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 The Bringer wrote:

 Albatross wrote:
My advice, harsh as it sounds, would be not to bother. The way I see it, if you have the grades you can go to a world-class university in either Oxford or Cambridge here in the UK for a fraction of the price of an equivalent institution in the US. If you DON'T have the grades, you'll essentially be paying a king's ransom to attend a middling university thousands of miles from home. I don't really see the point in that. Just go on a long holiday or something.

Grades actually have little influence on whether or not you would be accepted into excellent colleges in the US. Past a certain point, colleges don't really care because the SAT's are a poor representation of one's skills, and grades can vary greatly because of numerous factors, so much so that a student could easily get all A's at one school and all C's at another.

But you are right though, I see little value in going to college in the US.

Other than, you know, if you want to become an Aerospace Engineer... Going to college in Europe would be awesome, but that would require quite some planning.... Not to mention the fact that trips home would be crazy expensive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: Oh, the OP lives in the U.K. Now that makes sense.

 The Bringer wrote:

Grades actually have little influence on whether or not you would be accepted into excellent colleges in the US. Past a certain point, colleges don't really care because the SAT's are a poor representation of one's skills, and grades can vary greatly because of numerous factors, so much so that a student could easily get all A's at one school and all C's at another.

Test scores are not the same thing as highschool grades.

 dogma wrote:

 The Bringer wrote:

Grades actually have little influence on whether or not you would be accepted into excellent colleges in the US. Past a certain point, colleges don't really care because the SAT's are a poor representation of one's skills, and grades can vary greatly because of numerous factors, so much so that a student could easily get all A's at one school and all C's at another.

Test scores are not the same thing as highschool grades.

Yup, my roommate freshman and sophomore year went to the same high school, we had similar grades (he beat me out by like .2), and he was simply better at Math than I was, and so his ACT scores gave him the bump for some sweet scholarships, whereas I only netted like 3k in scholarships for my ACT scores (bastards took my lowest ACT even though they said they'd take the highest, apparently I didn't meet the criteria!)

But yeah, your test scores are where the school at least sets up your first semester scholarships. I've seen too many 3.0 and higher students get into college on decent scolarships, and get kicked out because they couldn't handle the transition.

There is a program in the UK which helps cover the costs of going to a foreign uni...
There's also the possibility you can find a course that would send you to a US uni for a year...
Not sure how many do that or what subjects would though...