Anyone's DC going to Uni in USA???

[Cblue]

Hi all

Has anyone's DC applied/gone to USA Universities in the last few years?

DD in Y11 very keen so we are off to Boston/NYC to see some Unis.

Reading up on it, it seems like there are some good bursaries and scholarships open to International students at the Ivy Leagues which would make it viable.
Do any of the lesser Unis have the same?

We have been to the Fulbright University Fair in London and that just made her even more determined.

Has anyone got any tips??
And has anyone else done it!??

Thanks

I would just urge caution with the promise of a bursary. My brother's child went to a private university in the USA and was hooked in with the promise of a bursary/scholarship. They went down the road of applying, doing a visit to the uni, etc and the actual amount of the bursary was only a couple of thousand pounds. It cost my brother over £100,000 eventually to send my,nephew to university, including flights, accommodation and fees.

£100k!?!?
She's not going then!!!

Some of them say they are 'needs blind admission' and they will fund any financial deficit - Harvard, Yale and MIT have this policy. But I suppose it depends on what they consider the contribution your family could viably make is based on (do they consider that remortgaging your house is an expectation?).
I know that they are very keen on extra curricular activities and am pretty sure she will have this covered - she does a sport to a high level (started training seriously at 10) and spends over 7 hours a week training/teaching children (unfortunately not track, swimming etc).
I am led to believe that the SATs are easy, that they look at your school reports from the start of Y7 (which are good) and a that your personal statement is really important.
She can also claim Hispanic ethnicity (at a push).

I am going to have to ask them explicitly what 'making up the funding gap' is.

Thanks for the tip.

Any more advice anyone?

Does your DD absolutely want to do her entire degree there, or might it be enough to do a programme with the option of a year in the US as an exchange student, or a 'double-degree' Programme partially based in the US? The advantage of those is that you generally don't pay the full American fees and might well be eligible for exchange-programme scholarships.

We only have fairly indirect experience- DD studies in France but will be doing her third year at an American university outside the US. The fact she's a visiting student means we pay the much lower French fees, and she's hoping to get a stipend to cover most living costs. The selection process does indeed place great importance on extra-curriculars of all sorts.

Yes she wants to do the entire degree there. What appeals is the broad base of studies without specialisation until the final years.
She is a bit of an all rounder and is quite good at most things with the exception of languages and music (singing sounds rather like dragging your nails down a blackboard ).

The option to mix it up is def her thing, so I am trying to work out how I can make it happen without ending in penury!!!

Honestly it probably won’t work out. Out of state fees are high, never mind international and a lot of the bursaries and scholarships are focused on local students. Also, she probably won’t be able to eat any form of loan as she’s not in the UK and won’t qualify for one in the USA so unless you have all the money upfront then remortgaging the house may genuinely be the only semi viable option. Universities here are hard enough to access for people in the country with full funding etc, it’s pretty impossible for anyone else unless of course you have $100k or so laying around considering the extra expenses of flights etc.

Some options would be either doing a liberal arts degree here which allows some variation or doing two subjects in combination. Exeter is one uni that does this particularly well with people doing things such as Physics and Phsycology or Maths and Japanese. Also as she’s just going into a levels next year that may also help her narrow it down as she’ll already only be doing 3-4 subjects so it may partly just be a little early to decide as with GCSEs there are so many.

Just out of interest - have you considered IB instead of AL if she likes the variety abc is an all rounder? May get exempted from some courses / modules in US. Worth looking into ?

Also bursaries/grants awarded in year 1 are not necessarily awarded for subsequent years of study. If you do not pay your fees on time, you cannot enrol for the next semester.
We ended up having to find $10,000 in a hurry because a grant the dsd was awarded in year 2 was for less money than year 1 (still no idea why )

@Cblue I know it's not nearly so glamorous, but has she looked at Scotland? It also has a flexible structure - Arts degrees are four years, and the first two can be very broad, picking your modules from across multiple departments. Then you focus on your actual honours subjects for year three and four. Might be worth a look! (Not sure what the science degrees are like, didn't try my hand at those)

@GetOffTheTableMabel - so your DC went!! How was it? Did you apply from the UK?

@mussie - I will look into Scotland. It's not so much the glamour - she's talking about staying at home and going to a London Uni if she doesn't manage to get a US Uni (- perhaps she is trying to scare me?)
We have lots of relatives in NY state including a cousin at NYU. She just really really likes their education system

Don't underestimate the costs involved.

For example, the costs of sending a student to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst is almost £60,000 (or $80,000) per year.

www.amherst.edu/tuition
For 2018-19, the typical student expense budget includes:

Comprehensive fee (tuition, room and board): $70,260
Other student fees (student activities, campus center programs and residential governance): $906
Health insurance* (estimate; may be waived): $1,938
Books and supplies (estimated): $1,000
Personal expenses (estimated): $1,800
Travel/Transportation** (estimated; varies by location): $50-$2,500
Cost of attendance: $75,954–78,404

Honestly, unless you have a lot of money which you're willing to spend on this, I don't think her wanting to do it is enough. We all want to do things we can't afford to do - it doesn't mean someone else should pay for it.

I think she should get a degree here and try to work there later. It's just ridiculous that other people should fund this whim. British universities are great - it's not as though she'll get a better education there. (And though I'm sure it's not the same in Harvard etc, but my professor at university was American and said the standard of degrees here is MUCH higher and there's a lot less corruption, too - eg lecturers forced to give higher grades.)

Our DD is just starting a Masters at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She was awarded a John F Kennedy Scholarship worth half the fees. She also got a BUNAC scholarship worth another £10,000.

We also have another DD doing a PhD at Stanford in California. After the first year she seemed to become largely self-funding on bursaries, awards, etc.

So money has been quite forthcoming but I cannot say how common this experience is.

Cblue, my DD is in second year at a US uni. Applied, from the UK, for the same reasons your DD is giving! Happy to answer any questions if you want to PM me, although I know nothing about the financial side as this was dealt with by her father (my ex). I do know that he had to provide "proof" of his financial status for some of the unis she applied to before they would consider her application.
Within the UK, DD felt that UCL offered the closest course to the US Liberal Arts one, although in the end didn't pursue her application there as they had to sit an exam which she didn't want to waste to waste time preparing for given that by then she already knew she wanted to go to the States. From memory, she also applied to Durham, Bristol, Exeter and Manchester as these offered courses vaguely approximating to what she wanted.

A US bachelors degree is only equal to an ordinary U.K. degree. A US Masters is often 2 years, so encompasses the Honours year as such with the Masters. If she’s going to do her bachelors in the US, she will probably need to continue onto grad school. Just something to keep in mind if she’s likely to apply for graduate programs/ apprenticeships

Leiden University offers BA/BSc in Liberal Arts-Sciences

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/education/study-programmes?pageNumber=1&education=&type=bachelor&language=english

THE World University Rankings has Leiden in 67th place internationally above Bristol (76) and Exeter (130).

Several universities in England offer a BA in Liberal Arts (e.g. Bristol, Exeter and King's London) if studying in the US turns out to be unfeasible.

Just to let you know, the SATs, (or ACT equivalent) are definitely not easy. U.S. students often find it a lot easier to manage than uk applicants as they test maths and English comprehension skills- which American students do up to age 18 whereas the majority of uk students do not. I had to seriously study math theory for my ACT (there is also an essay section depending on whether the uni requires it- which is a lot different than essays done at uk schools)

There seems to be a lot more money around at Masters/PhD level, though teaching or research assistant work seems to be expected as a contribution. DS has picked up a generous fully funded PhD offer from a well ranked University, as have some of his friends. A friend's daughter has been awarded a Fulbright to pursue an arts subject at postgrad level.

It depends really why OPs daughter wants to study in the states. If for the experience, then it is far easier to go for a year as part of a UK degree, and there are plenty of liberal arts options if she wants breadth (UCL and Scottish Universities are worth looking at). Otherwise it is worth going to as good a University as you can here, getting a good degree and then applying. UG in the US is very expensive unless you have something special to offer, and even then you can find that the more generous, say, sports scholarships are given by less highly ranked Universities and the training requirements are tough.

As I said upthread, my DD has now just finished her second year so my information may be out of date. But when she looked at the Bristol Liberal Arts course content, it was nothing like the US version and the students at the Bristol Open Day advised her to apply to UCL. Things may have developed since then though.

I am in the US and about to embark on my third child's college application process. For what it is worth ...

You need to understand how the process works here from the point of view of the universities encouraging applications. Every college wants their acceptance rate to be very low because that indicates that the college is very selective/competitive etc. and is included in their stats. What this means is that colleges want to encourage as many applications as possible. So when an admissions person tells your daughter that she is a very competitive candidate/should apply/will possibly get money that may be true - but what is certainly true is application does not guarantee acceptance. (this works again once they give an acceptance - they then want you to take their offer so their yield rate is high).

So take any hard sell on applying with a pinch of salt.

Harvard and others (Brown etc) have good online tools for determining what financial aid you will get. I think Harvard's works for overseas families too - Brown's doesn't. Usually kids apply and then apply for financial aid and see what they get offered. They may get merit money (money off their fees based on academic merit although that is a bit of a racket too), straight financial aid or offers of loans. You should be very careful that any money you are getting is scholarship/outright - not deferred loans.

You should also look at the early action and early decision concept - early decision means you are committed to accepting the place (increases the liklihood of you being offered one) and early action means you can still change your mind but indicates your interest.

I disagree completely that a US college degree is somehow less than an honours UK one or that there is widespread corruption and grade inflation. A 4-year degree from a good school in the US is an amazing experience - a true liberal arts and humanities education that doesn't require immediate specialisation and while career-focused is not only vocational. If you want to be an architect you will still take humanities courses, writing courses etc. If you want to be a historian, you will take math courses as well.

The SAT/ACT require proficiency in math and reading/comprehension. Easy to score college-ready. not easy to score on the level required for Brown and Harvard - which will have many people applying with perfect scores.

OP, you might also want to look at some of the liberal arts colleges around new england - colby, bates, bowdoin, holy cross, williams, middleborough, wellesley (female only though - as is sarah lawrence). Colby has a great online tool for figuring out financial aid.

A friend's DC went to the USA for uni. They got exempted from the first year as they had A-levels, which do carry a lot of weight internationally. They enjoyed the flexibility of the degrees but it's been hard on the family and I don't think the children will ever come back.

I had postgraduate offers from two US unis, with generous scholarships which would have given me free tuition and living and moving expenses too. In the event I decided to stay here because, having spent a lot of time in the USA, I preferred it here culturally & also I thought it would have been too hard on my parents. I've not regretted it. I do think that if someone wants to try US unis, a short term exchange program or a master's is just less risky than signing up for 3 or 4 years there. It's an awful long way for parents to go if you need help.

All - UK degrees are no better or worse than US degrees but they are definitely different. In the UK you specialise very quickly and become very good at specialist subject. US degrees are far broader and you get credits for courses - liken it to continuing all your GCSEs through 6th form and then for a further 3 years and then dropping it down to 1 or 2 for the final year or so. This is the thing that appeals.

I am aware that if she studies outside the UK she won't by eligible for a UK loan. I also know that some (but not all) US Unis extend grants and scholarships to non US residents.

I know that it costs a HUGE amount if you don't have a grant/bursary and I also know that the funding package often includes an element of work (which non UK residents can still do on a student visa).

What I would be keen to understand is

1. are there non Ivy's that make the same grants available to international students?
2. is it harder for UK students to get offers ?
3. How did other parents/students go about getting sponsorships/scholarships- and when did they start applying ?
4. did you have Skype interviews or just offers?
5. did you sit the SAT or ACT, which one did you choose and why?
6. when did you sat it, how many times and did you get a tutor? Do you need a tutor? DD looked at the maths one and said it was easy hence the comment about them being easy. Which specialist papers did you do?
7. how much assistance did your school give and did they understand the reference and school transcript requirements- if not how did you get it done?

.....I have read oodles on web sites, I just don't know anyone who has tried to do it let alone anyone who actually has a DC there. I don't think it's impossible (or even improbable)....but it will be a massive learning curve to get well positioned.

Any more assistance welcome!

I will PM those that have very kindly offered there help

@hubby - yes, the IB would be perfect for her but her school and local 6th forms don't offer it
If you get a 7/A and above at GCSEs they also count as credits, so assuming results are as expected and A Levels turn out well she should be exempt from the1st year at many Unis (MIT and a few others don't accept AP credits even from US Unis)

......plus IB requires a MFL and she is quite simply pants at all languages!!!!

Fwiw, my DD found that they didn't interview in the same way that UK unis do. She had a few, but they were all with London based alumni (we live near London), and were either face to face in Starbucks, just a chat rather than an interview, and one with a London based alumni but via Skype. I don't think they give too much weight to the interviews.

My impression from going round on university tours was that non US applicants were considered very favourably, as they all seemed to want to increase the number of overseas undergraduates.

@Cblue Slightly different circumstances here. It was my stepdaughter that went and she lives in the USA with her mum. Her dm didn’t want her to go and so we were responsible (along with loans/bursaries etc) for funding it. I’m afraid that doesn’t help you much but funding is such a big issue and, whether applying from here, or from the US, it’s important to consider fees & grants for the whole duration of the degree course so you don’t get a shock midway through. We found it hard, from here in the UK to get complete clarity about our obligations (dsd fairly efficient but may have made a few mistakes with paperwork, no support from her dm).