My son thought he was a CS kid and still enjoys tech, but AP Comp Sci A whipped him last year. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have taken it sophomore year. He is now a junior and very focused on environmental policy and also French. The dual degree with Berkeley/Sciences Po is probably his top choice. He wants to be in/near a big city and is open to schools outside of the country, including in Quebec, France and other French-speaking countries. His grades are OK – not outstanding – but his story is pretty unique between the French and the environmental activism over many years – not just to put it on his college apps. He’s very interested in using technology to solve sustainability issues, but I don’t think there’s a major for that. He’s also spent 2 summers in France on a CIEE exchange program living with French families and speaking exclusively in French. Open to any/all suggestions of schools to consider.
Demographics
US domestic
State/Location of residency: CA
Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Competitive public
Other special factors: Fluent in French, history of environmental achievements
Cost Constraints / Budget: N/A
Intended Major(s) Environmental policy
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.89 (going off of memory because his school site locked)
Weighted HS GPA: 4.2
Class Rank: No public ranking
ACT/SAT Scores: Took the PSAT freshman year without any prep. so score seems irrelevant, but it was 1020. Has not retested since but will take it in October.
List your HS coursework
English: Regular English
Math: Regular math
Science: Physics, AP Psychology (not sure if that counts as a science)
History and social studies: done over the summer
Language other than English: Essentially fluent in French (will take DELF Junior when it is offered next)
Visual or performing arts:
Other academic courses: AP French, AP Comp Sci, 2 summer semesters in France with CIEE, including one in Honors French. 1 CC class in Conversational French sophomore year
Awards: Won $1,000 scholarship from local foundation in 7th grade to start composting project at MS
Extracurriculars: Robotics team (2 years). This year, will be an officer. Launched food waste program at his HS, built a website to track progress and recruit volunteers.
Note that there is UdeM and UQAM. UdeM is considered more prestigious. You can apply to 2 degree programs at each. Laval is also very strong. You can use McLean University Tables to get a sense of them, although all are excellent.
He can also apply to a CEGEP such as Dawson, get a DEC, then move to Year 1 or 2 (he skips year 0 and it’s WAY cheaper than 4 years at University.)
He may want to look into
He would need APUSH, AP Euro, or their DE equivalent. Regular English isn’t going to work unless it’s a school where it means they have to turn in a 5page paper at the end of junior year. The typical Sciences Po exam will be one question, 4 hours, and you need to structure your answer on the spot, with 4-8 pages of writing expected. IB English Language A or B is a good preparation.
The Environmental science dual degree expects the equivalent of AP Bio, AP Chem, with AP enviro optional; IB Ess and IB Bio also work.
Some of the various engineering majors (e.g. civil, electrical, environmental, materials, mechanical, nuclear) can be applied to sustainability work. Here is a selection of courses that relate to sustainability at UCB: Sustainability and resiliency engineering for all - Berkeley Engineering
Will he complete all of biology, chemistry, and physics? Environmental science and engineering issues that would be helpful to someone in environmental policy would be more understandable with knowledge in all of the basic sciences. Also, what level of math? Statistics in general will be useful, although if he will take calculus at some point, it may be more worthwhile to take a calculus-based statistics course in college.
A year of visual or performing arts is required for UC or CSU admission out of high school.
These are the only two universities in Montreal that teach in English (language courses excepted). There is one more in the province of Quebec, which is Bishop’s University. It is a small “primarily undergraduate” university in Lennoxville, which is either right next to or perhaps part of Sherbrooke. Lennoxville appears to be very largely bilingual. Sherbrooke is a primarily French speaking small city. One advantage of McGill and Concordia is that they are larger, will have more majors, and are better known. Another advantage is that they would be easier to get to from California since it should be easier to get flights to Montreal. We did however quite like Bishop’s when we visited.
I am guessing that you mean Universite de Quebec a Montreal. You might also want to consider the Universite de Montreal. Both of these schools teach in French. Your son is likely to be amused by the difference between Parisian French versus Quebecois French, which will be significant. It might not be a bad idea to visit and figure out how big the difference is (I do not think that I was ever able to get a solid sense for this difference).
Thanks. For some reason, his school limits which AP History he can take by grade level and I think he missed the boat on AP WH because they only allow that for 10th graders and he was more focused on CS electives last year, so he didn’t take that. His school is actually kind of weak on AP History offerings. He could have taken AP USH this year, but wound up taking an abbreviated online history course over the summer to give him an additional elective. His school offers AP Env Sci, which he’d normally be very interested in, but the person who teaches that class actively worked with the school’s admins to shoot down a project he wanted to do on campus, so there’s bad blood there.
I think he is more interested in the policy than in hard-core engineering. For example, he started a school wide food waste program at his school to comply with CA SB 1383 law on food waste. The school’s cafeteria staff was composting, but nothing was being done about the food waste generated by the 2,500+ kids on campus. His experience with AP Comp Sci A really shook his confidence and changed his mindset about pursuing more of an engineering pathway.
Also: I think Montreal would be very appealing to him because he wants to be in a city and be surrounded by French, even if the classes are ultimately in English. I’ve been to Sherbrooke before for vacations and it’s lovely, but probably too remote for him.
Also: he has 1 year of Cinematography that he took freshman year, which I think counts as visual or performing arts. He wanted to take it again this year, but it was being offered in the same slot as AP French and he decided to take the French instead.
Thanks…I get the University of Montreal and the University of Quebec mixed up in my head. TBH, I don’t know if his level of French is strong enough to take classes in French on complicated subjects. He will take the DELF Junior exam the next time it is given in the spring, so it will be months or even a year before we really know because I think it is only offered in March/April. He took a STAMP test before he left France 2 weeks ago, but those scores won’t be available until December.
If something like environmental engineering appeals to him, U. of Rhode Island has an international engineering double degree program, which would be a B.S. in the respective engineering discipline and a B.A. in the language (i.e. French). It includes a full year abroad which has students studying and interning abroad.
In thinking of some sure things for him, a number of the Cal States are part of the National Student Exchange (NSE) program. That means that students can pay their home university’s costs and spend up to two semesters at a different university with all classes transferring back. He could even repeat the experience at a different university from the first “exchange” school.
Universite de Montreal and Universite de Sherbrooke are both part of the NSE as are San Luis Obispo, Chico, Monterey Bay, and Sonoma State, among others (including U. of Rhode Island!).
ETA:
Is there any part of the “traditional” college experience (the way many middle class and above families think of it)? The university experience in France will be quite different, more like attending a commuter college in the U.S. The academics are there, but life does not revolve around the campus experience and university students.
I’ll think some more, but thought I’d share this out.
Thanks. I wasn’t aware of NSE, but will look into it. Ditto for URI. He’s not a traditional suburban kid and could care less about sports (although he was swept up by the French National soccer team this summer) and he isn’t a frat kid, so I don’t think he’d feel like he was missing anything there.
To verify, put the California high school name into University of California A-G Course List , then go to the course list and look up whether the course is in the visual or performing arts category.
When I’m talking about the “traditional” campus-based experience in the U.S., I’m talking far beyond rooting for sports teams and having Greek life. For instance, forget about freshman orientation or most freshmen living on-campus. If there even is a dorm, it is usually not right by the classes, and most students do not live in the dorm. Nor is there an RA…it’s basically just people renting a room and there is very little, if any, attempt to build a feeling of “residential life.”
Mostly, students are either living with their families or renting a room somewhere or perhaps sharing an apartment with other students, but there is no centralized campus life. So clubs, whether student council or an environmental club or whatever…not really a thing. It’s basically like living as a regular adult who attends college classes and then all other aspects of their life are based outside of any university affiliation.
When you indicated that the budget was N/A, does that mean that your family is willing and able to pay upwards of $100k/year for tuition, room & board? Or…?
One other thing to think about that just occurred to me: The University of Ottawa is officially bilingual. The last time that I checked (which was a while ago) they gave a tuition discount to bilingual students who take some classes in French and some classes in English, and this seems to apply to both domestic and international students. I do not know all that much about it however.
And I do wonder about studying at a university in the USA, and thinking about taking a semester abroad. In general this might be more difficult for an engineering student, although there might be options, with a class abroad over the summer being one possible option.
Thanks for clarifying that for me on the lack of any real campus life. As for the money, I was very diligent at saving and have a well-funded 529 for him and he’s my only so there aren’t a lot of other things I can use that money for. Thankfully so because my husband’s industry has essentially been destroyed by AI.
Thinking about the pivot:
Is there any way he can still take APUSH or take some DE history/geography/poli-sci classes through a local CC this year?
As mentioned above, he can apply to 2 degree programs each at UQAM, UdeM, and Laval if his Delf results allow him to but if not he can apply to Dawson or another Montreal-based English language college so that he builds his French and gets Year 0 credits.
Champlain Lennoxville has the same deal with Bishop and USherbrooke.
Double majoring in Environmenal policy and French would be very easy at Dickinson and they have a Sciences Po Toulouse year abroad.
Sciences po, INSA, and others are called Ecoles - colleges- and do offer dorms, campus life, etc. although vastly more autonomy than at a US college is expected. I wouldnt recommend attending a French Université for a US freshman.
It may be particular to the specific campus of the Sciences Po. When in college (which, admittedly, was not recently), I spent a year in Aix-en-Provence. One semester I took most of my classes at the Universite de Provence in Aix and the other I took them all at the Sciences Po in Aix (L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques). At least at that time, there was no dorm affiliated with Sciences Po. There was a dorm with the U. de Provence, but even that was probably a 15m walk from the university (and more like 25m or so to the IEP).
To my mind, the extent of campus life was so minimal that I would pretty much call it nonexistent. Things may have changed over the years, but at the time it was very different from my experience at a residential college in the U.S. (I enjoyed my time in France and was able to do a lot of travel because of the way the French scheduled their classes, but it was a very different experience from what most Americans consider “college life.”)
You likely want to have a pretty solid tech background to get into this space (if he really wants to focus on tech side of environmental policy)…I would also encourage looking at some the UK schools - they have ties to a lot of the international orgs IME.
A number of tech majors and CS majors have focuses on this…and there is a whole industries of tech + global development, tech + environment, etc etc too…some are more for-profit focused, some lean more non-profit focused, etc.
agree … those were schools I knew off top of my head that had such majors! AND one of my kids had a pretty bad initial test run at PSAT in spring of 10th (admittedly just under timed real conditions not a real test) and is now on track for 1500…not MIT territory but but WPI is a likely school for them.. and northeastern would be very feasible
I’m going to go into the weeds a bit here so beside OP and AustenNut, feel free to skip.
There are two Sciences Po networks:
one, colloquially known as Sciences Po Paris or rue st Guillaume, is the most prestigious and internationally known. Getting a degree there entitles graduates to any masters program (relevant to their Bachelor) in one of their schools. Despite the name the Paris campus only has graduate programs - undergraduates all attend area-focused campuses in cities with a lot of college stusents: Transatlantic relations is in Reims (1h from Paris), Spanish speaking Americas in Poitiers (1h30 from Paris), Asia in Lille (1h30 North of Paris), Middle East on the riviera. You apply to Sciences po and are admitted to one campus based on your application - questions in your interview will focus on France/Europe + this region. These offer hundreds of clubs (some form of EC involvement is required) and student residences. 3rd year is spent abroad. The UCB and Columbia dual degree programs as well as the Trinity Dublin dual program or the science dual degree would be with these.
The other network is the IEP network: these are regional campuses and each has their own selection process, so that you can be admitted to 2 or 3 of them. Due to the competition with the Sciences Po regional campuses the IEPs have had to beef up their offerings. Although they’re not as extensive as the Sciences Po colleges and definitely more “suitcase” (students often apply because it’s 4-5 hours from home so they leave on weekends, there are no dorms) it’s still not as hands off as the université.
You can give a look at the international student brochure for Sciences Po Aix here
The Reims campus, where most Americans attend, is well-aware of the US college tradition and is the closest to what one would find in the US, although much more autonomy is expected.
The INSA-IEP Environmental Science&Policy dual degree in Toulouse is housed in INSA so the stusents do benefit from the campus.