@eabs97 It isn’t. Even if you ignore inflated exchange rates, universities in other countries are wayyyyyyyyy cheaper. I mean, Oxford and Cambridge cost about 9000 Sterling Pounds for English people, and even less for the Scots and the Irish (don’t ask me how that works. I don’t get it either :stuckouttongue: ). African Universities (assuming you could put up with the terrifically hot weather and all the other conditions) are cheaper than most community colleges in America (there are some exceptions of course). Asian universities range from 3000$ (yes, three thousand) to 12,000$ for internationals depending on the country (and occasionally the program) for international students. They don’t offer bad education either. Most people who apply to the U.S usually do so because a diploma from a reputed American University will give more options on the job market. Some like the country, some want to travel etc. etc.
Wow. Quite literally. This is very mind boggling. I understand why they want most students to pass because then wouldn’t that open up more job opportunities for them? I feel it’s a little unfair for some students who want to be stretched academically though. So if a student chooses not to take AP classes would their GPA at the end of the year, assuming they passed with flying colours, be considered the same as someone who took AP/IB exams? Is this where the weighted and unweighted GPA thing comes in? @cvisser96 your point about money is on point (excuse the pun haha). I found it shocking that to prepare for the SATs I had to go buy a massive book with 10 practice papers, from which only 3 of them were actually administered. In the UK, there are standardised admissions tests like the BMAT and the UKCAT which are required for most medicine/dentistry/vetenary and some biomedical sciences courses. Past papers are available online and buying a book is an option, not a necessity.
@eabs97 and @InfinityMan education is definitely more expensive in the US. in the UK as @InfinityMan said, the maximum UK universities can charge you (if they class you as a home student) is £9000. If you add living costs and everything it amounts to arounds £20000. However, any student can take out a loan to help them pay £9000, which they won’t have to start paying back until theiy start earning over £21000 plus it’s written off after 30 years. It’s a different matter if you are considered an international student, in which case the prices are exuberant and the opportunities for aid are limited so in that sense the price of attending UK universities as an international student is similar to US ones. Universities in Europe are significantly less expensive and provide good quality education for a fraction of the price. Some of these universities suchs as the Karolinska Institute in Sweden (?) are renowned for their research and they don’t charge much at all, even if you are an international student. I’d be inclined to believe that the cost of attending university in Asia would be cheaper, but I don’t know anything about that.
From what I’ve gotten from the research into the cost of attending universities around the world is that a fraction of the cost is just for the label, if that makes sense? More well-known universities tend to charge more, granted they may have better facilities because of their reputation, generous donations from alumni and their ground breaking research. In that account I am sometimes sceptical about league table rankings too.
P.S. I’m so sorry for this mini essay. 
I tried to keep it short 
@shiziani yes that’s how we get weighted and unweighted GPAs. At my school, we offer regular, honors, and AP classes (in order of difficulty). If you take regular classes, it’s impossible to get above a 4.3. If you take honors and AP classes (which are weighted the same despite the difference in difficulty), you can get a significantly higher GPA. Here’s another example of variation, because every school has a different system regarding GPA. Most colleges unweight your GPA when they look at your application and just base it off of your grades and the classes you’ve taken. When I was talking about the graduation tests, I meant they’re very easy for students at my school. Some students at schools that are perhaps public and poorly funded may have a lot more trouble with them. Again, there’s so much variation in our school system. It’s dumb
Oh that makes the entire college application make so much more sense! I bet it must be such a time consuming task to uncomplicate all of this in the admissions office. I feel bad for the students who attend the poorly funded schools in that case. So would you say that attending a private school or better funded school is more rigorous and puts more expectations on you as a student to achieve better/higher grades? I’m just shocked at the difference in education around the world, it’s very interesting!
@shiziani that depends too. Funding doesn’t necessarily mean better. There are private schools that don’t offer as many opportunities as public schools. For instance in my city, Williamsburg, VA (yolo for putting it out there), weighing public versus private depends on for which public school one is zoned. My public high school offers more AP classes, sports, arts and extracurriculars than the private schools, and we have phenomenal teachers. But we serve a higher socioeconomic demographic than other public high schools in my district because we’re rather gerrymandered unfortunately.
In larger metropolitans, private or charter schools tend to be stronger than public competitors because of the funding as well as the increased opportunities they provide to compete with one another and propel higher achieving students. Our public schools are funded by taxes, and in most cases, the inner city neighborhoods are comprised of the lower economic brackets whereas the higher earning income families move to city outskirts in live in suburbs. So the poorer have less, if anything, to pay into the tax system, so their schools have less funding to attempt to compete with other schools. Usually the state governments step in and try to help with funding, but no one seems to like taxes and school budgets are cut every year it seems.
American education suffers from a few things. One is funding, but another is qualified and dedicated teachers. It’s truly a sacrifice to teach in the US because their work is far from appropriately compensated. They could make much more in any other career that they’re qualified for. The last great struggle is the apathy of students.
Horace Mann once called education the great equalizer, but I wouldn’t be so certain it still is. The education I receive is superior to the education one may receive in inner city Detroit at a public high school of the same size just because of where I’ve been born. Is that necessarily fair?
I’ve grown up moving around my whole life, as my father has a 30 year career in the Army. And everywhere we’ve gone, it’s been interesting to see the changes in education. Louisiana, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, New York, Virginia… Every where is different, and some places really are at an inherent disadvantage just because of where they’re located. The kids in North Dakota going to a public K-12 school with 75 students total won’t have the same opportunity to work in a stem cell national research center in San Antonio, Texas as a high schooler.
So the application process is really difficult to gauge. And that’s all without taking into account the different grading systems and GPAs in our country. My school is on a 4.0 scale, but each AP class is based on 5.0, which means instead of a 4 toward my GPA for an A, it’s a 5. But every school can calculate it differently, and some do it on a 10 or 100 or 5 system. Some schools don’t do it at all.
Admissions sure does has its hands full trying to decide these things. I kind of feel bad for them. I mean, rejection aside, a man’s got to sympathize!
Woah, sorry for the essay. It’s something I’m pretty passionate about, so I hope it’s coherent while reading haha, that is, if you can get through reading it all. 
@shiziani Yeah @cvisser96 is definitely right that sometimes public schools have more opportunities, often because they are larger. The public high school next to my private high school offers way more math courses for more advanced students than we do. However, in general, I’d say our curriculum and classes are more challenging. At least at my school, there’s way more pressure on students. But also, the area that these two high schools are in is a very nice one, so the public school gets quite a bit of funding and has pretty high standards. What’s unfortunate is that when schools have less funding, the first things to be cut are usually the fine arts departments. I helped choreograph the winter musical at a public school near my house that gets so little funding that they didn’t even really have anyone running their musical—it was all student run and they had to scramble to get volunteers. it’s super depressing.
ok i’ve been away for a while and seemed to have missed a lot!
Firstly on the question of tuition fees actually going to uni the UK is much cheaper and Europe is heavily subsidised by the European Parliament if you’re an EU citizen but again that depends on where you live for example, my friend goes to uni in London and pays upwards of about £30,000 per year (living here is so damn expensive!) which if you convert into $ isn’t that much cheaper than the US. Also after you graduate the alumni networks at US unis are sooo much better so i just feel the difference once you mix in the liberal arts option and the amazing alumni networks are in a weird way kind of worth it.
secondly i often think that the American school system is slightly flawed. It would be so much better to have a standardised system a bit like the A Levels/IB. it would take so much stress off of students applying to Unis or whatever not to have to worry about which classes to take, what to send of to unis (since everyone wants something slightly different) etc. The combo of A Levels and liberal arts at an US college is a good mix though.
but also the German school system is pretty awesome and it definitely doesn’t get enough praise. it’s much more vocational from a younger age depending on your abilities/results and then focuses on apprenticeships so Germany/Austria both have low youth unemployment rates instead of uni which i think is a good way of going forward.
@ibbi1824 that’s another flaw of the American system—it’s really hard to get a job out of college! You can bust your ass through undergrad, but often your major doesn’t really translate to real job skills
All this talk of A-Levels and I’m just like “Uhh, Texas has STAAR testing” lol (An exit exam test)
@emenya hahahha, everyone’s writing essays, and I’m sitting here like ಠ_ಠ
Soooo, any idea when decisions are gonna be released?? Stanford is releasing this Friday, Berkeley tomorrow, so I’m assuming the ivies should follow soon right?
March 31, 5PM EST @muhnigmofo
@cvisser96 I read through it all I feel that some of the problems you’ve discussed are prevalent in the UK too. There are schools in the same city who don’t receive as much funding as ours does and a result can’t spend much on it’s students.Which is why I asked, because if every state has their own curriculum then I wondered if it also then meant that by living in a certain state may prove more advantageous in terms of opportunities. So in that respect, I believe that sort of difference exists everywhere. I wholeheartedly agree with you about your point on teachers. It’s an absolute shame some parents and students alike can’t appreciate what dedicated teachers do in order for our success. More so, some people complain about going to school. It’s unbelievable! The whole system of making sure every child goes through school and learns something doesn’t make them appreciate the gift they have of being given the chance to put their talents and abilities to use.
Conversely, I feel there are faults with the British education system too. The benchmark for a pass is a C in English and Maths at GCSE level (around grade 9-10 in the US). After that students have a choice of going to a college (which isn’t the same as colleges in the US), or to sixth form (A-Levels) or do an apprenticeship. This leads them to get qualifications that are relevant to what they want to do and gather experience that will help them in their chosen fields. There are countless students across the UK who struggle to hit that benchmark and until they do, the doors are closed for them. At my school, they ask for volunteers who got a high grade in their GCSE maths to tutor students who are struggling. What’s frustrating is that when you are assigned to your tutee, she is hand picked because she would have the most likely chance of getting that C amongst her other peers who find it challenging as well. I think it’s really unfair that the pupil who already has a likely chance of getting that grade is getting more attention in order to increase her chances whereas someone who has a lesser chance than her isn’t. Is the other pupil not worth the individual time a tutor wold be able to give her? This trend is present across the board, from my experience of going to about 7 different schools anyways.
Also, don’t apologise! It’s a really interesting topic and I love learning about different cultures and practices.
@eabs97 I feel you! There were cuts to the school budget recently and I remember that we had to use the supplies in the arts department sparingly because there wasn’t enough money for the department to re-stock their supplies. In came to a point where we all had to go out and buy most of our own materials. Our school also had a budget of about $100 for our annual pantomime and it was a stretch to have all the props, costumes and backdrop done in that budget. But, at the same time good practice for budgeting when you’re a student! 
@ibbi1824 Yeah, the alumni system in the US is sooo much more better! That is one of the biggest attractions 
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/3/26/regional-diversity-scrutiny/
If you’re applying from one of those states, I guess your chances are indeed better! Good luck to all next week!
@gibby those states probably have the most applicants but as a CA resident I hope your statement is true
@eabs97 yeah that’s totally true and if you want to get a vocational degree like Law, medicine etc you have to shell out a ridiculous amount of money whereas you can get a law conversion degree (if you didn’t do law at uni) in 1 year in the UK. That being said that advantages of having more time to choose your major is a huge plus even if you don’t end up with the right skills. in the UK you have to vaguely know what you want to do later in your life at the age of 16 so you can take the right A levels to apply for that subject at uni. I know people who hate all of their 4 subjects so didn’t know what to apply for which is a huge issue considering how expensive it is to go to college
@shiziani yes definitely! oxbridge doesn’t even compare to the alumni networks and massive funding that some of these US universities have.
@gibby those states have some of the highest population ratios – meaning more good schools. I agree with @Jehkobe they have the most applicants, but I think that’s a factor of higher populations.
I’m actually dying of nervousness even though my chances of getting into harvard are ridiculously slim. Ah, so far I’ve gotten into 4/5 of the schools i’ve applied to in boston (bc, northeastern,bu and wellesley) and harvard is the only one left! AHHH so nerve-wracking. I wish you all the best!!! 
@CSGoddess and @Jehkobe: While New York, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts are indeed populous states with good schools, I doubt that Harvard receives over half (51.5%) of their non-international applications from just those four states. The percentages of acceptance from those four states just seems out of whack in relation to acceptances from the other 46 states in the country.