Effin' long School Report!!

International Students
1

<p>I already posted this in the Common App forum, but no one has replied yet and I’m getting kinda anxious because I really need this done. like tonight. so maybe you fellow internationals have also had trouble with this and can tell me what to do:</p>

<p>I’m an international student applying to colleges in the States. My counselor isn’t familiar with the application process, so I have been basically doing everything myself so that he can just upload and submit the things.
My secondary school report is a bit longer than the average I assume, because it includes translations of my report cards, class syllabi and conversion tables (converting grades from german scale to american scale). All in all it’s a 44 page PDF with 1.5 MB. Does anyone happen to know what the size limit is for uploading the SR? The additional Information section allows 500KB. Is this the general limit for uploads? Or can you upload a bigger file for the SR??</p>

<p>This is kind of urgent because I’m meeting with my counselor tomorrow to finish everything off and I need to know if I have to somehow try make the file smaller.</p>

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<p>The maximum file size is 500KB for all documents. See here:</p>

<p>[Support</a> Center](<a href=“http://s3.parature.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=5525]Support”>http://s3.parature.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=5525)
Knowledge Base -> Completing School Forms -> Counselor – Specific Instructions -> My PDF file is too large to upload.</p>

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<p>That aside, shouldn’t the school profile and the transcript be two separate files?</p>

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<p>so you’re saying the class syllabi should go into the school report?</p>

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<p>I guess it depends on your wants and needs. If you have syllabi for all classes offered by your school, they should go into the school profile. If it’s only syllabi for <em>your</em> classes, they could be attached to your transcript.</p>

<p>However, if you need to save on space, I would encourage you to reconsider including syllabi at all. If your school is following a standardized national or international curriculum, you won’t need them. </p>

<p>If you are not following a recognized curriculum and you do want to include information about your courses, you could consider using catalog-style course descriptions instead of syllabi. For example, “elementary functions, single-variable differential and integral calculus, vector geometry, complex numbers, mechanics, intro to statistics and probability” would be a perfectly adequate description of a two-year A-level math course. It shouldn’t take very much space to outline the content of your high school curriculum. The more information you provide, the less likely the admissions people are to look at it at all.</p>

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<p>I wasn’t planning on including syllabi, but 2 of the colleges explicitly asked for them.</p>

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<p>Without the syllabi and with other major reductions I managed to get it to 508 KB xD this sucks, I really can’t reduce any more.</p>

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<p>Which program are you using to create the pdf file? The more sophisticated pdf generators give you very fine-grained control over the level of compression. An 8KB size reduction shouldn’t be an issue at all.</p>

<p>For the schools that want syllabi, would they be okay with being e-mailed the syllabi by your counselor, separate from the Common App files?</p>

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<p>I just emailed them a few hours ago… waiting for a reply. I don’t think it should be a problem though.</p>

<p>Got it to fit… for some reason the document is smaller on my PC than on my Mom’s Mac, only 478KB.</p>

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<p>Good for you! :)</p>

<p>Just out of curiosity, do the schools need syllabi for admission purposes or to evaluate your high school record for college credit later?</p>

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<p>I’m not really sure actually. It was just on their checklist for International students. </p>

<p>God I just spent 8 hours on that xD I was planning on working on my Facharbeit which is due Thursday -.-</p>

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<p>Wanna hear something funny? I just got the reply from the adcom. They don’t need the syllabi after all. I am so ****ed right now ^^</p>

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<p>lol! But that’s good news, right? :)</p>

<p>How many hours did you spend on getting syllabi in English? I cannot imagine that the Kultusministerium publishes Lehrplaene in English, or do they?</p>

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<p>It took forever. I downloaded all of the Lehrpl</p>

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<p>That sounds like a terribly frustrating way to waste your time…</p>

<p>Anyway, I shouldn’t distract you any longer. You have a Facharbeit to work on!</p>

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<p>I believe a brief one-paragraph summary of the course content for each class you took should be enough. You should also include a list of recommended textbooks that were used in the class, if applicable.</p>