Applying to International Universities

  The United States is full of great colleges and universities. However, America high school students aren’t limited to those. Indeed, the world’s professionals are being trained somewhere and that’s often at the quality colleges and universities in other countries. American students might find an international university is the right fit for them and here are some things to consider when seeking admission at one of these schools.

To begin, attending an international college should not be a haphazard decision. This needs to be a well thought out and targeted objective. After the all, the most important thing I can tell you about applying to an international school is to research, research, research. Everything you know about American college admissions may or may not hold water on the international stage. The importance of standardized test scores, academic performance, strength of courses taken, and extracurriculars can be vastly different than what you find in the American system and the value of these things can vary from one country to the next. You have to know what a specific college values in their selection process and you should never assume an international university considers the same thing in the same way as an American school does.

In order to do this effectively, you need to have a clear idea of what you are trying to do. It is not enough to say, “I want to go to college abroad. Maybe in China, Europe, or Australia.” You need something much more concrete than that. You need to be able to say, “I want to attend college in England and study international business.” That sort of direct approach will give you the ability to narrow your search and focus on a small number of similar schools. I should mention here too that no international university should ever be considered a safety school. If an American high school student intends to go to college but is overwhelmingly convinced they’ll attend an international school, they would be a fool to not apply to at least one stateside university. That’s just good practice and will provide an option down the road if something unexpected comes along.

The last point I want to make here is that if a student is choosing to attend an international school, they really need to tour it. Too few students take the time to tour American universities and there is much more involved in selecting an international school.  Just because you went to Dublin, Ireland in middle school or your aunt sent you a pretty postcard from there once doesn’t mean you are going to like the college in the city of Cork if you decide to leave everything behind and move there. It’s probably going to be an expensive trip, but you need to go feel these places with your own senses and with a college-bound mindset before you make this sort of monumental decision.

Of course, there is much more that could go into this topic but those factors can be too varied to explore here. With that being said, I’ll go back to my main point which is to narrow your search and do a ton of research. Only by doing that will you be prepared to seek admission to a four-year school and know that you are making an informed decision about a huge step in life.