These are likely recruited athletes with good GPAs, not 30-something international students with no scores, a relatively low GPA, and with financial need.
You seem to have an infinite amount of time to spend here disputing the advice of random people on the internet. Your energy could be better focused elsewhere, doing your own research. Worry more about getting your letters of recommendation and essays in place than convincing College Confidential of your worth. Prove us all wrong.
Have you mentioned who will be writing your letters of recommendation? Iâm guessing that some independent confirmation of your intellectual capabilities by a respected academic will be important in a situation where you have a low GPA, no test scores, and 15+ years out of schooling.
OP, let me be blunt here. You seem to have very naive understanding of how things work. Given your situation, it is extremely unlikely that you will get into any of the schools you are targeting. And IMHO that is the best case scenario for you as otherwise I am worried, you will end up being broke with little to show for it.
Please consider getting a bachelors degree in your home country. You can do online courses at US universities in the meantime, educate yourself about the ongoing research, and make connections. Four years later, you will have a degree, fresh transcripts, recommendations, possibly some connections with the professors at US , some cash in pocket and a much much better understanding of the subject matter. You can then leverage these for admission at a US grad school.
Stefen, you have received a lot of great advice and valuable information on these forums from well meaning and knowledgeable members who have taken the time and effort to read and respond to your many lengthy posts.
I believe this thread has exhausted its value now, and itâs up to you to decide your path forward. I doubt there is any new information you can provide that will change our advice, or anything we say that will change your mind. It is simply no longer a good use of your or our time to continue this thread. So I for one will be moving on.
I wish you well, sincerely. Let us know next year how things worked out.
Might I remind members of the forum rules: âCollege Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else⊠If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.â
Although I feel this thread is going around in circles, Iâm not closingâŠyet. But I would suggest that the OP take a step back to analyze the responses given on this thread, and their many others. There is plenty of good advice given by people who have plenty of experience in navigating admissions and FA; arguing because one does not like the response does not make the response less valid.
This response tells me that you are interested in IALs, but that you also donât know what an IAL is. (Important: It isnât a universal language, nor is there likely to ever be a single IAL at any given time, even if one IAL is dominant.)
Which is all the more reason for you to pursue postsecondary education and learn more about these sorts of things! Part of higher education is learning that you were wrong about certain foundational assumptions, and simultaneously learning how to discern what actually matches reality.
But please, please, please stop assuming that you know more about any given subject (whether itâs linguistics or college admission or anything else) than people who have been working with those subjects in meaningful ways for a long time, often several decades. (And if thatâs not your assumption, then please stop reacting as if it is.)
Also: The people here who have suggested getting an undergraduate degree in your home country have a really strong pointâif you really are onto the next moonshot success, a US graduate degree is more likely to be useful for you than a US undergrad degree obtained at great difficulty and stress. The focus you have on what I might call a âname brandâ US undergraduate degree is puzzling, given your stated goals.
A suggestion above to either get an undergrad in your home country or do two years of study from a US university online is a good one. You could get a number of your basic requirements done (writing, English, history) online, establish a gpa that would be understood by a university for transfer, and still have plenty of time in your schedule to take the advanced courses you want in linguistics for your final two years (or maybe 3).
I think a school would look at your application more favorably for transfer if you have some recent education to show them you are ready to go back to school. Some older students returning to school have been in the military, in business, in a service industry, but the schools want to see what they have done IN those jobs. Did they take continuing education classes, get a certificate in IT, up their skills? Did they advance in a supervisory roll? Did they complete 2 years of college while a working adult?
What are you offering the colleges other than your idea of developing a language? Frankly, they donât care about the ideas of 18 or 25 or 35 year olds. They make for nice essay topics, but the AO isnât going to admit someone just because they have an idea of how to send someone to the moon in a VW or think they might be able to cure cancer with a special diet. You go to college to learn how to get to the moon or cure cancer. Professors are interested in advancing THEIR ideas, not yours. Professors have very little, if any, input in admissions. You are corresponding with professors but if they answer you, all they are doing is telling you what kind of experience you can expect at that college, NOT that they can get you in or will write a letter of recommendation saying how much youâd add to their departments.
Go get some college credits. Show your work to them.
Well, thank you for all the comments. I wonât go into details of each post. The suggestion of going to a US online college for 1-2 years before transferring is a viable idea I havenât thought of, but it feels like a different type of education that requires research from scratch - which I donât have time to yet. So if you have some specific suggestions, please let me know.
Also, Iâve decided to extend my search to T400. Again, drop me some names if you please.
@merc81 : thanks! Could you PM me? I canât reach you, the profile is hidden from my side.
For what it is worth, my daughter has a Linguistics tutor at Oxford who came from a âhumblerâ beginningâŠ
He is from the US and went to Tennessee Technological University (#277 in US News National Universities ranking) for undergraduate (an affordable option), then PhD from Michigan StateâŠ
He was recently promoted to full professorship at OxfordâŠ
Stefen, I donât think youâre a hoax poster, and being a linguistic hobbyist and autodidact myself I feel some affinity to other linguistic autodidacts. And as a non US person working in international student finance, I feel sympathy for anyone trying to navigate the Byzantine world of international student admissions and finance in the US.
But Iâll be blunt. Your biggest problem is that you are 34 (give or take). You keep talking about how unique you are, but in some ways you are a very typical 30 something: you have very fixed opinions and a very closed mindset.
A 30 something with many years of higher education under their belt could afford being that way. It would be accepted in the work world, but not in higher education, where questioning and inquiring and learning and changing is the whole point. Not in an academic, not in a PhD student, and not, absolutely not, in a college freshman.
US colleges want to educate and that means shape and change you. Not just impart knowledge and information. Thatâs the rest of the world. In the US, it is frowned upon to expect students to go into college knowing exactly what you want to learn and do - the ideal is the liberal arts student who will try out everything before deciding on a major at the end of their second year in college. And who will live in a dorm changing and growing with lots of other 18 to 2s year old students. As an international, think of it as boarding school for that age group. Most colleges in the range youâre looking at will not want you there. They donât think of your fellow students as adults. They think of them as kids. They do not care that you may want to collaborate with them. They are worried that you want to have sex with them.
The way you are approaching this research tells me that you are trying to fit all information you receive into your mindset and worldview. You appear to be unwilling, maybe unable, to truly learn and change. College who practice wholistic admissions will notice.
Your challenge is to find a college that will accept a 34 year old without useful academic credentials. GPA and SAT is for high school students. You have been out of school longer that you have been in. What have you done SINCE? Thatâs what colleges will want to know. You appear to be unwilling to tell us, maybe you are worried youâd be doxxing yourself, but colleges will want to know and no one here can give you maeningful advice without knowing.
The US is the place of diversity. But itâs diversity as the US defines its or in your case, as US higher education defines it.
Many schools have online courses or an entire program online. Some that are well known in the US (advertise on TV) are:
Southern New Hampshire
Western Governors University
University of Maryland Global (this used to be called University College and has been going strong since the 1970s; it was originally based in Europe, mostly Germany, and served the US military and others overseas)
Arizona State - Starbucks pays for its employees to take courses
Almost all schools have some classes available online even if they do not have an entire program online.