Another post I really like about what the elite colleges are looking for. (This was a reply to a kid who really did not have the grades or scores for what he wanted.) http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/12914616/#Comment_12914616
@clnation, unless ACT scoring has changed massively, a 33 is 99th or 98th percentile.
The Ivies you applied to and Stanford all have acceptance rates under 10%. They are a crapshoot for pretty much anyone. It is not that anything was “missing” in your application but rather that these schools can fill up many times over with qualified applicants. Your mistake was in not creating a more realistic, wide reaching, and affordable application list for US colleges. Happily you have excellent and affordable choices in Germany.
I find it hard to believe that a 33 Act score would be “embarrassing” anywhere in the universe
OP, I am aware that “In Germany you start studying medicine right away; there is no such thing as a medical school. So if you are accepted now, you are guaranteed a medical degree (if you don’t drop out before)”
This is one of the advantages of the german program, unless you flunk out you will be a doctor. In Germany. In the US if you have mediocre grades you will not be accepted to medical school.
In my post I was talking about getting the residency you need after you graduate medical school in Germany.
Where do you want to live and work after school? In the US or Germany? Obviously Germany this is not going to be a problem.
In the US you will be considered an American who is a foreign medical school graduate.Years ago my cousin was in that position. It was more difficult to get a residency. You may want to research this issue and see if it is still true. You may want to ask your German medical school about their US residency placement. However a lot can happen in 7 years so you may have no desire to live in the US then
A 33 is fine. These are all holistic schools.
Looks like you were admitted to 3 schools instead of 1 – UCLA, Ludwigs-Maximillian Universität München, Technische Universität München, with the latter two at full ride.
It does look like, of the 7 schools in the US, 5 of them were reaches, and the other two were reach or match, depending on major applied to (reach if engineering). I.e. nothing even remotely close to a safety for admissions (and then there is the cost issue).
A 33 is enough to show them you can do the work, but on the low end. You need something else impressive to offset that, which you did not have.
Well you can find it hard to believe if you’d like. But the private school(s) in this region generally places most of the graduating class into Ivies. And a 33 is a problem there. In my public highschool - large IB program - 33 is average. I understand that an ACT of 33 is exemplary. But it is not an attractive score for an Ivy. An Ivy was never a goal for me.
I personally think an American going to school in germany is a super cool hook.
@clnation, I’ll have to call BS on what you’re saying. I’ve looked at the matriculation data for Phillips Andover and a bunch of the top prep schools in the country, and they don’t place the majority of their grads in to Ivies.
If you want to show that you aren’t BS’ing, post a link to the matriculation data of one of those privates in your area that you say sends most of their grads to Ivies.
Btw, elite adcoms aren’t just looking at the ACT composite. You can be thrown off by a lower section score, especially if it’s related to your possible major. But let’s not forget that a 33 roughly equates to CR & M 1440-1480.
And I agree with PT about the private hs. They may get more into top schools than some public high schools, but that shouldn’t be mistaken for the generalization that most of a class gets into tippy tops. If you dig, you can find the studies or comments. Among even the top preps, the bulk do not.
@PurpleTitan @SeekingPam Ultimately I want to live and practice in the US.
@clnation @lookingforward @PurpleTitan http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/NormsChartMCandComposite-Web2015-16.pdf A 33 still is in the 99 percentile.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1788283-act-33-retake-p1.html This is the thread i posted on the Harvard forum. I decided not to retake. Well, I know better now; “get 34+ ACT” duly noted.
@lookingforward I got a 35 on maths and a 33 on science. My possible major would have been something scientific, maybe chemistry.
Everything I know about the US application process comes from CC; no one in my family ever attended an US college, we do not have guidance counselors at our school and I am the only one from my school to apply to US institutions. So please excuse my inexperience.
It looks like I will be attending a German university (ranked 52 in the world http://www.shanghairanking.com/de/ARWU2015.html). Does anyone know how or if it is even possible to go to an US medical school. If I start studying medicine here, I will not have any degree until the end of the seven years (when a medical school won’t be necessary anymore + the problem of residency). So is it possible to transfer after the first four years to a med school?
OTOH I could do a bachelor (equivalent to an undergraduate degree?) here and then apply to a med school; however, in that case admission is far from assured and I might end up with no medical degree at all.
What do you guys think?
Thank you! 
First, your application is impressive. Don’t listen to CInation, who’s likely a HS student from a wealthy enclave and is truly clueless though trying to be helpful. A 33 for a non native speaker European is impressive. Retake if it makes you feel better, but that wasn’t the issue. You could also demonstrate your English level with a great TOEFL score and a good score on the SAT Lit subject test. If you’re trilingual, you can take a test in your third language (not German, obviously.)
Also, 1/140 is absolutely exemplary.
For Americans: we’re not talking US high school here. We’re talking the equivalent of a prep school (German schools are tiered at the secondary level and OP is clearly in a competitive prep school in a competitive region). If you will, like being #1 at New Trier or TJ.
Adcoms are well-aware it’s quite challenging to do EC’s in European school systems and OP’s done the best with what he had (and showed creativity in bypassing his constraints, which is always appreciated.)
Overall, your application is impressive and there’s nothing we can see as a real “problem”, so it must be in what you can’t see - recommendations and essays.
Second, no, you can’t go to a US Med School from a German"undergrad"/med school.
Assuming you did get into Med School at your chosen universities, you have three possible paths to a US med school/US med career:
1° Attend German med school, graduate in 7-8 years, then go through the process of being certified in the US. It’s the least risky but also the hardest since you’ll be considered a foreign med school graduate (regardless of citizenship) and your residencies aren’t likely to be great, but it’s more or less guaranteed you’ll be a doctor in Germany at least.
2° Attend German med school for 2 years, then attend a US college for 2 years (but with likely zero merit scholarship - however if you only attend your German university for 2 years, you’re still eligible for work study and federal loans, whereas if you attend it for 3 years you’ll be considered as equivalent to a BA and won’t even be eligible for those). This, in my opinion, is the least optimal solution. I’m sure it’d reassure your parents but there’s no financial advantage since you lose any shot at a full tuition scholarship while you lose the benefit of the guaranteed med school path in Germany.
3° Defer your current admission and take a gap year, during which you do medical-related ECs and you target more US schools/Honors programs and LACs, and go the premed/med school route directly in the US. This is riskier than option #1 since there’s no guarantee you’ll get into a med school down the road, but it’ll make it cheaper for you to get into med school than #2 and it’ll make it easier to get residencies than #1.
If you didn’t get into a med school program and would just be cooling your heels in another German program till your “number” is drawn for med school, then I’d choose #3 without hesitation. Those non-medical programs where you’d wait your turn for med school will still be there in a year if you change your mind.
“Everything I know about the US application process comes from CC; no one in my family ever attended an US college”
Well then you should not have been surprised with the results then. CC posters talk about the ridiculousness of ivy admissions all the time, so your expectations should have been low. And you obviously did not run NPCs for the schools, also mentioned ad nauseam on this site. Tell your brother not to waste his time applying to US schools unless your parents are willing to pay 100% of what the NPC says.
^I think you guys are too harsh on a kid who’s first gen AND in a foreign country, and had to handle everything on his own without the slightest help.
You also don’t need to attend an Ivy for undergrad to attend an American med school. Which almost certainly would cost a ton of money (or loans, though granted, you could work at a public or non-profit hospital to start out to get them forgiven). And that’s if you get in.
It seems like you have 2 choices:
- Go the German route to a medical degree.
- Take a gap year and go somewhere for undergrad in the US cheaply. We don’t know your family’s financial circumstances, so you may not get fin aid even at LACs who like internationals in which case you’d have to land big merit scholarships. They would definitely not be Ivies and most likely not anywhere close to that level of prestige.
Personally, I would go the German route.
Great post. I find the net price calculator to be a great starting point. Fit does matter but net price cannot be ignored
At some point the admissions process is a lottery. We should be asking why have the most exceptional schools not seeking to grow their enrollments.
As said by many, why are you dwelling on this when you couldn’t have afforded any of the ivies. You parents do not qualify as having an EFC of zero and since they do not want to pay it is pointless to be focusing on the same colleges for your brother. Unless their financial position changes when it is time to apply, it would be better for your brother to apply to a greater range of colleges where he has the potential to receiver enough merit money to make it affordable.
You didn’t do anything wrong, you just applied to colleges that just don’t accept a lot of students. At least half and it could be even more of the applicants to ivies are like you and most are told “no”. It makes me very sad to see all these posts on CC where very qualified students are calling themselves a failure, are asking what they did wrong or judging their self-worth against their ivy league rejections. As I tell those of my students that want to apply to a lot of ivies, " you are playing with fire so you must be willing to be burned". I loved college (and went to a small lower tier college but then top grad school) and the opportunity for additional education should be something to be celebrated. OP rejoice in the fact that you will be continuing your education at those wonderful universities in Germany and I hope that you enjoy your college experience as much as I loved mine.
I don’t understand why people assume OP 's efc would prevent him from getting fa at the ivies, or that he expected merit from them. Ivies have financial aid for families in the 185-250k income bracket, and there are VERY few regular people in Europe who make that much. OP in addition indicated he needed generous aid and is first gen, so I’m guessing his family is comfortable in Europe but well below 75k (meaning his parents wouldn’t have to pay anything). In addition, OP could have had full tuition and even full ride scholarships (IE., pay less than in Germany where his parents are on the hockey for r&b) but he apparently didn’t know about those.