Yeah, @Sybylla , I don’t know how well that conversation would go over. I really wanted at one point to go military and either go to a service academy or ROTC, and now that my dad realizes that college can be free through the military, he’s pretty dead set on that. Any deviance from that path would be met with wanting me to at least apply to USNA. I guess they’re not big on helping their kid pay for college, which I guess is a benefit of foreign universities, as many are quite affordable. They expect me to go to a good college, but have never made it clear that they would help support me financially to a point where I am not financially strained on my own. That’s why McGill interested me. I like Quebec, it’s comparable academics to great American universities, and the acceptance rate is quite high relative to the academics. Plus, I study French as a foreign language. But thanks, that is a conversation I need to have.
The reason why McGill’s acceptance rate is quite high is because they make it very clear what the minimum academics standards are for acceptance. And those standards are quite high. Have you taken any standardized tests?
No, not yet @bouders
You absolutely must figure out exactly how much money you will have to pay for college before you apply anywhere, especially in light of what you posted about your dad. If they won’t pay a dime unless you go to a military academy (murderously difficult to get into–I know a kid who was rejected by West Point and is now attending Harvard), then you need to figure out what you can come up with on your own via savings, work, scholarships and loans. You’ll save yourself a lot of disappointment later on.
It’s not clear from your wording how much of a conversation you have had with your parents about paying for college, USNA & the other service academies are not exactly a cake-walk for admissions, so what would your parents see as the Plan B? You need to know:
*what are their priorities for you in your college education? what are your own academic goals?
*how much will they contribute? how much do they expect you to contribute? do they know the loan limits you can get in your own name ($5-7K/pa)?
*for US universities, do you & they know what is available to you in financial aid (run some NPCs) or merit aid (difficult to guess, as you have no test scores)?
*have you done a serious costing of the international universities you are looking at- not just tuition, but living costs, transportation (both from here to there, and while there), etc? One disadvantage of international universities for an American student is that financial aid is essentially non-existent, and only a relatively small number of international universities are FAFSA eligible.
This conversation has to be the starting point: if you can’t pay for it, it doesn’t matter how great a program is.
A couple other points:
In general, universities outside the US look more at standardized testing than GPA. Most countries do not put a lot of weight on in-school grades, b/c the standards are too variable, and instead put the weight on either a national entrance exam or points based on subject-specific exams (IB, A-Level, Leaving Certetc.)
Also, be aware also that admission is one thing and staying in is another. I have seen more than a few students leave b/c they couldn’t hack it in a very different system, especially as the support mechanisms are generally not as robust as you might be expecting.
In a number of countries you have to pass year-end exams to move on to the next year, and it is not rare for students to fail some or all of those exams and have to re-sit the exam(s) at the end of the summer in order to start back for the autumn term.
Obviously, there is a lot of variation by country- the key is to look past the beautiful brochure and at the actual experience of being a student in an unfamiliar system.
@cruiser18 I think that you know very little about your state schools. And you could get two years of free education at CCRI.