<p>Hey there - I'm a freshman at St Andrews, from England, and I'm wanting to transfer to a US college in my second year. A few things, I cannot afford to pay for college, so it'd have to be somewhere with decent transfer international financial aid. </p>
<p>Course wise, I'm taking International Relations, English Lit, and Advanced Latin, and I got a first class in my first IR essay, and a 2:1 in my first English essay. Stats wise, I'm an AAB A-level student, and when I took the SATS, my Math let me down - 2080 here. However, I have 5s in AP Eng lit and lang, and I took AP Latin for half a year and have qualified for the Advanced Latin course, despite not having taken proscribed courses. I think I'm doing okay, pretty much all around. </p>
<p>Extracurrics - I'm the first freshman of my university to set up a society and run it. Unlike US colleges, student societies are entirely self-run, and funded; I've set up a ballroom and latin dancing society, am president and am teaching classes once a week - according to the director of students, this has never been done! I am a first year director of my own play, which is a full length Shakespeare, I am riding pretty regularly, and am part of the International Political Association. I'm also interning at Bloomsbury - one of the biggest publishing houses in the UK - this summer. </p>
<p>Where would I stand even a chance of being accepted to a US school, with financial aid?</p>
<p>I am not a foreign student, but I have heard that very few foreign acceptees receive some form of financial aid.</p>
<p>Even domestic transfer students receive relatively little financial aid since bulk of school wide merit scholarships are granted to those who entered schools as first-year students.</p>
<p>I highly doubt you are eligible for any government subsidized financial aid. You should focus on receiving merit scholarship.</p>
<p>I had seen a few people who received financial aid as foreign students even on this forum before.</p>
<p>That said, it's very unlikely you will receive a satisfactory financial aid package from top schools where you seem to be qualified to be admitted.</p>
<p>If I were you, I would stick to UK schools. However I am speaking from a third-party perspective. What's your motivation to come to the U.S.? Can you or your parents or your guardians pay for your tuition bill? How afffluent are you? </p>
<p>Since you are a foreign student, cheap state schools are no longer cheap for you I guess.</p>
<p>I wouldn't sacrifice a good school name for sake of just studying in the U.S. If you can afford, sure, come to the U.S., and study at a college where you truly belong to. I think your credentials look solid enough for a good handful of reputable colleges in the U.S. But again, I doubt those matching schools will give out any merit scholarship to you.</p>
<p>But you don't want to goto a second or third tier school in the U.S. just for sake of studying here and just for sake of merit scholarship.</p>
<p>yeah Alice If you want to leave St. Andrews because of fears of it not being known, I would not worry about it too much. St. Andrews is well known by most educated people in the US, being arguably the third most well known university in the UK (and for most of the world actually), after Oxford and Cambridge, and the fact that some Royals went there, so I don't think it will be a detriment to you to remain there, especially since you seem to be doing quite well. What are your reasons for transfer?</p>
<p>My reasons for transfer are - I spent six months in the US on scholarship exchange, seeing what life can be like studying a broader discipline than choosing a subject of focus at sixteen. I want to be allowed to study widely, not confined by traditions. For example, I take International Relations and English - I cannot continue this past first year. I have to choose one or the other, because of a time table clash. Rather than accomodate a student, they state 'it cannot be done'. I cannot study mathematics or science here, because I haven't studied them for A-level. I also benefited from actually being <em>taught</em> - having more structure to my day, having more homework so I can process what I'm learning - essentially, US college appears to be more like 'school' than the UK. There's less focus on selecting a major early on. </p>
<p>My family is not affluent - I pay my tutition to the UK based on UK govt need based financial aid - and I qualify for <em>all</em> of it. I pay for my education, not my parents, and my family is not wealthy. </p>
<p>I wouldn't want to drop down from St Andrews - my major problem is I want to go to the US for grad school, but if I were to study English, I'd be expected to also study Latin to fourth year, and I cannot do that here.</p>