<p>I lived in US since 2005. My mom had to change her visa type to F1 because my dad died in 2011 before we could get a green card (the lawyer ■■■■■■ up with files).</p>
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<li><p>Should I take TOEFL just in case even though I scored 610 on the SAT Reading?</p></li>
<li><p>I know that it’s possible for international students to work on campus with strict guidelines. How easy/hard is it to get a job? Let’s say I get my mom a gift… It would be pointless if I bought the gift with her money.</p></li>
<li><p>People told me not to be lazy over the breaks and do something that would help me, like volunteering and doing a research. So does researching count as a job? Can you get paid?</p></li>
<li><p>I heard GPA is everything when it comes to applying for graduate schools, and that biology major is difficult. I want to become a vet, so I don’t want to risk anything. I’m thinking about majoring in something else and minor in biology. Good idea or no? Any suggestions?</p></li>
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<li><p>If you have a good idea of where you’d like to apply, you can check the TOEFL requirements of those universities. Most universities don’t want TOEFL scores from students who have completed their entire high school education in the US. I only know of a handful of universities with stricter requirements (e.g. SUNY Stonry Brook and the University of Washington). In other words: unless you want to apply to a specific university that requires TOEFL scores (e.g. your local public university), not taking the TOEFL should not restrict your options very much. Of course, if money is not a concern, you could also just take the TOEFL and not worry about admission requirements.</p></li>
<li><p>It depends on the university. My undergraduate college guaranteed an on-campus job to every student who wanted one (unless you were previously fired from an on-campus job) but there are also many universities where on-campus jobs are hard to come by. As a general rule of thumb, residential colleges seem to have more student jobs than commuter schools (e.g. in the dining halls, the dorms and the libraries). </p></li>
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<p>It should also be mentioned that many colleges distinguish between work-study eligible students and other students for campus jobs. (American students with a work-study award get their wages subsidized by the federal government, so they are much cheaper to hire for the college.) </p>
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<li>Academic research is its own category. Useful for some purposes (e.g. getting letters of recommendation for graduate school admissions), not so useful for others (e.g. establishing work history). Find out what you should do to be a competitive vet school applicant. (Online research is fine for now, but I suggest you talk to a pre-vet adviser after you enroll in college.) Be strategic about the research, work and volunteer opportunities you pursue. (You probably know this already, but I just wanted to mention that F-1 students are allowed to work off-campus jobs that are relevant to their major. That’s what OPT is for.) </li>
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<p>Can you get paid to do research? Yes. Will you get paid? Maybe. Some professors have research or training grants that they use to pay undergraduate research assistants. A few (mostly private and very selective) colleges have university grants to support student research projects. However, it seems that much undergraduate research is unpaid and done for course credit.</p>
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<li>Biology should be a perfectly good pre-vet major. The vast majority of pre-med students major in biology or a related field (biochemistry, neuroscience, etc). That’s probably also true for pre-vet students, but I don’t know the statistics for that. Quite to the contrary of what you have heard, biology is often considered one of the easier science majors. Whether or not that’s true is debatable and will most certainly depend on the university you’re at. It is worth mentioning in this context that biology majors tend to score lower on graduate school admission tests than other science and engineering majors, including on the MCAT. <a href=“http://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/undergrad/mcat-lsat1.pdf”>http://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/undergrad/mcat-lsat1.pdf</a></li>
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<p>All F-1 students in good standing are elgible for 12 months of OPT after their first year. However, only STEM majors (not STEM minors) are eligible for a 17-month OPT extension on top of the standard allowance.</p>