The trick is that only the last school counts. Who cares that you went to local community college for the AS and Chico State for the BS as long as you did grad

The trick is that only the last school counts. Who cares that you went to local community college for the AS and Chico State for the BS as long as you did graduate school at Harvard. The catch is getting from Chico State to Harvard, but it should not be overly difficult if you show outstanding grades and work at BA level. Anecdotal evidence, a friend/acquaintance of mine got his BA from an Eastern European university for free(actually with stipend) and now is doing Masters/PhD at MIT under a very famous adviser. So how did he do it? From his first day at the university he must have kept his goal(Masters in US at a good university) in mind. He aced all his courses(even though I was a bit disgusted how he sometimes squeezed professors to give him the highest grade). He took graduate level courses and aced them. He selected a highly cited prof with US connections as his bachelors thesis advisor and his thesis must have been quite good. He only networked with people who could possibly help him. Sounds cynical, but he only friended me when he saw that I got good grades too and knew USA university system. One last catch is same as the German catch you have to know the local language, as most schools do not offer all courses in English.