mom2collegekids

Hi...there are many colleges that you can go to

First, we need to know how much your family will pay for your education here (or did I miss that?? LOL). For you to get your acceptance and visa, you need to demonstrate that your family can pay.

Next...

You need to have a broader list of reaches, matches, and safeties (all taking into account what you can afford)

Can your family afford $50k+ per year for Emory or other privates? If not, you may have to look at less expensive publics.

But, there are many you'll likely be able to afford.

You want to major in Biology, or Marine biology, or Zoology, right? What career are you interested in?

MikeFos123

You would have a really good shot at UH-Manoa who has a really good Marine Bio program....one of the best.

EricLG

I jumped to a conclusion that deserves correction:
As others have said, there are many colleges and unranked state universities that accept students with median SAT scores. Local state residents take advantage of them to decrease cost of attendance as one main reason, because of low grades/scores that prevent attendance at more select schools for another, and I imagine for many other reasons besides.

These schools can be a mediocre education, but do not have to be. Both of my kids will attend 2nd tier universities next year, even though they have the grades, scores, and family money to choose at least selective, if not highly selective schools. The differences I presumed in regard to OP is one, my kids will have scholarships; and two, we have (hopefully) picked schools that are very good matches for their interests despite their relatively modest rankings. In a fashion, we have shopped for what we hope is high value at a low price.

International students are unlikely to have any of these advantages, and so I jumped to the conclusion that OP would not be interested. Perhaps I am right, perhaps not. Regardless, the fact remains that money *will* buy admission to non-selective or minimally selective US schools.

EricLG

I heartily second the suggestion to take the ACT. I personally know of kids who scored *much* better in the ACT than the SAT.

Last comment (promise!): As I mentioned earlier, looking at the SAT subscore 25th percentile rankings at collegeboard.com can be deceiving, because you are not seeing the other sub-scores of each student. SUNY Stony Brook is a good example: 25th percentiles are 590 M, 540 W and 540 R, respectively. These numbers do not sound *too* far away from OP's, but look at the ACT. The 25th percentile ranking is a score of 25, which according to Wikipedia is 80th percentile of ACT test takers.

Sorry for not embedding links. Here are the URL's I relied on:
Stony Brook University Fast Facts
ACT (test) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

mewiow

WOW thank you all again for taking such interest and concern for me!! :0
i cant believe how detailed and valuable these information are to me )
okay, here comes my reponses: for the money problem, by parents are willing to pay for a private college- since internationals cannot get scholarships anyways in state colleges or community, the prices are much higher for internationals- the difference between a private college and state is about <10k, (guessing that private college is 50K and state/public college is about 36K-40K).. they just think that it is more on the "quality of education than quantity of money"? so Emory would be a great choice.. but i would have to attend school for 10 years, (2 for getting in emory, 4 in emory, 4 in grad-school- i want to be a vet.. high dreams haha)
Also about the SAT.. on my 9th and 10th grade, i thought "i can take it in jr year..." and procrastinated, and concentrated in my school work rather than SAT, but in my jr year, i unexpectly had to come back to korea (family issue) and had to go through with adapting to my new school and the culture shock was horrible! (i lived in the states for 10 years starting in 2nd grade) so.. while upon recovering from my shock of living in korea, i became a senior and realized it was REALLY late, and began as soon as i could, which was october 10th.. and got a 1570 on it...
for the ACT, i believe that the writing is a seperate and the science? :0 and i fear that i wont have any time preparing and studying for the ACT- since (is it?) alot different from the SAT, the question format and the test overall from the SAT?? But if i was somehow was horrible at only College board tests and not on ACT, i would take the ACT. I will look over the ACT information, and refer back later :^) so overall, do you think that the ACT is "easier to score higher" than the sat?
Thank you so much for everything! ) to the best people on CC i know!

EricLG

ACT: take a couple of practice tests and decide. Take with a grain of salt this snippet I found on the web: The ACT has easier questions, but less time per question.
Emory: I skimmed the website, and thought that Oxford-Emory does not add years to the BA if the student meets a minimum 2.75 GPA. Let me know if I am wrong.

Private schools > Public schools is a gross over simplification to the point of being wrong, and certainly not useful as a starting point for you. If I am not mistaken, Vet school depends on grades and entrance exam. If you go to a demanding school and consistently finish towards the bottom of classes, your GPA alone will likely exclude you from Vet school. If you go to a crap school that gives high grades to most, you may not learn enough to place high in the qualifying exam.

Solution: go to a decent school WHEN YOU ARE READY. 13th grade High Schools and community colleges are two places I would consider in your shoes.

Your problem is a lot more common than we all admit. It seems obvious and logical to focus at the end of HS on college admission, but it is a mistake to ignore likelihood of college success, and the chance that our bachelor's degree experience will prove to be the ticket we are looking for into professional school or graduate school or career choice. The country is riddled with young people who spent a lot of money in college and did not get what they were hoping for afterwards. Lots of reasons for this, but you can look ahead and increase your chances of not finding yourself in a dead-end five years from now by some open-eyed planning.

I hope I am not sounding terribly negative, but I'd like to warn you against naivete. Schools are businesses, and you are a paying customer. Both of you would certainly prefer that you do outstandingly well in college, but if a college has to choose between only picking students they have a high degree of confidence in succeeding, or including students they doubt will succeed but will allow the college to operate profitably, they choose the latter course. And at that juncture, they are not operating in your best interests if you will turn out to be a weak student in their college.

EricLG

Perhaps this story will be instructive:

A woman I work with was a very good student in HS. She measured herself as "the bottom of the top of a big, successful HS." The top top of her class went to Ivy league schools and graduate/professional schools afterwards. She was accepted to MIT, but chose SUNY Stony Brook instead. She wanted to go to medical school, and chose the difficult Biochemistry major, rather than the easier Biology major. In her senior year of college, as part of a biochemistry major, she had to take differential equations in required maths, and quantum mechanics as part of required physical chemistry. She tried her best, but barely scraped by with a 'C-' in these classes -- and that only after the class grades were curved. She lost her confidence and dropped out of pre-med. Compared to the (small) group of kids who were getting an 'A' in these classes, she was clearly a cut below.

None of us know if she would have made it to medical school and had a successful career as an MD had she chosen a less demanding, but adequately preparatory college experience. All this story tells me, and hopefully you, is smart student-college-major matching is damned important.