<p>Utoronto would be the easiest to get into. </p>

<p>All of the schools you’ve listed in the US all have acceptance rates with under 25 percent. Urochester and Umiami are still very competitive for transfer admissions so I wouldn’t go as far as putting those schools as a backup.</p>

4

<p>thank you
how about Emory? it seems it’s pretty transfer friendly
and I though Vanderbilt and W&M both have a fairly high transfer rate in 2010</p>

<p>Also, are Canadian students allow to work part time (off campus) in US?
I hope I can work part time to cover part of my living expenses, since the tuition in US is really high
Canadian schools are great, but since my dad is not paying tax to the Canadian government, I’m afraid I have to pay the international student rate…</p>