I’m an international Indian student and I recently got into Penn state University Park. It’s my top choice school right now but I didn’t receive any scholarships despite applying early. I’m not an American citizen so I don’t have a social security number and everything but i desperately need that scholarship. So how do I apply and get it?

Hi, I was in the military for 4 years after high school. Just got out and applying to college. My high school transcripts are a strong point on my application and I want to complement this academic aspect with a good SAT score.

I also thought doing well in the SAT (1550+ is my goal) would prove that I still retain my high school knowledge.

However I stumbled on a comment on this sub that said for nontrads, there's little point taking the SAT as a 'grown adult', which I suppose is true in a way...? I'm not sure, does anyone have any advice on whether taking the SAT is worthwhile

i know they’re not selective 😭

just wanna know what things would normally come up

Hi! I'm a 15-year-old student from Latvia, and I'm really concerned about my education after middle school. I'm currently in the 9th grade, and I need to decide what to do next. The universities I'm aiming for are Delft and SSE, but I'm still not sure about the best path to take. I just want to get into the best uni possible, for 5-10k max, so it will have to be EU sponsored most likely.

Here are my options:

Get a secondary education diploma at a regular Latvian school and spend one year in the USA as an exchange student.

Do the same exchange but then study in an A-Level online school.

Enrol in an IB school.

And literally any other option I don’t know about.

I can’t combine both exchange and IB, since it will simply cost way too much. I've heard many friends saying both that if you don’t have IB, you simply can’t get into good universities and at the same time that IB consumed all their life. I’m an athlete too, so not sure if I will still be able to train for 3 hours daily. I have exceptional grades and I'm confident I can maintain them.

I really want to maximize my chances when it comes to university admissions and not be limited by my school or exchange program. For now, it's crucial for me to decide where to spend grades 10-12. Thanks for any advice!

I wrote 'the pressure on' instead of 'the pressure was on' OMFG 😭

Im not being like extremely nitpicky but ...will this put the AO in a bad mood?

Hi, I’m a 19 year old male from the middle of nowhere in the deserts of California. I currently work as a Lab Technician for a gold mine local to me. Due to many unfortunate circumstances i don’t really want to get too deep into, I don’t have parents, no college fund, and no one to walk me through this process. I want to get a college degree in something, it would make me the first person in my family to do it. Since I work and have a child on the way, I feel like online would be the option for me. My first problem is, I never completed my A-G high school classes. Is that an immediate disqualifying factor? Second problem, I was in high school for the whole Covid thing. I did my first year of high school in paper packets, second was zoom meetings, third was masked and had no structure if I’m being honest, and my senior year was spent working and ended up in continuation school for lack of attendance. My grades throughout high school were terrible, I lost interest. I had no structure or drive, teachers were bottom of the barrel due to our secluded location, and we went through three administrators that fucked my transcript and took lots of summer school to make up for it. In conclusion I have no idea what I am doing, would appreciate any guidance if I even can do it. Anything helps, thank you for any advice.

(P.S. I didn’t do too well in English, so I am sorry for any grammatical errors. I’m not completely dull, I really excel in biology, anatomy, chemistry, and math. Not much of an English guy.)

Anyone who has applied to the schools above, did you receive your applicant portal login credentials? For some reason, I still didn’t get them and only got from UC Irvine today.

Which school would you recommend for someone to visit if we're only talking about the looks of a campus and how beautiful the campus is. Out of these schools which one has the best campus?

I’ve been going down multiple rabbit holes looking through ecs of accepted students at mit (my dream school) and people writing about application tips for the past few days and just, damn.

I’m going to be applying in the international pool, and all of the accepted students had either won olympiad medals or ISEF competitions (or both); many comments even say that they’ve only seen (international) students who have these achievements get in. But I’ve never even come close to getting a medal or international award.

I would say that I worked really hard to get a point today that I can be proud of, but seeing what other people has achieved on top of extraordinary activities makes me wonder if we even live with the same 24 hours in a day. This fills me with an extreme level of impending doom and I genuinely need some reassurance, thanks.

I’m an international student from India and just got done with my Stanford interview. I applied for mechanical engineering.

I heard that getting an interview for Stanford as an international is rare and is usually a good sign. However, other Reddit posts and all say that it is purely on availability. I’m just curious to know what is what.

Moreover, my interviewer was very interested in my extracurriculars and had a run down of basically everything as he even understood my research and projects properly. He said that he’s impressed and says i have a good shot. Apparently, he’s one of the guys who does like 15 interviews every year (most out of all alumni according to him). So, if he gives me a higher rating as compared to others then does that bode well?

I have heard that interviews don’t matter much but can help you if your interview was really really good or harm you if it was really really bad. So what should i make of all this?

for context, i'm from CA and there's some possibility i'll have to attend a cc and transfer to a UC

lately i've been obsessed with what i'm going to do in college. like nonstop thinking about decorating my dorm, trying new EC's, meeting new people and finally having a semblance of a love life, late night food runs/study sessions, halloweekend etc. i'm so restless waiting for decisions because although my town is chill i haven't been outside it much (no expensive summer programs, haven't left the west coast in 5 years). hearing about the people my friends meet and things they experience outside town gives me such bad FOMO. i'm so scared i'll have to lose this if i go to cc

 Hi, I’m a 17M. For most of life I lived without much help in academics, since my parents didn’t study much academics and my brothers isn’t so bother with helping much; as a result, I would find myself now stuck in my final year of high school, studying IB- where I was predicted a 19. My SAT score doesn’t fare too well (where I got 1290), but I believe that I am a pretty capable student if given the right resources and time to developed.

Right now I’m pretty passionate in heading to CC (and later on transfer to a well-known UC school), but my parents and brother heavily disagree with this aspect, as they believe that those who head to CC will fall behind society and be left behind; however, I don’t like about the tuition cost and wish for my parents to save more of their cash for their retirement. I believe that education is universal, and therefore the possibility of becoming a better person no matter what. 

I’m feel ambitious in joining many STEM activities, services, competitions, and even  potentially internship alongside trying to maintain a high GPA in CC. 

Do you think it would be possible to make such huge adjustments studying in CC? How competitive are transfer students? 

Thanks, any comments is much appreciated.

like i just searched for a random slide puzzle trying to pass time and ofcc theirs was the one that popped out in front. A picture of their campus for the puzzle, clearly they want me to start getting used to my future home.. And they even sent Big Red to ask me if i need help....

saw people getting upenn interviews and such and wondered why i hadn’t gotten any notice about one yet. checked my email and lo and behold there was one saying i had to submit something from a month ago that i did not see, same thing happened with carnegie mellon. i now feel like i wasted a whole bunch of money and time and upenn was one of my dream schools. i had no idea that was even a thing because none of my ea schools had that but it is what it is, probably wouldn’t have gotten in anyways 💀💀

Help!! I applied to both Columbia College and the Columbia Trinity College Dublin Dual Degree (both Columbia University in the City of New York) without knowing that we're not allowed to do so. Does anyone know what the consequences are or whether I need to do something about it? Is it a must to withdraw one of the applications? Also, my chances of getting into Columbia College is super low anyways. Please help!! Thanks!!

Hi! So before I get downvoted from the title, I want to mention that I have a 3.66 UW GPA with a pretty severe downard trend (due to extenuating cirsumstance). I wanted to get a 4.0 for the first semester of senior year to show colleges that I am back on track and can handle courses. I got all A's in my classes except a B+ in AP Stats giving me a 3.9 GPA. I completly understand a 3.9 GPA is good so plz dont attack me in comments lol but because of my already low GPA, I wanted to show the best possible gpa.

How much would this affect colleges for RD? Decesions for EA didnt go so well for me so thats why I am wondering if this will have any impact. What are your opinions? For reference, I took 3 AP's senior year (a step down from 5 AP's junior year).

most of my results hv come and now comes somehow the even more difficult task of choosing which uni to go to..like i thought once the results come i’ll be a bit more relaxed but i just feel more and more stressed + the unis i applied to are not necessarily the top unis so there’s this whole inferiority complex thing going on.. just feeling so done.. i hv my ap exams coming and NEED to study for that but just no motivation at all.. it’s like the only thing anyone around me can talk about is which uni i’ll go to and i just need a break from all that.. esp like this is literally the decision my entire future is based upon can not hurry this but at the same time i just want someone to pick one of them and want to be done with it… idk im just ranting ik most ppl here r waiting for rd (esp from like t20’s) but if you r feeling the same 😭😭😭😭

After I took the junior PSAT I was so confident. Got a 1200 and was thrilled thinking that I am in good shape with more studying to get a 1300-1400. Anyway I took a practice SAT last week and got an 1110. 480 in math, 640 in English. If anyone knows how I can turn this around let me know.

Hey everyone, I was waitlisted this year in Early Round and I was wondering if anyone here was waitlisted at Reed last year and later got accepted. If so, I’d love to ask you a few questions about your experience and any advice you might have. Feel free to comment or DM me—I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance! 🙌

What is the format for JSHS presentations generally like, and what do we need to present? (poster board, slides, etc.) any tips / advice for the competition would be greatly appreciated!!

i recently got into both uiuc and purdue for engineering (i specifically plan to major in industrial engineering). i was wondering what you guys think may be better. i am oos and dont want to factor cost into these rankings, just the 2 schools academically, job placements, social life, location, etc.

I'm currently taking AP Chem and I signed up to take the USNCO Local exam on March 2nd. Currently, we're covering the very beginning of equilibrium reactions. I want to qualify for the national exam, but I come from a pretty competitive school. How should I study for this, given I have at max 2-3 hours a day for the next month?

I've heard of resources like Atkin's but unfortunately I don't think I have the time for it.

hello! ive been hearing a lot of discourse recently about what (title) colleges look for within an applicant. i know for a fact that sustained classroom importance is one of the most important factors, but i heard from a lot of people that these schools dont care about extracurriculars or awards at all

basically what im asking is for past experiences and a pretty broad insight into stats to prove/negate these claims that extracurriculars and writings dont matter

Makes no sense to defer in ED2 when RD decisions come out the month after but we’ll see😭🙏

My ec list so far: -rotc (leadership) -senate campaign intern -youth gov program -small business

I really want to go into premed but just cant find any ecs that align with that. Its hard to find connections, most clinics i ask for interships decline and most professors in local colleges/universities only accept research help from college undergads not hs students. All the summer programs cost way too much and are highly competitive

What should i do to find medical ecs? what steps can i take independently to make some medical related project?

Thank u

Title says it all, I have done tons of interviews before but want to know what the environment is like and what to expect. USC is a top choice of mine so i want to ace it, so any advice is much appreciated! PM or comment. thank you so so so much.

bio major
legacy
good scores and rank
strong courseload
medical aspirations

Hello! I am a junior in high school taking the average math class (referred to as Math 3 at my specific high school). I preform unusually well in math for being in the lowest math course. Every semester I have easily earned an A in math which has frustrated me. I keep on wishing that I was in a higher math class but there isn’t anything that I think I can do. For more context, I would like to study something in the STEM realm in college (nothing medical though). I got As in Accelerated Biology and Accelerated Chemistry, and I’m currently taking AP Physics 1 which I received an A in for the first semester. I had to get approved to take AP Physics 1 because I did not meet the prerequisite of Precalculus but at least I got in the class. I am hoping that I can can prove my intelligence with my AP Physics grade despite my math class. For my senior year, I will be taking AP Chemistry and Precalculus. Will colleges look down upon my bad math class? I really enjoy science and math but I am afraid that this might hold me back. Please help! Thank you!

Just got an email saying I got a 10k/y merit scholarship for studying at Binghamton. Is this a big deal???? I'm intl so the difference in price isn't that drastic, but the fact I'm being offered a scholarship in the first place surprised me!

7/10 things on my activities list relates to something i've been doing since middle school which I am passionate about and I have made an impact in. but i think it's almost too much. i've had 5 internships for this particular thing and it doesn't directly relate to my major (business/economics) but it kinda does

the thing? i create professional level graphics for companies and local businesses. i started doing graphic design as a hobby when i was 12 but it progressed into something i mainly do for work/ecs.

I’m trying to get a good sense on how many students many top schools are missing out on for financial or lack of financial aide reasons?