Common app problems for international students

Student Lounge International Students
1

<p>questions regarding common app for international student
I am an international applicant and come across some problems when filling in the common app. Could anyone give me some advice?</p>

<ol>
<li><p>My school does not have a so-called 'counselor', only a teacher who is responsible for coordinating career-related activities and generally students do know know her very well unless they are taught by her. So should I find my class teacher to be my counselor instead?</p></li>
<li><p>There are 6 classes in the whole form 6 (grade 12). For the class rank and class size, should I use my own 'class' or the whole 'form'? And which one looks better? 3/33 (class ranking) or 21/174 (form ranking)?</p></li>
<li><p>How is the course credit value determined in US high schools? There are no credits assigned to the courses or lessons in my school, so what should I enter for the 'course credit value'? Number of hours per week or what?</p></li>
<li><p>I only manage to get around 70 out of 100 for the average score despite my high ranking (well, not very high actually) in school. Will the tough scoring system in my country seriously affect my chance of being admitted because it seems that many students of similar academic ability can get many As in the US . </p></li>
<li><p>Is my chance seriously affected if I fail a subject in grade 11 2nd semester? (although there were like a quarter students who failed as well and even the best student could get around 65% for that subject)</p></li>
</ol>

<p>thanks</p>

2

<p>Your “counselor” for Common App purposes does not need to know you very well. What is important is that he or she have access to your school file and can make statements about your disciplinary record and such. Any teacher you can find that can do that and is willing to help you will do.</p>

<p>Your class rank is supposed to compare you to all students in your grade at your school. </p>

<p>As for credits, you can just enter 1 for each full-year course or 0.5 for a half-year course. That’s what most American high schools do. If you want to emphasize that some classes are more important than others, you could also use the number of hours each class meets per week as the number of credits. It really doesn’t matter.</p>

3

<p>You’ll need your counselor to establish what percentage students in your grade reach each grade. A 70% is NOT an excellent grade in the US, so the counselor will need to provide context by indicating what the 25-75% range was, for example, or the media score.</p>

<p>If some of your classes “double up” (2hrs/day for example), you need to indicate this somehow. Typically people write the number of hours per week in that case (if it’s more than 5 for the subject)</p>