<p>I’m hoping to help an international friend of mine to get into the US education system. This friend dreams of becoming an experimental biologist, but has no biology training beyond the standard high school curriculum. Says it is impossible to get anywhere in his home country given his background. He wants to earn a biology bachelor’s in the US, then move on to a Ph.D.</p>
<p>Here’s a brief summary of the friend’s situation:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>27 years old with a near-worthless bachelor’s from a university in home country. Majored in international trade. Poor college grades but good high school transcript.</p></li>
<li><p>Totally unable to afford tuition at the vast majority of schools. All expenses must be able to be covered through wages earned by working part-time (which he is more than willing to do) and/or through scholarships. </p></li>
<li><p>All the community colleges I’ve looked at are too expensive–I haven’t been able to find any decent ones that don’t charge much higher rates for foreign applicants.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Look elsewhere. The US educational system is not set up to accommodate foreign students with a lackluster academic record and no financial resources. </p>
<p>
Visa restrictions limit your friend to 20 hours of on-campus work per week. At $8 an hour (a typical student wage), that’s about $600 a month, provided that he can find a job on campus at all. That won’t cover living expenses in most parts of the country. How would he pay for tuition on top of that?</p>
<p>He won’t qualify for merit-based scholarships with poor grades from his first college degree. He is probably not a competitive applicant for the colleges that award need-based aid to international students. Without US citizenship or permanent residence, he does not qualify for federal financial aid either and US banks don’t give loans to foreign students without a qualified American cosigner.</p>
<p>i gotta agree with b@r!um; don’t think there’s any way for your friend here. unless he decides to take a loan in his home country which i would totally not recommend.</p>
<p>maybe he could retake module to up his GPA and then apply to the US for grad school ? that’s the most feasible option IMO.</p>
<p>Throwing this out there - perhaps your friend could consider a reputable distance-learning Bachelor’s degree from an institution like The Open University while working full-time in his home country. This would mean six years to a second undergraduate degree, probably in Life Science. No idea where your friend is or what prospects are like in his field where he lives, but perhaps after the second year of part-time study (i.e. after reaching “junior” status) he could look for a full-time junior/intern research position with a laboratory/local university to make up for the lack of residential research opportunities offered by a long-distance degree. That would make your friend 33 by the time he gets his BSc, with four years of full-time research under his belt… good enough, I would hope, to apply to some U.S. universities for an MSc/PhD program.</p>
<p>… okay, well, it was worth suggesting…</p>
<p>To put it frankly - for your friend to become an experimental biologist will either take a long time or a perfect alignment of the stars. I hope he’s willing to accept that this could be an arduous journey.</p>
<p>160k usd in student loans ? do you have any idea how much that becomes after interest ? not to mention the current economy doesn’t even guarantee you’ll get a job right after graduation. but the bank doesn’t care; interest just piles on. and which bank in their right mind would give you that much money unless you have a very good credit rating (well-paying job/house or land as collateral) and/or a co-signer who does ? american banks are out of the question for internationals.</p>
<p>His first option should be to complete a bachelor’s degree in biology in his home country. This will give him a chance to improve his GPA so that he can apply to graduate school in the US or another country.</p>