US university high school requirements

skieurope
Thu, 13 Feb 2020 16:54:06 +0000

collegemom3717:

Again, students who are attending schools outside the US are not expected to fulfill US HS requirements. As an example, students in the UK doing A-levels would never be able to meet the usual expectations, yet even tippy top US colleges happily accept them.

@collegemom3717 is absolutely correct. A college’s recommendations for HS prep is meant to apply to most (but by no means all) applicants, and certainly not to all international applicants. As another example, no US college (except maybe UC) would require or recommend that a non US-based applicant have had courses in US history or government.

That said, some colleges, and Columbia is one, require foreign language for the college diploma; that’s not negotiable. But, for international applicants, not having sufficient HS foreign language experience would not necessarily mean an automatic reject. However, the Canadian HS system is not like the British system where one spends the last 2 years studying 3 subjects in depth. It is unlikely that the Canadian HS offered no French past beginner’s, so the OP made the decision not to pursue a subject which was available. There may have been extenuating circumstances, (one of which is not that the HS did not require), but it is unknown based on the OP if any such circumstances exist.