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Ask HN: How hard would it be for me to get into an American college?

6 points by munchor 14y ago

Hello, I'm a last-year high school student from Portugal. I've been programming for a few years and always planned to follow Computer Science or an equivalent degree such as Informatics Engineering. It was always a plan for me to take I.E. on my local university - it's cheap and it gets me a job. However, I've been thinking a lot about American universities and their attractive opportunities lately and so I've started to wonder how hard it would be for me to get into one and what I would have to do. I'm obviously going to be honest about it - MIT, Harvard, Stanford and other "big names" are the universities that most attract me but, of course, those are also the most expensive and never in the world would I be able to afford any of those. On the other hand, I try not to be modest about it, and consider myself as a university-approved student because I can fluently speak English and have been programming for a few years. I also have certain things to vouch for me such as my GitHub[1] or my Launchpad[2] account. I also consider myself a nice guy, the kind of guy who wants to learn new things every day and I believe I have almost all of the characteristics that would make a university want me as one of their students. I do know that a GitHub account is probably not enough to get me into college with a scholarship but I was hopeful it would help. For me, it's okay if I take my degree where I live, it's not like I'm going to be sad, but lately the idea of studying in an American university has been occupying my thoughts and my parents said that I shouldn't give up on my dreams even if I can't afford them without help. I'll be finishing high school in a couple of months with good grades and I'd also like to know if it's too late to get into an American college/university this September. [1]: https://github.com/davidgomes/ [2]: https://launchpad.net/~davidgomes

ameister14 14y ago
American Universities care about your grades and test scores, not just your GitHub. If you have almost perfect scores on everything, and a history of doing cool things, you might get into MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. By the way, Harvard is by far not the most expensive. They give a lot of financial aid as well. All these schools do.
aheilbut 14y ago
For most places, it is too late to apply for this September. Your best bet is probably to go to the best university you can in Portugal, excel there, and go to the US for grad school -- or if you really want to, apply to transfer after a year or two.
argonaut 14y ago
1. For most US colleges (including all the ones you listed), you must apply by January 1 of the year you want to attend. There are a lot of documents you need to send in from your school and teachers so you need to start applying at least 1-2 months before that deadline. You also need to take standardized tests (SATs), so again, you have to plan for that at least 3 months in advance, and probably a lot more if you wanted to study for the test (and you really do need to study for the test). So it's too late to apply for entry in September. If you're taking a gap year you would be able to apply. 2. Getting into the schools you listed is incredibly difficult, even for an American citizen. For an international/foreign student, the bar is set even higher. 3. The top American colleges will usually offer financial aid to everyone who needs it, including international students. These colleges are incredibly competitive (the three colleges you listed do offer financial aid). There is a special process for financial aid; you must specifically apply for it. Colleges that are not top-tier typically factor in financial aid into admissions; meaning those who need financial aid face a higher standard in admissions. Some colleges (usually the wealthiest) do not factor in financial need into admissions. 4. I seriously doubt any admissions officers will now with git or github is. Far more impressive are internships or actual products you have shipped on the App Store or online. And you really need to sell yourself - in your applications you would probably need to specifically say that X app is on the app store, X number of users and $X revenue, etc.
- argonaut 14y ago
  typo correction: "know what git or github is." Addendum: Think of "selling yourself" as selling yourself to some clueless non-technical BigCorp business guy. They might know a tiny tiny bit about the buzzwords of various languages (there are these things called Java, Python, C++), they might know some technology buzzwords (iPhone app, Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS) but probably won't know others (node.js, Django, UIKit, etc.). So it's easier to explain in terms of "Accepted into App Store," or "Featured in TechCrunch," X number of users, X revenue, etc.