I am preparing to apply to college as a mature student, but I don’t know whether I should consider myself a transfer student. I have been out of school for 3 years and the university I went to was overseas. I do not expect any credits to transfer over, as the program had nothing to do with what I am studying now. From what I can tell, applying as a transfer student adds needless steps + money to the application process. So here is what I’m wondering:
<li>Does it look worse to be a drop-out or to be someone who has never attended college?</li>
<li>Is there any way they can check? The college is overseas but I took out loans using the US financial aid system.</li>
<li>If they find out I have been to another college and didn’t tell them, would that be considered fraud or something?</li>
If you obtained student loans through fin aid then the fin aid folks at every school have a database with all of that stuff on it, you know. So use your best judgement and also keep in mind that there are certain standards as well as class year limits for that kind of thing as well. Trust me on this because I am trying to be your pal here.
For example, a dependent freshman student can only borrow “X” amount and an independent freshman student can only borrow “X” amount, and the fin aid folks at all schools check on those sorts of things.
Wait, I <em>have to</em>? That website seems to be a business that charges $200+ to evaluate foreign credits. The degree was incomplete and it will be 4 yrs old by the time I am back in school. I don’t care about the credits. I am going into a new field and it’s probably best to take refresher courses in the basics anyway. Paying hundreds of dollars for an evaluation on a worthless non-degree is absurd. I don’t get what you mean by “certain standards” and “class year limits?” Or how this relates to independent/dependent financial aid status?
…you will be able to look up your past history with the loans you took out using the US financial aid system
There is another form of that web site only for proper fin aid professionals.
There are aggregate loan limits which work in accordance to your class year (freshman, sophomore, and so on) as well as if you are an independent student or not.
The web site I linked to in my previous posting will formally evaluate any and all courses taken overseas and they will work really hard with the admissions and or transfer offices of most any school. I assume that is why they charge. However, depending on where you live, there might be a service like that for free and all it would take to find out would be looking up a thing or two online. For example, if you live where there is a fair sized immigrant population, I would safely assume you could find someone to help you for free.
So. The only thing I know for sure is that you might really want to think of just laying claim to everything and be done with it, since you have a past history with US student loans which the fin aid folks (as well as your own-self) can look up really quickly.
There is a nice area of this web site for fin aid and you could run things by the folks who are wont to post over there.