<p>Even though they tell us 'all applicants are considered in the same pool', I know for a fact that admission offices split off international applications by nation.</p>
<p>But the question is, do they consider you by nationality, or country of residence?</p>
<p>For example, if I am Canada, and studying in Switzerland, would they consider me an international applicants from Canada, or Switzerland?</p>
<p>It depends on the school. Some consider students by country of citizenship, others by HS attending. Everything is relevant also how long you lived in the other country, did you go there just for HS, do your parents job made you move from country to country, etc.</p>
<p>As far as I understand, the first-level differentiation is usually made by the country in which you are attending high school: that’s because not every admissions officer is trained to interpret grades and letters of recommendation from every country. </p>
<p>Beyond that, policies probably vary by school.</p>
<p>I don’t understand Ana1’s post.</p>
<p>Your application is read in context of where you went to high school. You are compared to students from your HS, region, state, country. Your nationality is not really that important except when it comes to FA. Most US colleges do not offer FA to non US citizens or permanent residents.</p>
<p>Although my school is in Switzerland, we still use a Canadian curriculum. Most students at my school are Canadians, too.</p>
<p>In this case, would I be compared with Swiss locals, or rather Canadians applying from Canada?</p>
<p>You would be compared with Swiss from your school. My kid went to an American international school outside of US. She was not compared with Americans, she was compared with locals, but more importantly with students from her international school.</p>
<p>@oldfort, it depends on how each college differentiates internationals and US nationals living overseas. Some colleges do not care where you went to HS and compare you with country of citizenship. If you are a Chinese for example going to a HS in NY, you are not compared with your NY HS classmates but with your countrymates. These schools have a separate pool that they compare US expats among themselves and not with classmates. For example MIT and Stanford have a completely different process on how they compare them. Stanford goes by HS, MIT does not. I just had my niece go through the process and she had a different regional coordinator than all her foreign citizenship classmates.</p>
<p>MIT:
“MIT considers any student who does not hold US citizenship or permanent residency to be an international applicant, regardless of where you live or attend school…If you are an American citizen or permanent resident, then you are considered a domestic applicant”</p>
<p>Stanford:
"If you are a U.S. citizen or a U.S. permanent resident living and attending school abroad, then you will be considered an American expatriate in our admission process. This means that, while you will be considered a domestic applicant for financial aid purposes, your application will be read in the context of your high school abroad and you may need to submit the International Supplement to the Secondary School Report. If you are an international citizen attending school in the U.S., we will read your application within the context of your high school. "</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr that also does that: “We recognize that U.S. citizens who live abroad may reference this information as it applies to their academic experience.” and Lehigh: “Applications from U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens living abroad are reviewed by an experienced senior member of the admissions staff who has worked in international admissions for many years.”</p>
<p>Ana1, I am still not sure what point you are trying to make. How do you think the admission process is different for an American citizen vs a foreign citizen with the same academic background? (Financial aid aside, obviously.) </p>
<p>Every single college I have seen had the same formal requirements for American students abroad as for international students. That’s even true at MIT. (Trivially, since MIT does not require TOEFL scores or an international supplement from anyone.) I also cannot imagine that any college would try to evaluate an application from a foreign school in an American context: there is just no way to do it. What exactly does a 1.5 GPA from a Bavarian high school mean? The only way to tell is to compare that to the performance of other Bavarian students.</p>
<p>That being said, I am sure that admissions offices are organized differently internally: one admissions office might have a separate officer for all American citizens applying from overseas, while at another college one person might read all applications from Germany, regardless of citizenship. It is not clear to me though if this affects applicants in any way. Do you have any evidence or evidence to the contrary?</p>
<p>@b@r!um
“That being said, I am sure that admissions offices are organized differently internally: one admissions office might have a separate officer for all American citizens applying from overseas, while at another college one person might read all applications from Germany, regardless of citizenship. It is not clear to me though if this affects applicants in any way.”</p>
<p>That’s exactly the point that I am trying to make. Each college has different internal processes on how they evaluate and compare students. It is not a uniform process where every college just compares the US expat with his high school classmates from the country where the HS is located. Colleges do have country targets (quotas, call them as you want they are the same thing), similarly to the state targets for US domestic applicants.</p>
<p>Colleges that pool US expats separately have an experienced international admissions officer who deals with these applications, not the regional coordinator for the region/country the foreign HS is located. The internationals school is just considered as an academic experience, just like attending a special summer school program, that adds a unique experience to the candidate.</p>
<p>But does that have any concrete implications for college applicants? You seem pretty adamant on a point that no one here has contested. Applications might be read by different people, so what?</p>
<p>Ana1 - again, I have no idea what you are talking about. EVERY college assigns someone who is familiar with a particular high school, state, country, region to do the first read, so that person would be familiar with students from that particular area. Students are compared with each other in that area. </p>
<p>An American going to school in Japan is not going to be compared with a student from Madison, WI. He/she is going to read in context with students from Japan. It wouldn’t matter if that student is a local, expat, or a local with American citizenship. An adcom who is familiar with students from Japan is going to know what 6.5/7.0 means, and if 2050 for SAT is high or low for students from Japan.</p>
<p>Every school has their own “quota,” but at the end of day they want to select most qualified students, and the only way to do that is by comparing students in their own environment.</p>
<p>
This is just bull. Yeah, 12 years of special summer school program.</p>
<p>Ana1 - I really don’t know what is your source of information. I am responding because I do not want students to get wrong information on CC.</p>
<p>
What are you smoking? You tell that to all the Stuyvesant Chinese students.</p>
<p>LOL Thanks for your answers guys. But seriously, no need for conflict. :)</p>
<p>I have a very special case.</p>
<p>My school only has around 90 students. All of us are one-year senior year students or gap-year students(I have yet to start my year there). Because gap-year students are already committed to a university, and the majority of the rest will only apply to Canadian schools, it only leaves around 10 people who will actually apply to schools outside of Canada.</p>
<p>Please note that within these 10 people, some are aiming for other countries(UK, Switzerland, France…), and the US colleges that they are applying to probably won’t be on my list.</p>
<p>In this case, would they still consider me within my school, or otherwise?</p>
<p>@oldfort</p>
<p>“Stuyvesant Chinese students” ? I am talking about Chinese citizens, not American-Chinese.</p>
<p>You are very wrong that "An American going to school in Japan is not going to be compared with a student from Madison, WI. He/she is going to read in context with students from Japan. It wouldn’t matter if that student is a local, expat, or a local with American citizenship. "</p>
<p>As I posted earlier and also quoted directly from colleges websites, US expats are evaluated differently based on the college they are applying. Thus, a US citizen who goes to school in Japan will not always be judged with the other Japanese citizens applying for admission. The US citizen will also not be judged with a student from Madison, WI. The US expat will be judged with all other US expats in their own pool. How the students are evaluated depends on how each college assigns them internally. So for example Stanford evaluates students based on the HS they attend, regardless of citizenship. Other colleges evaluate them as domestic applicants but a separate pool. In these colleges, the ad com who evaluates their applications is not the one assigned for a specific international region, but a senior officer who has dealt with many international regions and evaluates the whole expat pool among themselves. Due to the hollistic approach, they treat the living abroad experience just as a unique characteristic of that individual US student, not as a foreign student who was born and raised in a different culture.
The posts from Lehigh and BrynMawr really put it very clearly:</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr: “We recognize that U.S. citizens who live abroad may reference this information as it applies to their academic experience.” </p>
<p>Lehigh: “Applications from U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens living abroad are reviewed by an experienced senior member of the admissions staff who has worked in international admissions for many years.”</p>
<p>@b@r!um
“But does that have any concrete implications for college applicants? You seem pretty adamant on a point that no one here has contested. Applications might be read by different people, so what?” It is not who reads the applications but the quota for the region/country. If a school accepts only 1 non-caucasian student from Kenya for example. If you suddenly have 2 ex-pats students applying, then their chances will be significantly reduced if they had been evaluated with all other classmates from Kenya.</p>
<p>Ana1 - I read all the website you quoted, they are all consistent. For FA purpose, if you are not an American citizen or permanent resident, then you are considered as international, and there is limited amount of money alloted for internationals. But when it comes to admission (qualification), applicants are all read relative to where they went to school. Expats at HKG International school are not going to be put in a different pool than local students at the same school. The reason? Adcoms need to be able to compare apple with apple. I would like you to show me from any website which says American expas are put in a different pool. As far as MIT is concerned, aside from FA, MIT only admits X number of internationals, whether you went to school in the US or abroad. </p>
<p>Everything you are posting here is your own conjecture of what is going on with no basis of real facts. Just for what is worth, my kids went to a top prep school when we lived in the US. They had very good GCs. When we moved overseas, we hired a very good private counselor in the US to help our younger daughter. We spoke extensively on how D2 would be viewed by US schools. The private counselor specialized on internationals and expats. Hence, I do not understand what you are talking about.</p>
<p>OP - your school is unique. You need to look at your school’s track record. I am going to guess that your previous school is going to have a big impact on your chance of getting into any school. I don’t see how your current school should have that big of an impact on your college application.</p>
<p>
A Chinese citizen student in the US, whether he/she is is legal resident or not, after going to school in the US for 2-10+ years, he/she would be compared to his/her countrymen. Why? What would that student have in common with students in Shanghai or some remote countryside in China?</p>
<p>How are you going to compare a “third culture” US expat attending a HS in Japan with the Japanese students? You presume that the students had lived in the same country for years and share similar traits as their local classmates. But most third culture kids have lived in many countries. My niece has lived in 9 countries since she was born. She shared nothing in common with her classmates and has been in her high school for less than three years and quite a few of her US expats classmates had similar experiences. This was also the first time the family lived in that continent. Everything depends on the individual college and the internal schemes. Even for inside the US, some colleges have different RCs in a state depending on whether the student goes to a public or a private school in the state, and other RC have responsibility for the urban enters in the state and others for the rural.</p>
<p>Does Lehigh or Brynmawr state that they are compared to their high school classmates? No. Brynmawr states that the living overseas experience may be referenced by the student and Lehigh also states that they are evaluated by a senior international expert officer.Neither state that they are judged by HS attended, as Stanford explicitly states. The MIT example clearly refutes your point. Otherwise, based on your argument, a Chinese expat attending a HS in LA would be judged with the HS classmates but MIT states that they do not. Or a US citizen who lived in the USA all his life and is now in Germany as a Congress-Bundestag Scholar, since he attends a German HS during the year he is applying for admission then he should be compared with all his German classmates, even though he has been in Germany for less than 6 months. All schools accept X numbers of internationals per country, and X number of domestics per HS and state. US expats are just considered as residents of the 51st state, the expat pool. It is similar to the homeschoolers. Based on what HS are you going to evaluate homeschoolers? How are you going to evaluate an army brat?</p>
<p>Schools that evaluate everyone by HS do state that in the website. Tufts for example says that:
“’m a U.S. citizen living abroad. Am I considered an international student? We read applications based on where you currently attend school, rather than by your citizenship status.”</p>
<p>The admission evaluation has nothing to do with their classification for US federal financial aid eligibility. Admissions offices state that they are not considered internationals for admissions purposes and do not specify that this is only for FA aid, as many colleges have different admissions application requirements for internationals (I am not talking about FA.) Do not forget that many students do not apply for financial aid. US expats are evaluated on their own and then listed in the class profile as being from the US state their parents or themselves last lived and are eligible to vote.</p>
<p>Look how in Quinipiaq for example on the ad coms, the description for one of the officers:
“Andrew J. Antone, director of international recruitment and admissions, travels, recruits, interviews and helps support our international students at Quinnipiac. He also reviews the files of U.S. citizens living abroad.”</p>
<p>Similarly at Manhattanville:
"Freshman or transfer applicants from the list below:</p>
<pre><code> International
Puerto Rico
Virgin Islands
Guam
US citizens living abroad
Armed Forces (APO)"
</code></pre>
<p>It clearly differentiates among the two groups.</p>
<p>A Chinese citizen living in the US for 2 years will have similar upbringing with any other Chinese resident as they were brought up in the same culture and shared similar experiences. Just because they lived in the USA for 2 years it does not mean they suddenly have more similarities and life experiences with a US born student than a Chinese student who continuous to live in China. If our life experiences changed so fast, then all the one year cultural exchange programs will have monumentous influence and instantenuous assimilation in the country they lived for a mere year.</p>
<p>@b@r!um</p>
<p>“that’s because not every admissions officer is trained to interpret grades and letters of recommendation from every country.”</p>
<p>It is not required that ad coms know how to evaluate foreign credentials. There are agencies for that. Many colleges require from international students to submit transcript evaluation reports by any NACES member agencies while others want from their specific preferred provider. These are experienced companies that they deal with such evaluations. They compare the courses on the transcript course by course and produce reports about the individual transcript. It is very similar on how international health insurance companies hire agent companies to convert medical codes and customary medical charges and expenses for a medical treatment in each country.</p>
<p>Why are you taking all of our comments out of context? Nobody ever said that someone who attended a German high school for half a year before applying to college will be compared against German students and German students only. </p>
<p>What we all meant (and I think I do speak for all of us) is that educational credentials need to be evaluated in their proper context. German grades need to be compared to German grades, Japanese grades to Japanese grades. The same goes for letters of recommendations. (E.g. a German “very good” would translate to an American “excellent”, and a German “sufficient” means “above average.”) Even ECs need to be interpreted against a cultural background of what’s available. (For example, if a competitive American athlete moves to Germany and stops playing high school sport it’s not that he lost interest in his sport; it simply reflects that there’s no such thing as high school sport in Germany.) </p>
<p>
Many? Some maybe. I have only personally encountered a handful of universities requiring external evaluations - mostly colleges with a very small international student population. None of the universities frequently discussed on CC require an evaluation, for instance. Your observation does not appear relevant to this discussion. </p>
<p>
Nope. That sentence means, “domestic students living abroad should reference the admissions page for international students as it applies to their own situation.” For example, American students attending non-US style high schools need to submit a supplement to the school report.</p>
<p>@b@r!um,
It is very elitist attitude to claim about CC that only the top colleges are discussed here. At the international students pages, by non US citizens, yes they do discuss primarily for the top 150 US colleges. However, there is a great variety of schools discussed in CC, especially in the parents threads that encompass all levels and may indeed have a small number of international applicants. When posters here claim that each applicant is compared based on the HS he/she attends, then based on that logic would not a US citizen attending a foreign HS during his senior year be compared in context of the HS? I brought the German exchange program as an example of that fallacy. One can not have it both ways. Either the student is compared with the HS classmates or not. When does the statute of limitations run out? 1 year, 2 years? A claim was made that a Chinese citizen attending a US HS for two years has more in common with the US population than his fellow Chinese students in Shanghai, something that I find incredulous. Posters here explicitly stated that a US citizen attending a Japanese HS will be judged with the Japanese classmates. “An American going to school in Japan is not going to be compared with a student from Madison, WI. He/she is going to read in context with students from Japan. It wouldn’t matter if that student is a local, expat, or a local with American citizenship…Your application is read in context of where you went to high school. You are compared to students from your HS, region, state, country.”
Borum, yourself you stated “I also cannot imagine that any college would try to evaluate an application from a foreign school in an American context: there is just no way to do it. What exactly does a 1.5 GPA from a Bavarian high school mean? The only way to tell is to compare that to the performance of other Bavarian students.” However, I showed you that many, (yes many because there are 4000 US colleges, so 150 colleges is a drop in the bucket), schools require the school transcript evaluated by NACES affiliates. How do you know that even top schools do not use consultants to evaluate foreign transcripts? They do use them after all for yield management and self-improvement. I think the problem here is that there is a presumption that the US citizen has been going to the same overseas HS for years, but most third culture kids have been living a mobility life going from country to country based on where their parents are assigned and the usual tour of duty is 2 years per post. Also, not all of them go to an American curriculum school because these schools do not exist in every single country.</p>