<p>I am an international student who came to the US during my sophomore year in high school. I have only about 10 or so credits from Korea but its GPA is about 3.1 and it has totally killed my GPA(weighted 3.70/unweighted 3.6(?)) and class rank percentile(65% or so). My SAT score is solid(2250+), and even E/C is not bad despite the fact that I had to stay in school for 15 hours per day before I moved.</p>
<p>Anyways, I can daresay classes I took in Korea were much harder than AP or even some IB classes here except for English, but my transcript does not show difficulty of the classes I took in South Korea because there was no such thing as honors or AP in my Korean high school; everybody takes the same level of classes... believe it or not.</p>
<p>So would I better say on college apps like: "I would daresay, even though they are not named as honors nor AP, most of the classes I took in South Korea were as rigorous as, if not more rigorous than, AP or IB class in U.S." or something like that? Or will it simply look like begging for an excuse for the low GPA and consequently backfire on me? And, if I should say that fact on college apps, would I better support it by comparing my grades in Korea and U.S or just leave it alone because my transcript kind of explains it? I have a slight feeling that a long explanation for this will make a bad image...but colleges should know that Korean classes are freaking hard although they look like the easiest classes you could possibly take according to the transcript!</p>
<p>Thank you in advance.</p>