So here’s the story. I just finished my first year as an undergraduate student at Seoul National University in South Korea. I’m originally from the U.S.
Unfortunately I decided that the school isn’t a good fit for me and that I would like to transfer to a school in the U.S. The only problem is my gpa. I got all A’s and one A- in my English taught courses, however I didn’t do so hot in my Korean taught courses. As in two F’s and a D. Yikes, I know. I definitely didn’t anticipate the amount of time and effort that would have to go into courses taught in my second language, and also overestimated my Korean ability. For the two Fs I had basically decided half way through the semester to ignore those courses and focus on my other classes so that I could at least get good grades in the ones where good grades were actually attainable.
Anyways, besides that everything is pretty good. My stats are decent, in high school I got a 31 composite on the ACT, with a 34 and 35 in reading and English respectively (the subjects most relevant to my major). In high school I took all my academic classes for two years at college, up until that point had taken all honors, and my gpa was a 3.92 unweighted. I was also involved in Korean club at college, helped run events and club meetings, etc. and was on this student board for high school students in college, wrote for my high school newspaper for two years, and did an internship program where I helped teach classes at a childrens’ theater company. My high school that I attended for two years before switching to college courses was a performing arts high school, so I also had theater classes and was involved in a lot of theater stuff.
As for university, my gpa is absolute crap because of the Korean courses, but besides that I joined the school English language newspaper and wrote for the Arts&Culture section for the entire year, I did an on campus internship second semester with the school’s Diversity Council where we worked on projects to help foreign student life on campus, did a little bit of snap shot modelling as a hobby, and was a participant in a couple research studies for marketing Korean products to Americans (cosmetics, skincare, kimchi). I also applied for an internship with LG in a group with other foreign students, and we made it to the final round with our project before being eliminated.
So my question is: Has anybody else been in a situation where they are trying to transfer from a school abroad to one back in their home country? If, so how did you navigate that and how did it end up working out? And with my gpa, do you think I even have a chance at the more competitive schools (not ivies necessarily but maybe some schools like Pomona, Pitzer + the other more competitive liberal arts colleges, and then University of Michigan, UChicago, etc). I know they’re going to be reach schools anyways, but do you think my other activities and stuff will help compensate for that? I also know that the transfer acceptance rate really differs from school to school, so you can’t really generalize.
I’m just in a situation rn that I don’t really see any threads on and was hoping that maybe there would be some people with a similar experience, or at least some thoughts on my situation.
Wow I didn’t realize how much I wrote until now…sorry to everyone that had to wade through all that haha