Need help finding colleges please!! (international student)

milee30
Fri, 22 Dec 2017 13:53:57 +0000

“Okay say I will return to my home country after graduation. speaking generally will studying in a larger more well known college be better in terms of employability?”

That’s the rub. Most of the US schools you’re going to be able to gain admission to have little to no name recognition overseas.* It stinks because many of them would give you a great education, but if your goal is employability after college, you might be best served going to college in your home country. We’ve been going through this analysis both with our nephews (who live in England, don’t have US citizenship and would be returning to England after college) and my son (who has dual US/British citizenship so could go to school or work in either but would like to return to the US after college.) After our research and talking to dozens of employers, college placement people, etc. we concluded that unless the student was able to go to one of the tippy top colleges in the foreign country - such as HPYSM or UCB in the US or Oxbridge in the UK, name recognition outside the country is low to zero. To add insult to injury, having a foreign college on your resume may hurt your first few job searches because potential employers assume you aren’t a citizen and won’t be able to work without them committing to going through the paperwork and expense of trying to get you a visa, so they don’t even bother to contact or interview you.

If your family can afford to pay full price for an education that probably won’t help you get a job in your home country (and may actually hurt your first few job searches), then no worries - there surely will be one of those US colleges you can get into. But it’s not very practical if your goal is employability in your home country. I’m sorry, it’s unfortunate that the complexities of immigration/employment policies turn something that could be wonderful into something negative. And you may decide that it’s still worth it to you personally to come to the US and just work to overcome the fact that overseas employers won’t recognize how good your education was. I just want you to understand the risks so you have all the information when making your decision.

And foreign name recognition can be just plan illogical and weird. If you're British, you''ll know what a fantastic school Imperial College London is; in Britain for most science/math subjects ICL would be considered more prestigious than London School of Economics. Here in America, few employers would have heard of ICL and even fewer would understand how strong a degree from ICL is, but they'd be extremely impressed with the LSE degree. But again, sadly if most employers received a resume from a LSE grad, their reaction would be "wow, look - this guy graduated from London School of Economics! Too bad he's not a US citizen and can't work here. Next!"