Last week's US High School episode has got more appreciation than I expected.
Many asked about preparing for US college admission in the comments of that episode.
What does college admission committee expect from applicants?
How can we prepare for SAT exam?
Got many similar questions like that. We will take a closer look at all those in this episode.
Hi. My name is Vijay Mohan. You are watching - Investment Insights.
In India, college admission is dependent either on 12th standard marks...
or with an additional entrance exam. Admission is purely based on academics.
Here in US, other than the academics, things like essays, teacher recommendations and extra curricular activities are included as well.
What that means is, we do not have a clear cut direction that is dependent purely on marks like in India.
Even if we have perfect score in academics, it does not necessarily mean that we can get a seat in top college.
Another difference is, in India, we can join to any undergrad degree that is directly related to our career.
It is same here as well - except for medicine and law.
For doing medicine or law, we should have completed an undergrad degree first.
Only after finishing the undergrad degree, we would be able to even apply for a law or medicine degree.
Other than that, Engineering and Science degrees are just like in India. We can do it in undergrad itself.
But there are no 3 year college degrees like BSc, BCom or BA in USA.
All degrees require 4 years.
So what does a college expect from a student before giving admission to them?
Let us look at each of the requirements in detail.
First - High school GPA.
This is the most important criteria among all. We already reviewed about GPA in detail in last week's episode.
Each and every homework, quiz, projects, test and final exam will be counted towards GPA.
So we cannot even take a small task lightly.
Our kids might be brilliant. They might score good grades in tests.
But if they do not have the punctuality to submit the homework on time, that will impact their GPA.
So it is better to keep an eye on them to make sure that they are submitting their homework and projects on time.
Honors and AP courses help to take our GPA over 4.0.
If the kids can, then they should definitely go for honors or AP courses.
If your school does not offer that many AP courses, that's OK.
College admission committee knows about each and every school.
They check how a kid has maximized the opportunities provided to them.
They do not care about the opportunities not offered to them.
So there is no reason for us to worry about not enough AP courses offered in the school.
If we are targeting top colleges, it is better to have a GPA over 4.0.
Here we are looking at the average weighted GPA in top colleges.
We can see that they are all above 4.0.
The next important criteria is, SAT/ACT test score.
All the colleges expect either SAT or ACT score.
It is enough to take just one of those tests. No need to take both.
Today many kids write both the exams.
If you ask me, we can have our kids try both as practice.
Both SAT and ACT, they offer many free practice tests.
Kids can try both and they can pick one of their liking for full practice.
Both have english and math. Act also has science reasoning. That is all the main difference.
It is not that difficult to prepare for Math. They get questions only up to 10th grade.
So the kids do not have to spend time preparing anything extra.
But they definitely need practice to finish the test within the allocated time.
Practice will definitely make them do faster in math.
Khan academy has 10 practice SAT tests.
I would say, ask them to write one practice test.
Identify the weaker portions and focus on strengthening that weak part.
Then they can take another round of practice test.
If we do this iteratively, they will be ready for the final test in few rounds.
English - for the kids who are growing up here, it will not be that difficult.
It is better to encourage reading in kids from their elementary school.
Most of the kids show lot of interest in reading story books.
We can take them to the library at least once in a week and get books for their reading.
Our kids carry many bags of books from library every week.
Once they get into the reading world, they will not care about mobile or gaming.
So it is better to introduce this habit as early as possible.
Kids who grew up reading books like this will not have any problem with SAT english. They will handle it with ease.
SAT preparation can be started from 10th grade summer break.
We can write SAT/ACT tests as many times as we want.
We can make our first attempt during the August month of 11th grade.
That will give us enough time till next summer to make our score better.
We will not have any time for SAT once 12th grade starts.
Kids will be very busy with their prep work for college.
So it is better to write the SAT/ACT test within 10th summer and 11 th summer.
SAT has a total of 1600 score with Math 800 and English 800.
If we are shooting for top colleges, then we should target for a score above 1500.
So this GPA and SAT score are the "academic" requirements for college admission.
If only we have a good handle on these two, other things will add value to our application.
If we lag on this, other things cannot help us much.
So regardless of any other things, it is important that we put our maximum effort on these two.
Next requirement is recommendation letters.
Most of the colleges ask for at least 2 recommendation letters.
One from school counsellor and another from a subject teacher.
Math or Physics teacher would be a good choice for Engineering.
Science teacher would be a good choice for science related majors.
Teachers note qualities like, leadership, team player, and helping other kids in the class. They all will show up in recommendation as well.
So it is better to identify who we are going to get the recommendation from and behave accordingly.
Actually it is better to show all those good qualities in all the classes regardless of whether we are getting the recommendation or not.
School counsellors - it is better to have good relationship with them from the beginning.
Not just for the recommendation, but their guidance on colleges to apply based on our kids capability will be very helpful for us.
Next - Extra curricular activities.
All top college applicants will have a GPA more than 4.0.
They will have near perfect score in SAT as well.
So it is important for us to differentiate us from other kids thru other activities.
That is where extra curricular come in.
State or national level participation in competitions like - Math, science, coding, robotics, debate, athletics can help us with the college application.
That does not mean that we should sign up for all clubs and sports available to us.
Quality is more important than quantity.
Even if we participate in just 2 clubs, it is better to give full dedicated focus.
Many kids do volunteering work as well.
Exceptional kids would have come up with a solution for a problem in this world.
It could be an app or a big contribution to the society.
If the college is convinced that a student can bring a good positive change to the society, then they will definitely give a seat to that kid.
If your kid is interested in anything like that, definitely support them.
It will come handy in college application.
Next requirement is essays.
All colleges ask for at least one personal statement essay.
Our academics capability can be shown from our GPA and SAT score.
So it is better not to focus on that, but to focus on other things that would differentiate us from other kids.
Kids growing up here will come up with a cool story themselves. We do not really have to sweat over it.
Other than these generic essay, there could be a specific essay like - write about one challenge that you faced in your life and how you handled it.
It varies between colleges. Again, we do not have to worry about this much. Kids will take care of it.
These 5 are the important ones needed for a college application.
Other than these, we get other questions related to college application.
When can we choose the college major?
Most of the colleges offer "undecided" option.
We can choose the major in second year after getting into the college.
Universities encourage that as well.
Because they know that the high school kids would not have decided their career yet.
Some universities ask us to apply directly to a specific department.
Like they might ask us to apply directly to "School of engineering" or "school of applied science".
Even then, we should be able to switch majors within the department easily (Eg: Civil to Mechanical Engineering).
But if we get admitted for a science major, but want to switch over to an engineering major, then it might be difficult depending on the college.
This varies for each college. So do know about your college in this regard before applying.
I will also include some links related to this in description below.
Another question we get is, is there a quota system here like we have in India.
There are no visible quota systems here.
But behind the scenes, each college has a diversification policy.
They will be very careful in not making a specific race dominant in the college in the name of fairness.
If all the admissions were given purely on merit, then all top colleges will have a big majority of Asians.
So generally speaking, they do not allow any group to go over 35%.
Asian admissions are already very competitive.
It becomes even more competitive because of this 35% ceiling.
That is why, an Asian kid has less chance of making into a top college compared to others. Or we can call that as more challenging.
Similarly, a girl has higher chance of making into an engineering college than a boy. Again - diversity is the reason.
Another interesting thing here is, let's say a boy applies from US...
and another boy applies from India with exact same qualification...
Then the Indian boy has higher chance of getting the admission.
Because that student brings different experience and perspective to the class. Again - diversification.
Because of this reason, even if our kid has perfect score in SAT and GPA, they might not get a seat in top college.
But that's OK. It is not necessary to study only in top colleges.
All top 100 colleges in US are pretty good.
It is better to get a seat in top 20. But even if we did not, top 100 is not bad is what I am saying.
We can check for college rankings in US news website. Link is in the description.
All these are high level details for US college admission.You can use this as a starting point.
You can create a plan for your kid based on this.
If you know other things that is not covered in this episode, please share in the comments below.
It will be very helpful for others. We will soon meet again in another episode. Thank You.