I have narrowed down some universities that I will be applying to during the fall. I will show my stats as well, and please tell me which ones i should remove and rethink.
Just some background information, I am a current junior who is half Morrocan and half Emirati (from Dubai), I go to an American private school, and my current GPA is a 3.0. I will be applying for a government scholarship that pays the full tuition for four years and gives me a monthly allowance. In return, I come back and work for the government for two years.
GPA: 3.0 (It will get higher for sure, might reach a. 3.5 by the end of senior year) I can make it happen, I have my ways
No AP classes
extracurriculars:
school team volleyball for a semester
did track for a year
badminton for a year
Student council for a year
Debate for a year
music for a year
volunteered at a local hospital
competed in a national science competition
participated and helped organize all school events
Did not do the SAT’s because they closed down all test centers
I want to major in either general biology/biomedical sciences or Marine biology. I can’t decide which one yet. I want to choose something that will be needed in the future (job-wise).
Keep in mind that there is a specific list of universities that the government will allow me to apply to, and these are some of them. They consist of the top 200 best worldwide universities for biology.
I included some safety and some reach and some high reach schools.
University list:
Boston university
Duke
University of Chicago
UCSD
UCD
NYU
Ohio state
University of Washington (Seattle)
The University of Pittsburg (my sibling goes here)
Kings College London
University of Michigan
Northwestern
Baylor College of Medicine
Brown university
I do realize that most of these universities will probably reject me because of my grades, but is there a slight chance of them accepting me? If you have any other university recommendations, please tell me so I can look into them.
You are an international student, so (other than places that guarantee automatic admission for stats and extend that policy to international applicants) there are no safeties in the US for you. There only are matches and reaches. The college placement team at your own high school is much better positioned to advise you on your application list than any of us are. They know exactly where students with your grades have been admitted in recent years.
So, start with your own guidance office. Get their list of places that have admitted students like you. Check each of those places to find out what kind of biology majors are offered.
The problem is that the guidance office at my school doesn’t know anything if im being honest, and almost all students who graduate go to a public university here in dubai and their gpa is always about 2.5 or even a 2. Thats why I don’t ask my school for any advice because they wouldn’t know where to start.
Your choices are too difficult. at 3.8 my son was rejected by most on your list. Baylor medicine?? Private universities with acceptance of less then 20% would just not be an option
Background son is Kuwaiti and just like you limited to which schools he could apply too
I think you need realistic schools as back up. Look at michigan state university, University of Minnesota and maybe UMass Amherst. Private Schools Syracuse, St Louis, and LMU (if they are accepted)
Agree there are no safeties and almost all of those schools are reaches for you. Search for “x university class profile” - go to the page of each college (not a site like prepscholar or those other college info collation ones as they are often out of date) and compare your stats.
For Example for Boston U https://www.bu.edu/admissions/why-bu/academic-profile/ you will find average high school grade A- (I think that’s generally accepted as 3.7 unweighted ?) Then, realize that international applicants are generally a small % of admits and they generally have higher stats than the overall ones (especially for public colleges).
You will also find - unless you are doing IB - not doing honors or AP will count against you. A lot of your ECs are only one year - top colleges don’t like that either, they like to see deep commitment. So I think to be blunt, you need a new list.
There have been some threads on CC about colleges for B students, I think those will be more useful to you for realistic ideas. Bear in mind that group will include a lot of names familiar to US residents but unfamiliar outside, so that’s also something to bear in mind when you think about potential job hunting back home.
What is your rank in your HS ? If your GPA is US style GPA, you need a completely different list where your full pay status is useful. Sometimes though, international GPAs don’t translate literally. you really need a test score, you should be studying for that now and taking stimulated tests. At some point one imagines you will be taking a real test.
They’re all reach colleges, and some are very high reach (Brown, UCSD, Duke, UC). I don’t know if a 3.0 in your country means the same as a 3.0 here, but an American STEM hopeful with a 3.0 (even a 3.5) would likely have to look outside the top 100 ranked colleges to find a match or a safety. International students’ odds are even smaller. What are some of your other options?
I assumed that because OP is at an “American private school” gpa system is the same (the American school in my old home town was) but you are correct that they may be using some other system.
International students need a minimum UC GPA of 3.4 to even apply to any California UC’s. UC’s calculate GPA differently also and they do not consider Senior year grades in their GPA calculation:
I am wondering whether you are running into difficulties regarding how to translate your GPA into a “US-style” GPA. Universities in the US will know a lot more than you expect about the grading system used in your high school. However, those of us contributing here on CC would mostly not know the grading system used in your high school.
A GPA of 3.0 would put you just about average in a US high school.
Slightly more than half of all of the high school graduates in the US go on to college or university. However, significantly less than half ever graduate with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent. It is a reasonable question whether a student who is right at the average high school GPA even belongs in university. The answer probably varies from one student to the next.
However, I get the impression from your post above that your GPA is above average for the high school that you are attending. Is this correct?
@DadTwoGirls Yes comparing to others in my school, especially in the 11th grade I am above average. However, I do not know how the GPA translates to a US-style GPA even though I do go to an American high school. I checked my schools website and it said that an 84-100 is a 3.67-4.0. I just assumed my gpa is a 3.0 from what I’ve been seeing online. But if my school translates a 3.67 to an 84% then I guess that is exactly my GPA. I will need to check with the school again just to make sure how the whole gpa system works here and how it differs from the U.S.
If your attending an American Private school it will have a US GPA system. If it doesn’t then you will need to check if its accredited (If not accredited will be an issue). The fact that you don’t have AP or IB will go against you especially if your competing with GEM schools, American School of Dubai and other American schools. Unlike the US they will not look at your school ranking but will compare you to your peers who are applying to these schools your looking at.
Remember American School of Dubai is considered by more universities is the “US sanctioned school’ so they will get the advantage in admissions
“They consist of the top 200 best worldwide universities for biology”
You might want to check the acceptance rate for each of these, and let us know which ones have the highest percentage of applicants admitted or the lowest average incoming GPA. I do understand that this would be a bit of work, but it seems like something you could do in an evening.
Most of the people who contribute to this site are from the US, but there are also a few of us with connections to Canada, and to a lesser extent to other countries.
Figuring out how your grades compare to others at your school would also be useful. It is possible that your guidance counselor might be able to tell you if you are in the top 20%, or top 30%, or whatever.
Since you listed Baylor Medical as one of your schools of interest and talk about a biology major–which is typical pre-med major, I wanted to let you know that it is extremely difficult for international students to be accepted into a US medical school.
The barriers are twofold:
Only 45 US medical schools say they will consider international students for admission. In practice only a handful of med schools accept more than 1 or 2 international students every 4-5 years. Those schools that accept international are also among the most competitive medical schools in the US.
International applicants to medical school need to have higher MCAT scores and higher GPAs than do domestic applicants. International applicants are sequestered in a separate application pool and compete only against other internationals for a extremely limited number of seats.
Last year at all US medical combined only a combined total of 129 international students matriculated. Approx. 85% of those were Canadian students.
International students must demonstrate that they fund 100% of the cost of their US medical education because there is little to no financial aid available for international students. Proof of ability to pay requires either a letter of guarantee to pay your full COA from your home country government or placing into an escrow account at a US bank the cost of 4 years of tuition and fees. (Some medical schools also require living expense be deposited into escrow because medical student are not allowed to work during med school.) Those costs range from $200,000 to $500,000,
I’m going to put on my GCC hat, What is your plan with a biology major? In our region usually a science degree sends you to teaching. What’s your plans?
OP, you’ve said your sibling is at Pitt. Did your sibling attend the same school as you? How does your gpa, etc compare to that of your sibling, if so?
My first plan was to major in molecular and cellular biology then conduct my own research during my senior or junior year. That was my initial plan but then I started thinking my not do general biology and come back to Dubai work for 2 years then go back to post grad school and specialize in something else but still related to the biology field.
My sibling graduated from the same school as me but that was 6 years ago, he had a 3.5 gpa and went to a 6 year program in the UK, then he decided to leave since it wasn’t what he wanted and moved to the U.S. His grades are somewhat close to mine but his overall GPA is higher than mine which does not make sense to me at all.