How to get into a university in ....?

Factual Questions
1

This question comes mainly from years of watching American movies and TV shows and wondering how this actually works in the U.S. of A. (not an American myself). But also wondering how this works in other countries.

So my General Question is: How do universities in your country decide who gets in? What must a high school student do to get into Harvard or Sorbonne or the University of Tokyo?

I’ll start with the country I know something about. I admit I haven’t researched this thoroughly and gone through the entry requirements of every Finnish university. Other Finns here can correct me if I’m wrong.

Finland: You go into a high school, try to get good grades and at the end of the final year there is a standardized matriculation exam. Your grade point average and matriculation exam grades may be enough to get you into some degree
programs in some universities.
But usually you need to take an entrance exam which may be on a school subject like physics or on something else (like an anatomy book for Medical School, economics book for Business Administration, drawing things for Architecture etc.) This happens in late May/early June. And then you’ll get points for the entrance exam and appropriate high school grades and the matriculation exam.
And if you’re in the Top 58 or Top 156 or whatever in the point list, you’ll get a letter in July/August saying “You’ve been accepted into the University of Helsinki to study Sociology or the University of Oulu to study Physics or something like that. Classes start September 1st.”
And if you don’t get in this year, you can come to the entrance exam next year (and the year after that etc.) until you do get in or give up.

So is that the way it goes in other countries or is this some weird Finnish anomaly?

I’m asking because the only comparison I have is the American way (as movies show it, anyway) where in addition to good grades high school students seem to (sometimes) need proper kinds of hobbies and extracurricular activities to put on their college applications. And to write essays to the university on the subject of why they should get in. And be interviewed by the college people who make the decision. Is this how it actually goes in the real United States? Somewhere else? Everywhere else?

And another thing: when they do get in, they seem to get into Yale/Michigan State/Wherever U. but never to study something specific. Is that just a movie abbreviation that omits the end of the sentence “…to study Computer Science” or can you actual Americans go into a college and then decide there what you’re going to study? And if you can, what will you do in college while waiting to decide? Besides ‘drink too much alcohol’, I mean. Are there so many required courses that you could just take them for a year or two while deciding?

And one more specific question, not to the Americans, but the Europeans. I read about the university system in a European country, but I can’t remember which country exactly that was. But the system was: every high school graduate can go study whatever they want but there is a predetermined number of places in each program. So everybody gets to start studying Math or Medicine or Literature and after a year or two the if there are too many students, you kick out the ones with the lowest grades.

So you go to study Law and take boring legal classes for two years and then get kicked out because you weren’t in the top 10/top 30/top 57 percent of your class. IIRC the country was France. Or Belgium. Or Netherlands. Sound familiar to anyone?

2

Lots o’ questions. I’ll answer as many as I can.

Yes, this is basically accurate, although the essays aren’t necessarily “on the subject of why they should get in.” Different colleges set different topics; usually, they ask students to describe some important life experience they’ve had, a favorite book, a person they admire, or something of that sort. In general, the admissions process is geared toward getting a sense of what the student is like as a person, not just as a student.

Yes, absolutely. Most students don’t officially declare a major subject until the end of their second year. Colleges usually expect them to come in with some idea what they want to study, but accept that this will probably change; for instance, a huge number of students begin college with the idea that they want to study medicine but change their minds after the first few required science courses.

Yes, there are. It depends on the university, but most of them require students to take a broad range of courses in their first two years, including an introductory writing course, some sort of lab science, a foreign language, basic literature and history, etc. Also, many students have unofficially decided on a major before they formally declare one, so there’s nothing to stop them from taking upper-level courses in their intended field.

3

Here’s a somewhat vague but generally useful answer to how to get into a prestigous college in the U.S.:

Study hard in high school and get good grades. In so far as possible, take the hardest courses available in your high school. What the hardest courses are varies greatly in the U.S. At the least competitive high schools, there’s a track of courses called “College Preparatory.” It consists of something like four years of English, four years of math (ending with trigonometry and solid geometry), four years of science, two years of American history and politics, and four years of a foreign language. I’m ignoring music, art, and physical education, for the moment. If you take all those courses, you’ve taken the only courses a college prep student can take. The best high schools have many more choices for courses. The top course in each subject at those schools can be a couple of years more advanced that the top course at a bad high school.

Furthermore, you should do some extracurricular activities (sports, music, high school newspaper, and so forth). Take the SAT test (a general test in math and verbal ability) in your senior year and do well. Take the SAT II, which gives a test in each subject from high school, and do well. Get your teachers to write you good recommendations.

You then choose which colleges to apply to. For ambitious students, it’s frequently recommended that they apply to six of them. They should be spread out in how competitive their admissions are, so that at least one of your six is a college that you’re pretty sure of getting into, while one is the absolutely best you can hope to be accepted at. You fill out a separate form for each college you’re applying to. The highly selective colleges look at many things, including high school grades, SAT scores, quality of courses taken, SAT II scores, and teacher recommendations. Each college chooses itself how to weigh these different factors.

Many of them give a little slack to people who didn’t go to a top high school. After all, if they only took people who took the hardest courses, they would be automatically rejecting everybody from mediocre high schools. They may take a student from such a school with a top SAT score and good recommendations even though the student didn’t take the top courses. They sometimes give some slack to an older student who took a long time off before college.

They try to make their student body diverse. They usually make some effort to take minority groups that would be otherwise underrepresented. They frequently make an effort to be geographically diverse (i.e., to have students from all over the U.S.). They try to have a wide diversity of subjects that the students will be majoring in (which is why they ask you what you’re going to be majoring in, even though you don’t get accepted only to do that subject).

Many (far more than you would think) colleges, even very selective ones, make an effort to get a wide diversity of good high school athletes in order to fill their college athletic teams. Sometimes they try to get a selection of musical abilities for their college musical groups. They often give a little bit of an edge to the children of alumni of the college. They often give a little bit of an edge to the children of famous people. If the college is state-supported, they might give an edge to residents of that state.

4

[bitter]
BAH! Here’s how to get into a prestigious American College:

  1. Have a rich mummy and daddy.
    and/or
  2. have an attractive minority status.

[/bitter]

5

It is better, far better, to be a top student at an ordinary HS than a good student at a top HS. Or at least that was the system 50 years ago. I finished in the second decile of one of the best schools in the US and while I got into a few schools, I got no scholarship. A good friend of mine was no. 1 in one of the worst schools in Philly and got a full scholarship to Penn. So it goes.

The schools that have the reputation of being the most selective first off pick their football and baskeball teams. (Yes, this includes even the Ivies) and then the children of alumni, at least if they don’t think they will stink up the place too badly. Then they make their choices based on criteria that only they understand. And then they make sure to validate their choices by making it extremely difficult to fail. (A colleague of mine who spent two years at Harvard in the early 90s was advised by his chair to give no grade below B+ because he would have to fill out a report with a full explanation any time he did that.)

At U Illinois, every HS student from IL who finished in the top half of his HS class was guaranteed admission. But at least 25% of them flunked out in the first year.

In Quebec universities, there were large expansions in the 60s and now they are stuck with large infrastructures and staffs. Since reimbursement from the province is based on enrollment, there is tremendous pressure to admit large classes. On the other hand students who graduated from Quebec HSs may not go directly to universities, but must waste two years in these junior colleges whose main purpose seems to be to guarantee employment to incompetent teachers. Students who successfully negotiate that experience (amny of them kill three or even more years) and are ready for more, they are practically guaranteed admission to a university, where they will sink or swim. But there is political pressure not to fail too many, so most squeak through somehow.

6

God bless the American system!

7

[ul]I don’t know why, but the term **UGLY AMERICAN ** comes to mind. :([/ul]

8

For American universities: one generally does not have to declare a major until one has been at school for some time; however, larger universities will make you apply to a specific school, from which it can be difficult to transfer. That is, one might apply to the College of Communications (a subdivision of the larger University of X), intending to get a degree in broadcast journalism, but if s/he then changes his or her mind and decides s/he’d rather have a history or theatre degree, s/he would have to go through a complicated process to change to the appropriate school. That can be a limiting factor.

9

Here in Australia it is a bit different. At the end of the VCE year (Year 12…about 17 yrs of age for average kid) all kids are given a standardized TER score which is the main determinant for University entrance. Depending upon which ‘course’ they want to do (Medicine, Law, Science, Arts etc) they will also need prerequisite subjects in VCE. For example, if you want to do Medicine, you will have needed to do a couple of maths subjects, probably biology/chem/physics etc. English, or ESL, is a compulsory subject for all students.
All school leavers are assessed in this way to promote ‘equality’ but given that kids from private schools tend to do better academically, it should be no surprise that they are grossly overrepresented in the uni enrollments, especially in the ‘prestigious’ courses at the ‘higher’ level universities.

OK, so kid finishes VCE, and clutching his Certificate applies through a central agency to the Uni of his/her choice. We also have a tiered system, with Universities being at the top, then Colleges (which are all now affiliated with Uni’s) then TAFE institutions which cater more for vocationally oriented courses (generally 2 years or less).

At Uni you are expected to pay FEES, but not at TAFE for some reason. These can be paid up-front, or deferred until you are earning more than $25,000.00 pa (I think, roughly). It means you can finish uni with a debt of around $20-$30k to start your working life with! If you pay up-front you get a discount, and of course this advantages the wealthy. We also have a sizeable proportion of full fee-paying students who, if mummy and daddy can afford it, are exempt from satisfying the TER requirements that all other school-leavers do. These are mainly overseas students, and according to the Uni, top the coffers of the uni and allow more places to be made for domestic students. DON’T ask me how this is meant to work!

It is only in the Arts faculty that you can really pick and choose your Major, and that doesn’t have to be done until the end of second year (it’s 3 years for a straight Bachelor’s Degree). You have a limited choice in science or commerce and bugger-all flexibility in Medicine and Law. Even if you are enrolled in one faculty (say Law) you CAN take subjects from another faculty (say SCIENCE or ARTS) to count towards your degree (provided you have the necessary prerequisites from your VCE year to do that subject.)

Of course, the entrance score thing only applies to school-leavers, while mature-age students/graduates from other courses generally apply directly to the Uni and thus more ‘personal’ criteria is taken into account.

10

Different US schools are looking for different things. The best approach to getting into the school that you want is to have a high HS GPA, a few 4’s or preferably 5’s on the applicable SAT II tests (math I or II and physics IB if you want a progressive technical school for example), at least one solid teacher recommendation, and an impressive extracurricular record; sports, clubs, honor societies. That’s the kind of stuff that admission officers fantasize about: the ‘complete’ student.

I’ve seen 4.0 students with 1600’s (perfects) on their SAT with some amazing SAT II scores rejected from MIT, and a 2.8, 1400, reasonably good SAT II taker get an early admittance (granted he was the senior QB for our football team). Seems now that admitters are looking for personality.

11

The surprising thing about that is that MIT doesn’t even have a football team! It really makes you wonder.

12

…and everything that kambuckta wrote is true for her part of the country.

Education in Australia is covered by the State Government, so what is true over in Sydney is a bit different in Perth.

To enter uni is pretty similar (we just have different names for the exams and stuff). But you choose your major pretty much straight away.

13

As for Japan (and I hope that those more in the know will also chip in), you apply to the university and sit their exams. The universities are strictly ranked, with Tokyo University being at the top.

Traditionally, being a graduate from Tokyo guaranteed you a cushy job anywhere, no matter what your personality or personal strengths/weaknesses might be. Hopefully that will start to change.

14

As everyone has mention grades, test scores, essays, and other achievements are important. BUT the number one most important thing is to have a rich dad. If your a total dumb ass you can always slide by on the money. This even takes place at small non prestigous school. I went to a small no-name university, and one of my best friends only graduated because of a well timed donation. At this level the donation was likely only about $5000 dollars, but one you get to Yale or Harvard they can be very high.

15

Okay, just to expand a bit more on the Victorian-Australian system. In Yr 11 of HS (2nd las year) students enter what is called the VCE and choose 6 subjects to study of which one must be english/literature. Of these, they choose to continue 5 into Yr 12 (english compulsorary) and each subject has a range of assesment. At the end of the year, each student gets a scoe out of 50 for his/her subjects and then the scores are then adjusted based on hardness (Maths and Languages get pushed up, arts get pushed down). They then take 4 of the 5 subjects plus 10% of the fifth and add it up to form a total score. From this total score, a percetile based system called the ENTER is built with steps of 0.05 from 20 up to 99.95 (if you score less than 20, they dont tell you). Before your scores get published, you can apply for up to 10 (I think) majors/univeristies based on what you think you will get and the previous years entry requirements. When your results come out, you are then given a weeks time to modify your preferences if you got higher/lower than what you expected. The universities then have a look at who wants to go where and how many they can admit and publish the entrance reqiurements. About half the uni course require purely an ENTEr with most arts/architecture/medicine courses requiring portfolios or interviews or special exaimnations for med.

16

With the Universities themselves, the Governement subsidises a fixed number of Uni places through what is called the HECS scheme.

With this scheme, students have to pay around $5000 AUD a year (2500 US). If you choose to pay it upfront, you get a 25% discount. or you can choose to defer and the govt takes around 3-5% of your income every year once you are over $25,000 until it has been paid off.

Since there are only a limited number of HECS positions availible, the entrance requirements are slightly higher (between 2 - 10 percentile points normally).

Uni courses are normally 4 years over here with double degrees being 4 - 5 and some courses taking up to 6 years (med). You can then choose to do an honours year over here which gives you th equivilant of a Masters degree.

17

Beg to differ Shalmanese, but most Bachelors (straight Degree courses) are 3 years, not 4, and you don’t CHOOSE to do an honours degree (you are ‘accepted’ if your marks have been good enough during your 2nd/3rd yr) and it is NOT the equivalent of a Masters.
However I agree with you on the double-degree definition and Medicine does take 6 yrs (minimum) :wink:

18

My turn to differ, kambuckta. There is a heavy degree of specialisation in Commerce. A major in, say Accounting, is admittedly similar to a Finance major, but very different to a Human Resources major, or Asian Studies, or Labor Relations, or Marketing, or Strategic Management. Likewise, I imagine those with Bachelor of Science with a major in Geology would contend their qualification is quite different to those that did a major in Chemistry.

To address the OP, it appears Finland’s system is not at all an anomaly. Different to the US’s, apparently, but not unusual.

My fellow Aussies have already pointed out the main differences between our system and the US system. To elaborate:[ul][li]subject choice is only relevant if your desired degree has a prerequisite high school course. Eg, entrance to an engineering course requires high school calculus, chemistry and physics;[/li][li]the high school you attended is irrelvant. Personally, I think it would be abhorrent to factor this in;[/li][li]individual subject results are irrelevant. Only your aggregate, standardised result (a TER, which is out of 99.95, as Shalmanese said) is counted;[/li][li]personal characteristics are irrevelant. Athleticism, character references, race and your parents’ alumni status are not considered. Again, I think these would be pretty silly things for a university to consider; however, my knowledge of the US system is patchy at best. Also, there may be an exception with regard to special consideration given to Aboriginal Australians;[/li]payment of fees can be deferred on the HECS system. Scholarships are uncommon. Myself, I’ll owe $30,000 or so by graduation. It’s fair to say that for most Australian uni students, the price of tuition is not a barrier to entering university. (The price of living while studying being another matter.)[/ul]

19

Not in my experience. (Perth uni student here.) Everyone I know doing Arts, Commerce, Economics or Science chose their majors at the end of second year. Not sure about the Engines though.

**Say it isn’t so! :eek: Again, I admit my understanding of the American system is poor - so it’s entirely possibly I’m missing something - but to my sensibilities that’s disgusting. (There was a furor down here when a lecturer was accused of giving soft-marks so certain fee-paying (cf HECS) international students could pass. But a “donation” to ensure a pass grade would be outrageous.)

20

In addition to the genrally accurate information on U.S. schools above ( including the preferences for “legacies” at many prestigious schools ), one should keep in mind that there are actually multiple tiers of higher education in the United States.

Community Colleges ( CC’s ) will take just about anybody that has a High School diploma and a pulse. They are generally dirt cheap and publically funded. These typically offer only two-year programs. These can either lead to an Associate Degree in a vocational program of some sort ( electronics, horticulture, etc. ) or they are used as a substitute for the first two years at a major university, which is generally the general education stuff. Usually students pursuing the second option do it for one of two reasons - either, A) they need some remedial training to get them up to speed ( and just didn’t have the grades to gain entrance to a regular university ), or B) for financial reasons. The second one actually makes sound sense as in many states ( CA for one ), state-funded schools ( including prestige universities like UC Berkeley ) are required to give preference to CC transferees.

State Universities are usually “land-grant” schools that were established on public land and publically funded by the state. They are four-year universities that offer Bachelor’s degrees. Many, probably most, also offer some sort of graduate program. These schools range very widely in quality. In CA a distinction is made between the public California State Universities ( CSU’s ) and the University of California’s ( UC’s ), with the first being more undergraduate-oriented and the second being more prestigious and graduate-oriented ( very roughly, as both offer undergraduate and graduate programs ). But in other states the formula differs. Many SU’s require nothing more than sufficient grades and test scores ( very occasionally not even those ). They are more selective than CC’s, but generally ( very generally - exceptions abound, like the aforementioned UC Berkeley ) less selectiove than schools like Stanford or the Ivy League. Likewise they are midway in the price-bracket as they receive public funding of one sort or another. They serve to take a majority of college students in the U.S., who do not quite have the grades/cash/connections to make it into the elite schools. If you are planning on going to grad school, it is often a good strategy to get an education at a reasonably regarded but much cheaper SU, then go on to an elite school for graduate work, as it is generally the higher degree folks look at.

Then there are multiple tiers of private schools, from small liberal arts colleges with several hundred students, to the mighty Harvards and Stanfords. Not to mention “issue-oriented” private schools like the (in)famous Bob Jones University. Contrary to the perception of many, overall the quality of these private schools are all over the map and not necessarily superior to the public schools taken in aggregate. Though certainly there are probably more private than public schools among the listing of elite instituitions.

  • Tamerlane