<p>USyd, combined law pour moi.
Anyone have opinions on PES/Law vs. Arts/Law?</p>
<p>(PES = Political, economic, social science)</p>
<p>^I’m going for combined law @usyd too!! Deciding between Commerce/Law and Economics/Law. I’m starting to get quite keen on usyd law with my scholarship compared to usa college… we’ll see what happens come april :)</p>
<p>Merit? Or the other one? PS. I’ll probably see you tomorrow at the open day, or perhaps also the Dean’s luncheon. :)</p>
<p>hey! it’s my first time posting on this thread; I’m an IB student so I only got my atar this morning. between now and going off the US I’ll probs go to usyd too (adv. maths)</p>
<p>which colleges are you guys applying to? I’m just getting an idea - you’ve all probs been through this already but I haven’t been following the posts :S I’m going for most of the ivies+chicago, jhu, uva, case, MIT, a few LACs, and the amazing financial deal that is the CUNY Macaulay Honors program 
(it really is pretty amazing)</p>
<p>@theskylitup: a couple of my friends are doing USyd combined law as well! I think one is done International and Global Studies/Law and the other Arts/Law. In terms of Arts/Law vs. PES/Law, I guess it depends on what your interests are. I imagine that Arts would give you a broader range of subjects to choose from…maybe more languages/history if thats what your interested in? I don’t know too much about PES, but I imagine it’s got a few things in common with IGS…so if your interested in diplomacy etc…not sure about that but just a guess…</p>
<p>@feathers.o’four: hope your IB went well! saw an article in the paper today about how many think it’s better than the HSC. Does your school offer both?/is IB or HSC more popular? I applied to 5 colleges: Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Middlebury and Bowdoin…as you can probably tell from my school choice I am in need of financial aid…which LACs did you apply to?</p>
<p>our school offers both HSC & IB but we only had 10 ppl doing the IB this year. epic eh? yeah I saw that article too, about how IB is more rigorous. Not all HSC subjects are created equal academically, but neither are IB courses. It’s just more ‘well-rounded’ because we’re restricted in our subject choices - english, a maths, a science, a social science, a LOTE are required. </p>
<p>LACs I applied to: Wellesley, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore. Hopefully I’ll get into at least Wellesley (since competition is technically cut by 50%! hehe)</p>
<p>hey I’m an 2010 fall applicant from sydney, it’s my first time posting here.</p>
<p>never knew there were so many US college applicants here in sydney O.O</p>
<p>Welcome bbbbbbbblove! Yeah it seems that there are quite a lot of Sydney/Australian applicants this year!</p>
<p>What schools did you apply to?</p>
<p>I applied for the top Ivies (HYP) and a few “safeties” (because i dont know whether they are safe!)</p>
<p>but the Ivies are so competitive !</p>
<p>lol man its been so long since i commented on the post. </p>
<p>for the newcomers I’m a 2013 going to a place called Clark U, not the best but its a top 10 for my major (geography) so i’m not complaining.
any questions you have go ahead and ask me. (trying to save my good old beeish here from working extra time haha)
P.s. I’m from Sydney so if you’re a Queenslander or a Melbournian…</p>
<p>Hi all,
Firstly, good luck to everyone who has just sent their applications in!
I’m a first time poster, currently in a public selective school in Sydney (not one of the very top, but top 20), about to start Year 11, and I’m going to be applying to US colleges next year.
One question, a lot of colleges, particularly the top ones like HYPS, specify that applicants should have completed two years of languages study. I did 2 years in Year 7 and 8, but since that won’t be on my transcript (since they only look at 9-12), will it put me at a disadvantage? Or can I somehow include it? And if not, should I try and take any language classes out of school?
Thanks for all your help! =)</p>
<p>@ st.g.i.dragons</p>
<p>yes i do have a question =]</p>
<p>for the midyear school reports (those in the common app), when do i send them? In Auz, midyear reports come out around June don’t they? But then some people say they’re due early Feb ==</p>
<p>I’m very veryyy confused</p>
<p>@ Fetchgretchen</p>
<p>ummmm I don’t think it will be a big disadvantage, and I have always thought that the “years of study required” refered to yrs 7-12…</p>
<p>But correct me, anyone, if I’m wrong</p>
<p>@ Fetchgretchen. it depends on the individual schools. you must look carefully at the actual wording of their descriptions. some will have RECOMMENDED while others will have REQUIRED. If its required then I guess it will be at a disadvantage than those that did take the class but it won’t be as big as the difference between 2400 SAT and 1900 SAT score if you get the analogy. And they only consider years from 9-12 because thats high school for them where as year 7-8 is middle school. completely different system</p>
<p>@bbb…love (sorry cbb to count the bs haha)
American school year is obviously different to ours. They start late aug/early sept and end around may. So for them midyear reports come out around december which is when the fall semester ends. For us, when you send your apps in around Jan/Feb, you should have your HSC scores out and everything, so send it all in. The people looking at them will know that our years are different so when they say have your final year reports in around may or whenever, we don’t have to send anything in because we’ve already sent in our full school reports.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. Appreciate the help =)
One other question, when do you recommend taking the SATs? And how much study/prep do I need to do?</p>
<p>Eep, one of my first posts here.
I’m from Syd and I’m doing year 12 currently.
Similar to ^, but how much did you balance you study with the prep for the SAT and what you do for the HCE, VCE etc.</p>
<p>Welcome to all the first posters. =)</p>
<p>@FetchGarden: I don’t know whether this will help but I’ll be taking my first SAT in the end of this month. I would personally recommend taking it during late year 11 or early year 12 so that if the result isn’t as high as you hope you can re-take. As for preparation, you can go to the large book shop (such as borders) to buy some prep books.</p>
<p>Hey everyone!</p>
<p>In regard to the SAT, I agree with natalle that you should take the SAT earlier just in case you need to re-do. I only decided that I wanted apply to US colleges in April of Year 12 (I know, really latee), so I could only do the SAT once. I did it in June, so didn’t have too much stress yet with trials etc, but it was a bit of a pain having to study while trying to balance HSC work. For SAT 1 prep I got the big blue college board book from collegeboard.com (I think you can also get it at bookstores), and just did some practice papers from there. I guess that’s the simplest way to study and other methods are pretty limited here, as SAT tutors I suppose are hard to come by. For the subject tests, I got the McGraw Hill books for Lit, Math II and Bio. They were $20-30 and had a couple of tests in them as well as review of all the material covered. They were pretty helpful. My study for the SAT IIs was pretty pathetic, but most of the stuff overlapped with HSC work. Math II pretty much corresponds to Ext 1 HSC maths except for a few things like vectors, but I just left those questions out. Lit is reading comprehension skills and is similar to critical reading. Bio was a bit of a problem but luckily the schools I applied to only required 2 subject tests so my bad score wasn’t such a problem :)</p>
<p>Oh, and a word of advice: book early for the SAT, because I tried to book in for subject tests as Macquarie like more than a month before the october test date and it was already booked out, so I had to go to Canberra… :(</p>
<p>yeah. best advice: BOOK EARLY.
i tried to book for a language exam 3 months in advance and they were ALREADY booked out.</p>
<p>wow sora2712, are you serious!! What happened to you afterwards? Did you end up taking any language exams?</p>