<p>I'm english and applying for ivy league unis next year, but don't really have any idea how i compare to other english applicants, or the standard expected from us...anyone know somebody who's done the application before? how did it go?</p>
<p>I'd also be interested to know about this...</p>
<p>henina, are you english? if so...whats your situation?</p>
<p>I'm in lower sixth (year 12), hopefully applying next year but I have no idea what I'm doing! Makes life extra fun really. I feel like I have so many questions that I need to know the answers to about the whole process, but nobody who can answer because they all need other British applicants to answer them...</p>
<p>yeah...i can't seem to find any real info or message boards with loads of english applicants for america - and even fewer with ivy league applicants. i'm applying post-A-level, with pretty good grades and school report that is amazing for A-level years, mixed beforehand. but i don't have a clue what the typical ivy applicant from england is like. whether its all 5 As from westminster, or more mixed.</p>
<p>I'm waiting on my AS scores... I've got good GCSE grades and lots of extras but I've had a rough year so I'm not sure what my AS scores are going to look like. I'm considering a gap year. I think that most people who apply to college in the US probably are privately educated, simply because it's so expensive and anybody else is generally not going to be able to afford it. My plan is just to go for it and see what happens!</p>
<p>totally. are you going ivies, or random ones? and by "good" GCSEs do you mean 10 A*s, or something slightly more modest?</p>
<p>Not quite... 8A* 2A. I went on a crazy whirlwind tour down the east coast in February and fell in love with Tufts, I think that I'm going to apply to U Penn and GTown as well. There are a couple of others I'm thinking of, but I'm still researching. My parents won't fund me unless I get into somewhere 'decent' (whatever that means). How did you find the SAT tests in comparission to what you're used to? I've done the reasoning... my score is OK, but not really high enough so I think I'm going to retake (I have a fear of MathS). I think the hardest part is the fact that it was the first multiple choice test I've ever taken in my life.</p>
<p>i did the SAT on june 3rd. results next week. i personally found the maths really easy (famous last words), and the english i'm not really sure about. the 'choose the best sentence' bit i really couldn't say how i did.</p>
<p>as i mentioned earlier, my stuff going on 3 years ago (GCSE and before) was at a time when i'd checked out a bit, so my grades suffered (4 A*, 6 A) but its been As ever since, and i've got good ECs...what sort of stuff are you doing?</p>
<p>I've got a lot of music, technical theatre, community service, head of house (got to love boarding school), school prefect, subject prefect, D of E and some other random stuff. School paper next year, shedding some of the music (it's getting a bit too much now), hopefully a peer listening scheme with younger pupils and we're trying to kick some kind of political group off (like MUN or debating). My school doesn't give a full transcript with grades from each term because we have a really weird system, just references and public exam results.</p>
<p>ooh how special. which boarding school are you at?</p>
<p>Well... I don't know if that was a sarcastic special or not. It's on the south coast... begins with an R... it's famous but not generally amongst our age group.</p>
<p>lol the "special" really meant "quaint", with regards to your system of not grading. i probably don't know your school. do people do well there/are many applying to the US?</p>
<p>Basically, our grading system is such that it's only on a 1-4 scale. Most people get 2s because that means that we're working well according to what the teachers think that we're capable of as individuals. 1s are extremely hard to get, and the grades are not based on test scores (which are printed on the report as well)</p>
<p>My school activiely discourages applications to the USA, I think two applied last year, and there are only 3, maybe 4 at a push out of 120 in my year this year (3 of which are international students). They say it's not advisable because the process is so long and complicated, and fundamentally at odds with the UCAS system. Lots of people get good grades though and head off to good universities in the UK.</p>
<p>same with my school. we had a letter and number - letter for achievement, number for effort, with A1 being the best.</p>
<p>i'm the only person applying this year, although at least 2 applied last year, and one of them got in to Yale - but i think its because his family donated a lot of money...</p>
<p>Ah... hooks... shame I don't have any hooks. Well, whatever happens, I'm just going to give it my best shot and hope for the outcome that I want!</p>
<p>i've got a pretty neat lil hook...have to see if they like it though.</p>
<p>i think its a pretty standard hook just to be english really - our school curriculum is much more rigorous than american, apparently, and they just like us in general. you have any idea how many english people typically apply to the ivys each year? i know there are some schools that encourage it (like the one laura spence went to), but most seem to have pretty much nobody applying each year.</p>
<p>No idea about the success and applicant number for Ivies, but I imagine that the numbers are fairly low. </p>
<p>I'm not sure that the curriculum is going to be an advantage; there are probably quite a lot of international applicants who follow the British sylabus. What schools are you thinking of applying to?</p>
<p>yale, harvard, princeton (because they're renowned and can also give need-blind aid).</p>
<p>apparently they have some rough quotas for different countries - i.e. although there are several thousand indians will stellar A levels and IB and extra-curriculars and so forth, they'll only admit a certain number of them, and they'll take some promising looking brits too.</p>
<p>for the sake of diversity, i guess.</p>
<p>if they did application purely by merit i think barely any americans or brits would get in, and it would be lots of work-mad asians filling up the top american unis.</p>
<p>are you applying ivy?</p>
<p>I hated Harvard when I visited, so that's crossed off the list. I don't really like the look of Yale or Princeton for a multitude of reasons. I haven't looked into the others closely enough to make a judgement on them just yet. I loved U Penn, but at the end of the day I'm going to reserve judgement on where I apply until I've resat my SAT reasoning.</p>