Opinion: How to skip the college admissions rat race and still get a degree
College admissions in the United States have evolved into a rat race.
Seniors will be getting their acceptance and rejection notices in the next few weeks. They will have spent years cramming for grades, toiling at college-level courses, prepping for entrance exams and spreading themselves thin with clubs, sports, the arts and volunteer work, all for the singular goal of being admitted to their dream schools. At the same time, their equally anxious parents have been scrambling to figure out how to finance their children’s education if they are fortunate enough to be admitted.
This leaves many, including admissions consultants such as myself, to rightfully question whether our higher education system is broken.
The University of California is weighing what kind of data science classes could count as math for admission, sparking debate over equity and access.
There is an alternative to the shockingly low acceptance rates and high-priced tuition that mark the college admissions sweepstakes in the United States: international universities. Studying abroad for a semester has long been a rite of passage for college students seeking to explore the world. But attending an international university to obtain an undergraduate degree is becoming increasingly popular as well.
Storied universities abroad offer strong preparation for postgraduate employment or graduate school, and their admissions process is often more straightforward, their acceptance rates higher and their tuition costs lower than comparable schools at home.
Let’s take Oxford University as an example. You might suspect it would be just as difficult to be admitted to and as expensive as, say, Harvard or Stanford. But depending on what a student wants to major in, acceptance rates can reach up to 17%, compared with 3% to 4% for equally highly regarded universities in the U.S. At Oxford, like most international schools, you can’t tap U.S.-style financial aid packages, but the cost is lower all around. Tuition for many programs starts at 33,000 pounds for international students. That’s about $42,000, significantly less than what many private universities in the United States charge.
The University of California enrolled a record number of California undergraduates in fall 2023 and cut out-of-state students to accommodate surging local demand for seats.
The cost difference looks even better when you consider that most U.K. programs are completed in three years, not four. And for American high school students and their families, the process of applying is much less cumbersome and stressful.
Most British schools straightforwardly weigh applicants’ college entrance exams and their demonstrated interest in their intended fields. This holds true for well-regarded options in Canada, Ireland, France, Spain and other countries, where universities publish test score requirements, removing the guesswork about what it takes to be admitted. In addition to increased transparency, these universities do not obsess over personal essays and extraneous extracurricular activities.
You may wonder if attending college abroad will limit your job prospects at home after graduation. With few exceptions — primarily programs such as nursing or accounting, where students use their undergraduate education as part of a licensing process in the U.S. — the answer is no. Employers and graduate schools appreciate applicants with diverse perspectives and experiences that can help them navigate an increasingly global workforce and marketplace.
University of California applications rose to 250,000 for fall, driven by a rebound in transfer applicants and gains in racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.
I speak from experience counseling students to ensure that their college choices will help them achieve their long-term goals. One student was passionate about motor-sports engineering, but he was not excited about pursuing a general mechanical engineering degree, which is typically offered in the United States. Instead, he was admitted to a program at Oxford Brookes University tailor-made for his interest in performance automotive engineering. When he graduated, he had job offers in the U.S., U.K. and other countries, including from Formula One teams that recruited at his university.
Regardless of what a student studies, many find developing foreign language skills and an international perspective to be invaluable when applying for jobs or grad schools. This matches my own experience. I applied for investment banking positions on Wall Street prior to graduating from college, and the only offer I received was from a bank that valued the semester abroad I spent in Argentina; it was looking for a Spanish-speaking analyst to assist with South American clients.
Going abroad for a college education is far from the norm among American students. But thinking outside the box is a skill that will serve them well in the admissions process wherever they decide to apply, not to mention for the rest of their lives. Why not employ it to escape the rat race of U.S. admissions?
Greg Kaplan heads a Newport Beach-based college admissions advising firm. His book “The Journey: How to Prepare Kids for a Competitive and Changing World” will be published in May.
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