Some advice/perspective for international students

supergeniet
Sun, 10 Apr 2005 11:13:51 +0000

I found myself rather suprised after reading through this thread. It was, and still is, my general impression that being an international student greatly INCREASED your chances of admission to competitive US colleges. Not decreased, which seems to be the general idea in this thread. I just got admittet into Yale, while getting on the waitinglist of Harvard. (I too only found it worth pursuing the very best, as education in Denmark where i am from is already first rate and more importantly - FREE) Even though i consider myself a strong candidate, and wrote a good application, i’m sure many amaricans equals my abilities on paper, while my nationality made me more attractive in the eyes of the admissionsofficers.

First of all, being an international student whose first language isn’t english, and isn’t used to multiplechoice testing, i’m fairly confident that the significance of outstanding SAT scores decreases. I scored a mere 640 math and 630 verbal, and still i made it into Yale - even though more than 10.000 applicants had scores from 700-780.

Furthermore, eventhough I do well in school i’m not nearly academically gifted enough to earn acceptance at an ivy. While danish schools by principle do not rank students, I would probably be in the lower end of the top 10% if they did.

So on what basis did i get in? well, my extracurriculars are pretty strong, as i’m a nationalteam rower (but in a small country, mind you!) and president of the student council. I wrote some good, and very personal essays, and got nice teacher recommendations, But I believe I was also the only applicant from my country, and i’m sure that the universities quest for diversity have helped me gain admission.

Each year the ivies get thousands and thousands of applications from extrordinarily gifted people. It would be easy for admissions officers to just pick the ones with the best grades, or most extensive extracurriculars - but in creating the best possible learning environtment, diversity plays the central part. A school needs to have close to a 50/50 male/female distribution, a wealth of minorities, and people of different backgrunds. Therefore the number of internationals on a specific school is crucial not only in terms of looking good in its recruiting efforts, but also is in the effort to maintain a stimulating learning environment - to get the best out of the best so to speak.

My point is, do not underestimate the significance of your nationality - it might just be the “hook” that gets you through the gap!