International Time Constraints

b_r_um
Sat, 30 Jun 2007 05:50:16 +0000

Once your friend attends a Chinese university, he has to apply as a transfer. Some colleges let you apply as a freshman if you only complete one semester at another university, but I don’t think your friends wants to drop out of his Chinese university without knowing the outcome of his applications in the US.

Application requirements for transfer applicants vary from college to college. Most colleges still require high school grades and standardized test scores when one applies to transfer during one’s first year of college, but all colleges require a transcript of the university that one is attending.

If your friend makes his choices wisely, he should be able to get his stuff done for universities in both countries. One thing that I can say after applying to US universities as an international is that the process is as time consuming as you make it. I would have been off fine spending 10-20 hours for my college search, but I invested closer to 200 hours because I was afraid of missing a hidden diamond. I spent hours writing and rewriting my application essays, just to realize that the earlier versions of my essays were better than mthe 15th draft. The only area that I spent the exact amount of time and resources on is testing. Overall, I think I spent no more than 20 hours preparing for all my tests, mostly taking practice tests.

On a side note: has your friend considered taking the ACT instead of the SAT? If your friend is good in math (up through pre-calc) and knows the English grammar, he can do well on the ACT without much preparation. An additional advantage of the ACT is that it is offered in mainland China while the SAT is not (to my knowledge).