Why US Colleges Reject International Students

hey guys are you an international applicant to u.s. colleges and wondering why some international applicants have so much trouble trying to get into US schools or why it's so competitive I've said that's what I'm going to discuss in this video whatever you have my name's Brooke I've been coaching students on the SAT and the a CT for over a decade and a half and you can learn all my secrets in our online courses at super tutor TV comm the best a CT / of course ever the best SAT prep course ever whatever test you're prepping for we have a program for you so definitely go check those out while you're there sign up for totally free mailing list super tweeter tv.com subscribe we're also on social media Facebook Instagram Twitter find us there cool let's get started with this video I'm gonna go through some reasons why colleges often admit international students at lower admission rates than domestic students I'm also going to go through what I've seen as somebody who works as a college consultant cuz not only do I do test prep I also help students with their essays mostly like as an essay coach in that process I've worked with quite a few international students and what I find with international students is that there are some issues that arise with international students particularly in their essays that don't appeal to American admissions offices and that kind of American audience so let's talk about this four reasons why u.s. colleges reject international applicants number one money now this money issue goes in a few different directions but basically a few things to know one some schools not a ton but a small handful of schools I think there's like six are both need-blind and meet a hundred percent of student need those colleges often admit lower rates of international students than domestic students because they don't have enough money to go around international students generally to support with full aid packages cost more than domestic ones do and that's something that to wrap your head around you have to understand how aid works in the u.s. system the US government offers both grants and loans to US students who are financially qualified and those can go to domestic u.s. citizens but they can not go to international students who are coming from other countries so if colleges want to help the most number of students in need they're going to be able to distribute the limited financial aid resources they have more efficiently to domestic students because those u.s. kids are going to get some money from the government too so it doesn't cost quite as much to fund their education potentially and that's one reason that international students often get stopped by that little tiny pool of colleges now for the rest of colleges the most colleges are neat aware when it comes to international students and their need aware because generally they want international students to be able to pay their own way and if they're concerned that you won't have the money to pay they don't want to spend that admission ticket on you they want to give it to some kid who they know either has the ability to pay or has the ability to get the loans to pay and on this money note again the citizenship issue comes into play because as American citizens students qualify for loans and grants and the majority of people who are US citizens can qualify for enough to age to go to whatever college they want to go to majority of not everybody but the majority so for that reason because US students always have a way to pay for it and international students don't colleges are wary to let all those international students in and that kind of complicates the whole situation and in essence that means that colleges are going to admit you based on whether they think you can pay or not because they don't want to have these kind of like dropout situations that doesn't look good in their statistics it doesn't help their US News & World Report ranked and it's like no fun and no cool for anyone involved nobody wants to have like a half-baked education right they want to be able to give this opportunity to somebody who's going to be able to take it on and complete their degree second thing that I see going on with international applicants is often a bit of a cultural divide between the kind of information that international students write in their college essays and the kind of information an American admissions officer expects to see oftentimes international students come from an educational culture that has different priorities than Americas and sometimes students aren't aware of these differences in the u.s. we don't base college admissions just on a test score and your GPA I know in some countries like India or China it's all about the test score right you get that test score and if you score the highest you get into the better university and if you score lower you get into a lower university it's all about the grades in the chess course it's not how the US says those are one factor each of those is one factor in this whole admissions process and u.s. admissions people are looking for other personal qualities and that's what they want to get out of your essays that's what your essays are for there to show you these personal qualities to create this holistic admissions experience right they want to know when you have grit you have character do you have good values who do you want to be in life what kind of a difference do you want to make in the world they want to know who you are and your story and I find that more often the international students struggle with this then domestic ones do often again because I think they come from a culture where that's just not how you're judged when you're getting into any sort of academic school it's like not the norm there and so they're they're not wired to think in that same way and that brings me to my next point which is that a lot of international essays often lack this kind of individualism and point of view that are really solid college essay typically has as Americans we are the individualist right we're the ones who split off and wanted to do everything our own way right and I think that kind of American ideal of individualism of like this Hardy individualism is very much the kind of narrative that resonates with American admissions officers and I think sometimes people from other cultures don't quite understand that and they don't quite give voice to their own personhood or their own individualism when they write their essays or they don't understand the importance of that that's really an important factor and again I see just a lot of students from different countries overlook that kind of like Who am I that sort of self-awareness and that idea that your essay should really reveal who you are as an individual what makes you special what makes you unique right all those kind of individualism qualities and I think that's something that that you guys could work to incorporate and that's gonna strengthen your application the third issue that I see with inner national students is something I'll call lost in translation and that's that often times I see who you are get lost in translation because you haven't done a good enough job translating it for us so you're playing a little bit of an uphill battle when you apply as an international student because your high school isn't like all the high schools in the u.s. not that all the high schools in the US are the same they're not but still there's certain cultural norms there's certain activities that we have in the US that are standard that we understand there's a certain logic to how students and spend their time and what they spend their time on and often times when you're in an international school or in this other environment you have to do the legwork of translating what your experiences mean to us as an American audience in a way that we really understand some examples of lost in translation issues one activities that don't translate I often have students and they're putting down these activities and they'll have like some research activity and they'll give it some weird name you know and they've translated it literally from the Chinese and it's like the wings Club and I look at that and I say the wing this Club and I don't know what it means and then you tell me you spend all these hours a week and kind of what you do and maybe the wording that you use for what you do is like overly technical and and I don't quite understand it and I know it has something to do with aircraft but I don't understand what the wings Club is and that can be a problem so if you have lots of activities that there's no real American counterpart it's not just student government you need to be an ambassador and translate these ideas what are these activities that you're doing so I don't feel lost in translation now this problem just gets exacerbated when I get to students who also are dealing with language barriers and they're translating from their native language into English and then the English is you know not any o matic and it might be more difficult to understand you've just got to watch it especially with those activities and also the idea of readability I think a lot of times international students think they really want to impress American readers and sometimes they add too many big words in fact and then your writing becomes awkward and and not very conversational and it's over the top so you need to find a balance you need to strike a balance between sounding like you have like a well-developed vocabulary that you speak in a direct and concise manner and that you get to the point but that you also aren't using crazy flowery language or you don't sound like you're you're writing a really jargony research paper but rather you express things in a way that's clear and easy to understand and conversational and that clearness of communication is another factor that I see just overall can hinder some international applications so the best thing to do is make sure that you get a pair of eyes on your essay hopefully one that is somebody who's a native speaker of English so they can tell you if anything's not animatic if it sounds kind of funky and all that kind of good stuff and my final point that I'm going to talk about today is lack of extracurricular involvement I get it international schools often de-emphasize extracurriculars they're often all about the grade and the tests and that's it but you have to be developing yourself outside the classroom that's just something that American colleges expect and often times I find that international students may neglect to do so or they do these activities that are fluffy and they spend an hour a week on them for three weeks and that's their activity and that's basically you know they've got 20 of those and there's no real meaningful developed kind of extracurricular activity I realize that you won't have these built in like a lot of American students do but that doesn't mean that you can't find ways to apply yourself outside the classroom the other thing I'll say is for whatever reason I find a lot of international students do research and they do a lot more research than domestic students do which is cool but it's sometimes it turns into you sound like all the other kids at your high school so whatever every other kid at your high school is doing if they're all playing American universities and sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't just be careful that you just don't sound like one of the same right that you don't sound like you're doing the same thing everyone else is doing and you've got to find a way to apply yourself outside of classroom pursuits and you can be creative about how you do that it doesn't have to be a structured activity but you've got to have something that you spend your time on and that you care about that isn't just academic and that's about all I've got for this round guys give this a thumbs up if you like this if you're an international student also go check out the American college system explained comment below if you got any other comments about why you think it's hard as an international student to crack the u.s. system and I'll see you guys next time thanks for joining us but I

Channel: SupertutorTV

Views: 260,031

Keywords: SAT, ACT, Brooke, Brooke Hanson, Hanson, prep, SAT prep, ACT prep, college, harvard, princeton, yale, supertutortv, tv, super tutor, admissions, high school, learning, tutor, tutoring

Id: OqaXL91t_Fg

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020