I’m a rising senior who is going to apply to colleges this year.
I have a complicated situation right now. I finished Junior year in Korea and immigrated to the US. (Green card holder)
Due to some problems like new language and new environment, I decided to repeat my sophomore and Junior year in the US. I somehow succeeded in managing for those two years and got a GPA of 4.0 (unweighted, 8 APs so far), 35 ACT, and lots of extracurricular activities.
But the problem is my international transcript. I got fairly bad grades (some Bs and few C) on my Korean School since the school was one of the hardest schools in Korea. Will this international transcript hurt my chance to get in some top schools? (maybe top20-30)
I don’t know how colleges will look at my transcript in this case.
Thanks!
Repeating a year is very common for international students arriving in the US, especially if they are on a school year that starts in February-April.
Is there a profile of your Korean school?
It’d need to indicate
whether all children from your neighborhood just proceeded to middle school then to your high school or whether students have an exam, an interview, a review of their transcripts to enter the middle school in partnership with your HS, if there’s a further exam/interview/transcript review to enter the HS, any stream or classes considered harder?
% who attend selective universities, % who attend top 3 or top 5 universities in Korea
grade distribution -
For instance, top 5%=, top 10%=, top 20%=
Regardless, you need to build your college list from the ground up.
Find 2 affordable safeties (probably your instate public universities, perhaps including one you can commute to).
Then find 3-5 universities (national universities and national LACS) that are good fits and admit 25-40% applicants.
What state do you live in?
What’s your budget?