Hi, I’m 21 yrs old and graduated international high school in Asia, in 2015.
I took a gap year and applied some colleges in the US and unfortunately, I didn’t know there is Columbia gs (If I’d known, I would’ve applied, but the deadline has passed long time ago… so no need to talk about it).
Got accepted from several colleges all ranked around 70-90 according to the usnesws ranking, think I’m going to one of the SUNY schools,(its engineering and applied science is well known among SUNY) Engineering school for now, but I want to transfer as a sophomore to another college (columbia would be the best one so far but thinking uc schools and other colleges too like umd, uw, georgia tech, emory, cornell, usc…etc)
So, my question is that if I do qualify as an international transfer at Columbia (gs)
I took a gap year, because I did not know what to do, study and also didn’t really think I need to go to college.
But, I did some part time jobs during my gap year.
Here’s what I did during my high school and gap year:
High School
-Voluteering as student English assistant for grade 2 whose native language isn’t English (twice everyweek, grade 12)
-Valley ball, left back, won two big matches in the country/ all 3rd place (among int. schools)
-high school gpa unweighted 3.4-5 (I guess, it was canadian school so I didnt do sat)
-got 2 recommendation letters when I was applying (not sure if it would help when transferring)
Gap Year
-Ielts overall 7.0
-Part time job, Taught English speaking from an institute for 3 months (it was a company and since my country’s native language isn’t English I could teach ppl/I spent 6 years abroad)
-Worked a month at int. airport at duty free (for translating)
-Worked a month at English kindergarten (for 5 year old kids)
-Did a lot of traveling and some stories from this experience. (US,Canada, China, Japan, Korea… etc and it influenced a lot on me in terms of choosing my major and finding my own interests/ also since my dad is a computer programmer, he was influential as well)
-Speaking tutor for a month (I got 8.0 from ielts speaking section, it’s not like perfectly native, but the person I taught was around 4.0-5.0 on her ielts)
What I’m going to do at SUNY
-getting -3.9 or more gpa (aiming for 4.0)
-Recommendations (letters)
-an autobiographical essay
-sports activities
-clubs participations
-leaderships if applicable
-taking courses related to my major
-also thinking to get some certifications like CCNA, OCJP and LPIC
-do some self research paper (with one specific topic, guessing it would take about 3 months per paper, so I’m thinking 2-3 while enrolling freshman year)
But, I don’t think I will take sat nor act since I don’t have enough time, and it’s not mandatory for international applicants (all the schools I mentioned above as well, there are different standards for minimum credits I should get to transfer without sat or act but most of the schools don’t require sat/ act if there are more than 30 credits)
Can you guys chance me for columbia gs as an international transfer?
Do you think I do qualify enough?
Thanks!!