Hi,My son is a US citizen but he graduated High School outside the United States.He did not get in to the universities he wanted as a freshman. I am thinking of having him repeat Senior High again but this time doing it in the US so he can get a US H.S diploma. My questions are:
Can he do that? have two H.S. diplomas?
Can he still apply as a freshman next year to the schools that rejected him and to the schools he hasn't yet applied as a freshman?
Assuming he excels the second time around, (and if I find a H.S. willing to accept him as a senior) , what are his chances of getting in the top tier schools? (schools ranked 1-20 in the USA)
He took IB and his grades were not that stellar (38 points, taking the hardest HL classes) as part of his curriculum.
An alternative is to go to community college and apply for transfer in his sophomore year which what most people would be doing but having that extra H.S. experience should help my son, imho?
To be honest, the vast majority of what gets kids accepted isn’t what happens senior year. Apps go out in the fall, before most kids have senior grades. My kids both had acceptances in hand before they had much in the way of senior grades to show.
Was the issue that he simply applied to the wrong schools?
I think your plan of CC is probably the better choice. And I’m not sure you’ll find a US school that will allow him to repeat the year just because he’s not happy with his college admission results… or that the colleges you want will reconsider his app.
Many boarding schools offer a post graduate year that is intended specifically for students who have already completed high school. Ime, a kid like your son in not a typical pg student. It’s more likely an athlete who is already desired by a college coach who needs to get bigger and stronger and/or improve academically. A kid with a 38 on their IBD who simply wants better acceptance results would be unusual. Plus it costs about what a year of college does!
I think he has a number of options.
Attend where he has been accepted and transfer.
Take a gap year doing something interesting and reapply. This could help if his application was just about grades and he needs to fill it out on the personal side (and if he is feeling burnt out.)
Go to community college (depending on where you are) and apply to transfer.
Attend where he has been accepted and thrive.
There is always grad school for prestige!
It is hard to get into T20 colleges (and many of the LACs that aren’t in that group) as most have sub 10% acceptance rates (and most applicants are qualified.) If that’s the only goal, you have good odds of failure despite what you do. While people are split on the value of college consultants, a good one might be able, with a few hours of time, to help you assess what is a reasonable expectation for your son. I would advise a strategy that keeps him moving forward on his chosen path, not one that is about looking for another path to the same place.
A school is in the midst of offering him a year 13 type of admission (I am not sure what it means yet) if he passes a series of interviews and academic record reviews… the problem with his initial applications was that he only applied to five very selective universities instead of playing the odds
A 38 is very good, so what kept him out of top20 universities isn’t academics.
Lots of kids who studied in a non us high school enroll as seniors but it wouldn’t impact their college odds.
However you could enroll your child in a boarding school’s PG year. Some might still be accepting applications (looking for someone else, I know that Gould in Maine still does).
The boarding school’s teacher may be better at writing letters of recommendation and may push him into extracurricular activities that colleges value and which may be difficult to do abroad.
If he attends community college first he’ll lose the opportunity to get grants from the 4-year colleges. The best aid goes to students who start as freshmen.
Hi MyOS1634, I thought 38 pts is the reason. He has a lot of extra-curricular activites- he is varsity in Golf, getting silvers and bronze medals, he won bronze in the world robot games, is his school’s science champion, represents the country in robotics, does red cross volunteer work, does math tutoring for free (more than a hundred students so far)… does a PG year give you a different diploma? like a PG diploma when you apply to colleges?
I also don’t think 38 in IB could be the reason as the IB scores weren’t available at the time of college applications.
What does your DS want to do? He seems to be a very accomplished kid, does he want to redo senior year?
Honestly, it just sounds like this student didn’t understand the admissions landscape. Yes, it’s possible that the app could have presented him better, but it really sounds like he needed to apply to more schools, including some that were less selective.
Hi makemesmart, He used predicted IB grades… He wants to know what his options are at this point in getting to the universities he wants if there is still a chance. basically, its now- community college then apply as transfer, repeat senior high or try that boarding PG year… I dont know if there are other options
I lean toward having him reapply to 4 year colleges this fall, meaning he will take a gap year 2019/20. But, he needs to have a balanced list of schools to apply to—a couple of reaches (probably not schools that rejected him), 4-6 matches, and 1 or 2 highly likelies that he would be happy to attend and are affordable. Maybe start another thread to ask for help in developing this list.
A pg year would be an option, but he would lose two years, unless you get him in a school that still has fall openings as myos suggested.
I do not see the CC option as a good one, and encourage him to preserve his freshman status. Good luck.
With a 38 in all HL and good ECs, he should have had a number of decent options. The problem with applying from outside the US is often that you don’t have decent counselors who can explain the reach-target-safety approach. Did he apply to any non-US colleges?
You said they were all highly selective? A 38 could well be an issue for those, you need to look beyond the top tier. If he stays focused just on schools with 5-6% admit rates chances are he gets the same result no matter what he does with his next year.
My middle child was in a similar position 3 years ago. Non-US high school with no college counseling and disappointing US college results. I was in the process of moving back to the US and her little brother’s new US school had a Post Graduate Year 13 option which I recommended to her, but she declined. She wanted to go off to university like all her friends. So, she went off to a Canadian university.
I don’t think they get an additional diploma though, but there will be an additional transcript from a US school as well as letters written by experienced US high school counsellors.
I still think a PG13 year would have been a good idea for d16. There were deficiencies in her high school courses because her high school couldn’t fit more than 2 years of foreign language or social studies into her schedule, could only fit one AP into her schedule, couldn’t fit chemistry into her schedule etc. Her guidance counsellors were really no help in the whole process either. Advice regarding ED and EA would have helped a lot.
D16 was also somewhat young for her year. Overall, I think a year getting more APs and more maturity would have helped in her adjustment to university.
Another advantage would be another shot at SAT and ACT scores. @Depressed01 What were your son’s scores?
Very few students are admitted to T20’s from community college and they tend to be lower income residents of the state where the university is located and which has an agreement with the university, or veterans.
There are some exceptions: California public universities admit a lot of students from California CC’s, USC, Vanderbilt.
However most transfers are lateral.
Finally, it’s quite rare to be admitted to a university where you were denied - a couple months after your fest application, Adcoms aren’t going to say “aw, we made a mistake”.
A PG year would bring more chances of a balanced application list, well-written recommendation letters, a chance to improve the essays.
Can you buy him a " Princeton Review’s best colleges" guide and challenge him to find ten colleges he likes even though he’d never heard of them.
They’re not admitting anyone at this stage. Either try to find boarding schools with PG13 that still accept applicants (as I said I found a few still do including Gould but it’ll take some digging, the process has been completed for quite a while and would require phone calls etc.) Or focus on his registering at the public school near grandparents’ home if grandparents have agreed to host him for the year, so that he can preserve his freshman status. A PG year will mostly help with proper recommendations, going to the process again from within sort of (as opposed to being an outsider to the process, to the point he applied to 5 universities with sub 25% acceptance rates without matches nor safeties.)
In my opinion a PG year will be more helpful than a public school year. At this point the only things he can change are recommendations, from new teachers/GC used to writing them, and his own essays. A 38 IB, a 35ACT, the ECs you listed indicate the problem isn’t academics but rather a faulty list - indicating lack of guidance (or refusal to hear proper guidance). So the boarding school itself doesn’t matter, as all boarding schools will be very able to write good recommendations, help him design a reasonable list, and improve his essays.
You can also try to have him enroll in CityYear but it’s selective and it may not match what he wants to do with his year. Volunteering has to be a choice.
Cross out the 5 he applied to. (He can add them back in but odds he’ll be reconsidered are minuscule, so have him focus on other colleges and if need be, add them back in after the list has been built).
Finding five dream schools requires no work at all. Building a list is hard work.
Help him build a list : first order of business should be finding two affordable safeties that he likes (so, 35-50% acceptance rate and some characteristics in common with his favorite universities: academic program, location, vibe…). Next, finding 5 matches (25-35% acceptance rate, good fit, affordable).
Add the dream schools at the end - regardless of stats, any school that admits 25% or fewer is a reach for everyone.
Get him the guide and give him the challenge I suggested upthread.
hi MYOS1634, Would there be impact if he does PG13 in winter or spring or next year as opposed to doing it this fall? Would that period of delay in going to PG13 later rather than sooner have a bad reflection on his freshman application in the future? Thank you
It’s a year. He’s supposed to start in the Fall.
In addition, because application season is August-December, there’d be no point in starting in the Spring.
Finally, if he’s not in public or private school, he’s taking a gap semester/year, which could replace a PG year except he’d have no GC, no new letters of recommendation, and would have to work/volunteer in a way that makes sense for his personal growth, not easy to figure out mid June. In his case I don’t think the optimal answer is a gap year, unless you can’t find a PG year that still has places, this forcing him into a gap year.
I don’t see the benefits of doing a PG year after a gap year and it may well be detrimental, especially since he seems academically focused.
In my opinion it’s Fall2019: gap year or PG year. NOT Fall 2019 gap year, then Fall2020 PG year…
That doesn’t make any sense to me. What do you envision with this?