French high school student

Student Lounge International Students
1

Hi everyone !

I have just finished my second year of High-School in france (we have three years of high school so i will get my diploma at the end of the next year) and i would like to study in USA. The thing is, the french student don’t really know about studing out side France, they tell us only about the french system. Therfore I look for information by myself, and i am more and more stressed because i don’t always find the information i need for some universities.

Standardized test : I already know that for most universities i need to take the Toefl to proove my english abilities (i will take it the 16 of october). I also read about the SAT reasoning, but should i take it to ? In the MIT website it is written that international student don’t have to take the Sat reasoning, is it the same for others university ? In addition the Mit ask for two Sat subject (one in math and an other in science or physics), but i didn’t heard of it in any other university’s website.

GPA : I was told a few hours ago about it and i still don’t understand how it works. (In france the GPA : "gestation pour autrui"for those who knows has no link with school). So i am a bit confused. Here are my grades this year, every thing is out of 20 in france wheras i was told gpa is out of 4. Can someone tell me how to convert them into gpa :
Maths : 17.3
Physics : 19
Sciences : 17.7
French : 16.7
History and geography : 18
English : 17.9 (i could get more but i didnt work hard enough)
Spanish : 18.4
DNL (it’s like economy but in english) : 18.4
Chinese : 18.42
Sport : 15.5
Basically i can get better grade in each subject next year because i didnt work hard at all

I also made a list of universities that interest me the most (in order of preference) :
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Texas at Austin
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Carnegie Mellon University
Texas A&M University
Pennsylvania State University - University Park
Purdue University - West Lafayette
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Harvard University
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
University of Maryland, College Park
North Carolina State University - Raleigh
University of Washington
The Ohio State University - Columbus
Cornell University
Duke University

Skills and Hobbies: Piano and chess. I was also the chess teacher this year at school.

I think I have talked about almost everything. So could you please give me your opinions, some advices, some additional information about the university i have mentionned or at best , if someone study or had studied in one of those university, can he explain me clearly how to apply for it (as an international student ^^ )

Kind regards!

2

You have not told us the most important thing: can you pay? As an international student you have to count on paying $50,000+ per year – for four years. If your family cannot pay this much, you will need financial aid. And that makes everything much harder: the more money you will need from the university, the harder it will be to get in.

If you need financial aid, you will need to focus on applying to PRIVATE schools. There is almost no financial aid for international students at public (state) universities. So if you need money, forget all the public schools on your list.

As for the SAT tests: every school has different requirements. Most of the top schools require subject tests, many other schools don’t. Go by what’s on each school’s website.

3

Yeah I have forgotten, so far my father told me to do not worry about costs.

And what about my grades ? Are they good enough to pretend getting into the universities i mentionned ?

I am also looking for some students experiences (especially international), can you tell me about you ?

4

Hard to advise without SATs, which are very important. But as a full-pay international student I think you will get in to many of the schools on your list. Schools such as Minnesota, Ohio State and North Carolina State will probably be the easiest to get into from your list.

Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Cornell are a reach for everyone (in other words, very, very difficult for even top students to get in.) Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern and Duke will also be difficult but not impossible with good SATs.

5

^ Cornell is significantly easier to get into than Duke is and it probably shouldn’t be considered a “reach for everyone”.

6

What is the percentage of students getting 20/20, 19/20, 18/20, 16/20 for each class in a French school and in your school? And percentage of students having overall GPA of 20, 19, 18, 16? Do you have class rank?

7

Actually (I don’t wanna seem boastful) I am the only one in class to have such grades. And we obviously have a class rank where I am the first in every subject exept spanish and sport :slight_smile:

8

That’s why I asked to confirm. Your grades are stellar. You are a competitive applicant for the schools you listed. I know that it’s hard to get 16-17/20 in the French schools. I think colleges know about this because they have profiles of applicants from foreign countries.

9

Do you have any issues with French higher education?

I understand that no system is perfect; however the reaches-for-anyone put much heavier on extracurriculars than the ones that aren’t.

10

@Catria I am not sure about what you are asking here.
Selective US colleges look for students with strong extracurricular activities. But I don’t think French universities look at EC.

11

Your grades, according to the French scale, are all A’s (A+). They definitely rank you at the top of students for academics regionally and, likely, nationally.
The issue is lack of ECs. As of now, your odds are MIT are basically nil - you’d need to be competing for International Olympiads or at least Nationals, to have worked on actual research for your TPE, been selected by Google Science Fair, etc. And yes doing that is almost impossible, but that’s the threshold for MIT, Harvard, Princeton.
MIT has a cap on foreign students. They’ll admit only one student from France, in all likelihood. All applicants will have grades like yours. What will make the difference is what they’ve managed to achieve in addition to national-level academic results.
On top of this, French students start with a disadvantage because the 2008 reform (invented by a man named Luc Chatel to reduce the need for math teachers) brought down the math syllabus for the S students along with the number of hours. You now get a “lighter” math, physics, and chemistry course, with about 1/3 fewer hours than previously. Some of the material in Terminale S (non spé) used to be covered in 3e trimestre de seconde générale 20 years ago, and in 1S before 2008. Compared to most students admitted to MIT, you’re now one full year behind. (NOT compared to most American students, compared to whom you’re one or even two years ahead). So, you’ll be compared to other French applicants, but then French applicants are compared to the rest of continental Europe and the new S curriculum does not help them (understatement).

1° Ask your father what he means by “don’t worry about it”. BY FAR the most common thing parents mean is “I don’t want to deal with this right now. I’ll deal with this when/if you get in.” The result, for most, is that in March they both hear their admission results and their inability to go. Ask for an amount minimum, for instance. Better yet, even though though the NPCs don’t work for internationals because they include money not available for them, running an NPC can give your father an idea of how much American universities cost. To give you an idea, the average annual income for a family of 4 in France is about $25-30,000. Universities cost double that. If you’re lucky and you truly can be full pay this will be an advantage for you. If your father thinks it cost 5,000 or 10,000 dollars, you better know now because it means you’ll need to hunt for MERIT as well as NEED-BASED aid.

2° What were your “bac de première” results?

3° How strong was your grasp of “collège” math? How fast are you? The SAT or the ACT test speed and accuracy. These tests are standardized to make comparisons easy; they don’t want students who can write elegant mathematical proofs or rigorously constructed philosophy essays with many quotes that have been perfectly memorized, they want students who will answer lots of multiple questions correctly without losing focus after the one hundredth question. You will need to PRACTICE, something that is not taught in French schools. (Same thing for college essays: they need to be written, rewritten, re-drafted, rewritten, etc.)

4° GPA means Grade Point Average. It means Moyenne Générale Cumulée sur 4 ans, although in reality it’s “sur 3 ans et demi” or even “3 ans” and for some universities, only 2. :slight_smile: Each university can indeed decide where they cut things off, at the end of 11th grade or after 1st semester of 12th, and whether they include 9th grade or not.

5° How did you decide on this list? Why don’t universities like Swarthmore, Cal Poly SLO, Lafayette, Trinity, Tufts… get included - do you have specific reasons, is it just you’ve never heard of them, ???

6° Go to Commonapp.org and register. Look at the rubrics, start filling out your name/address, etc. Add colleges to your dashboard and check what type of writing they require.

7° Go to Tumblr (register if need be) and look for AFrenchie36, frenchyalie, and myjourneytocollege. Start reading, very carefully, especially Afrenchie36’s long post about how he was one of 300 (and the first Frenchman who got in) among the 66,000 applicants to the special program he was interested in.
You can also read blogs from students who are now, respectively, in her 2nd year of International Relations and 4th year in Computer Science (after a summer internship with a “famous” tech company). Those are their first posts, you can then read through their blog. They answer questions if you post comments.
http://tyshaauxusa.blogspot.fr/2014/03/lets-get-started.html
and
https://usafrenchstudent.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2012/08/10/pourquoi-jai-choisi-st-olaf/

12

MIT enrolled 1 student from France because probably there is less of interest for undergraduate education at MIT from France. It enrolled 9 students from England, 7 from Bulgaria,… But on the graduate school level, among European countries, France has the highest number of enrolled students (89). Be aware that the enrollment number is lower than the admittance number.

http://web.mit.edu/iso/stats_14-15/general.shtml

http://web.mit.edu/iso/stats_14-15/europe.shtml

Also, MIT admission officers asserted that not every international student admitted to MIT had an Olympiad award.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1794290-international-students-and-olympiads.html#latest

13

Therr are at least as many applicants from France as from Bulgaria… but anas is right, there’s very little info about us admissions in France and very littke understanding if it along with much disdain from some teachers.

14

Hi @MYOS1634 , to answer your question :

-My Father already know about the average annual cost, and he agreed to pay for MIT for instance (even though we hope receiving financial aids)

-I had 15 in écrit, 18 in oral and 18 in TPE ; and my topic int TPE was the nanotechnology

-I am exactly the kind of student who hat writing “elegant mathematical proofs or rigorously constructed philosophy essays with many quotes that have been perfectly memorized” , it is one of the reason why i would like to join the US system. I also reached the final of “La course au nombres” (a mental arithmetic contest) that gather 6 students from all over the world. Unfortunately i finished last but i reached the final, so it may be helpful for the admission.

About ECs: I didn’t know it was so important so I didn’t mentionned them. In addition to chess and piano I also play Volley-Ball and Football

Actually, i have forgotten to tell you that I don’t live in France, it has been 5 years that we are expatriate in Congo (thanks to oil and bank stuff). So the only international olympiad in which i participated ar the one proposed by our high school. By the way i was competing in the "Olympiade international de Geoscience and i finished first (including every congolese french hisg school in Congo And Republique Democratique du Congo)

15

You sound like a very interesting candidate, and should be accepted into many very good universities. Good luck!

16

Thank you so much @katliamom :slight_smile: I hope so

17

Sorry for the mistakes in my previous reply, I am writing on my phone and i can not edit it anymore

18

These EC’s make you an applicant who may make the cut. Since money is no object you now need to focus on your test scores. You should take math2, one science, and one humanities or social science. Your lv2 may be the easiest pick for the latter.

Rather than graduate program rankings use Rankings such as Forbes (just published ), or usnwr (in about 2-3weeks?) Keep in mind that within a grouping of numbers quality is the same, only subjective criteria matter. Anything top 25is stellar, top 50 is excellent - it’s out of 3500 :). Look at research universities and, depending on your field of interest, at the national LAC category. LACs are similar in selectivity and prestige to prepas. But their atmosphere is totally different from prepas.

19

Thank you for all your advice. I still need some, but now I am focusing on the SAT maths level II (it is the one you recommended me, i still don’t understand why MIT let us choose between the level I and the level II , i guess the second one is harder, so everyone will take it but i follow your advice and i will take the level II). Basically, I’am looking for website that prepare well for it. I found SparkNote that seems good, if you know any other please tell me.

20

You have some hidden interesting ECs. Make sure you mention about those ECs in your application. Selective US colleges want students who have passion. You can convey your passion in your essays.