hei, I’m a student from Italy and I would love to study at Yale, but I don’t know if it’s possible. I know they accept a lot of foreign students but Italy has a whole different way of giving grades and in terms of school system. I transferred my grades into american ones and I found out I had a 4.0 GPA and I’m the best of my class (like 300 people my age). I hope so because it would simply be a dream!
- Have the finances to pay for Yale
- Have test scores and original grades submitted with application and fees. Don't do your own conversion. The school will convert.
- Wait to see if you are accepted.
@aunt bea, Yale is one of the handful of schools that is both need-blind and meets full need for international students.
@aleherondale, Yale is a difficult school to get into for anyone, but they are very familiar with different grading systems. Even within the United States, even within the same State and County, differences exist in how grades are determined. Admissions Officers for each region have a great deal of knowledge about this, and standardized tests also provide some common metrics.
That said, in my opinion, grades (and scores) are only a small part of the application decision. Yale accepts and rejects many students who are the top of their class. They also accept and reject many students who are not the top of their class, at least according to grades and test scores.
Good luck, but know the odds.
For the most part, international students are admitted through the same process as domestic students. You’ll have to take the SAT/ACT (SAT Subject Tests are also recommended but not required) and TOEFL/IELTS/Duolingo (these are not required but strongly recommended). You’ll also have to get two teacher recommendations, a guidance counselor recommendation, and a school report (your school should send this in directly). If any of these materials are not in English, you need to get an official translation to send in along with the originals. Finally, in the fall of your last year of high school, you will submit an application through the Common App or the Coalition App.
Don’t worry about your grading system; many countries have different ways of giving grades. Just get your counselor to send in your transcript as it is and Yale will know how to handle it.
FWIW: International applicants do NOT have the same odds as US applicants. Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and MIT (among other colleges) limit the number of international students to about 10% to 11% of an incoming freshman class – and most of those international students are from just 6 countries: Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Korean and Japan.
Yale is not as forthcoming as Harvard, but go to http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics. From the pull-down menus, select STUDENTS, HARVARD COLLEGE (the undergraduate school) and YOUR COUNTRY, and you’ll see how few of your fellow countrymen are enrolled at Harvard. Be sure to divide that number by 4 to get an idea of how few students are admitted each year from your country. My best guess is that Yale’s numbers are about the same for your country. Without even knowing where you are from, I’m going to take a guess that the odds are not good (sorry)! That’s just the reality when international students apply to US colleges. I wish is could be more optimistic.
Swap out Australia and Japan for Singapore and India, and the international student information here is pretty much correct. Even so, the numbers or students who attend from these two countries are often single digits.
To the OP - do things that are internationally recognized or at least recognized beyond your school. Do olympiads if you’re a strong math or science student. If you’re strong at languages, get qualified (ie DALF) and get published.
For the international students I knew, admissions seemed to be less variable than for domestic students. There were a lot of international students who didn’t get rejected anywhere despite the admissions rate being lower. I don’t think this is because these students were any smarter (some graduated from Yale with below average GPAs) but because they needed recognized achievements to get in. These were the students that topped their countries in their own college entrance exams and won prizes at international olympiads (IMO, IPhO, IChO etc). It’s much easier to interpret an award at that level than a nebulous valedictorian accolade.