How to Apply to USA Colleges and Universities

Each college or university that you may be thinking about applying will have its own application requirements, procedures that you will be asked to follow. It is very common that in some cases international students can assume that they can simply submit the same documents required for one school’s application/admission purposes to another one. While some schools may allow you to submit original transcripts for example in person some other ones may strictly request such credentials to be submitted directly by the institutions where you earned your degree or diploma so that they can be considered official . Therefore it is very important that you do your homework and find out more about the application requirements of the institution and even the program (as specific admission requirement may exist for different program inside the same college/university) you may be applying to before doing so. This will save you time and most importantly money as the application fees tend to be high and most importantly non-refundable.

What to pay attention to when submitting your application file (Step 1 “Application Form” and Step 2 “Application Fee”):

A completed application is the first step to apply! Please make sure to complete the appropriate application form completely and in its entirety. Most schools will have different application forms for U.S. Citizens, Permanent Residents, and F-1/J-1 Visa seekers (International students) . it is very common for an international student to fill out the wrong application form, but the students are not to blame all the time. Time to time you may still encounter a U.S. college’s/university’s website that may not be international friendly, in other words, the site may not be providing you with the information necessarily easily. In such case you will need to look extra carefully: HINT: Look for the following keyword(s): International, International Admissions, International Programs etc. Completion of incorrect applications will delay your application process. Schools can tell their students apart and classify them as Domestic or International by looking at the application form itself, and the information filled out.

If you are an international student who MUST receive an I-20 form for example along with an acceptance letter to apply for the F-1 student visa, but if you filled out the domestic student application, you will have no opportunity to inform the school about this.

Application forms must be completed correctly and in its entirety (where applicable):

Name: Please pay extra attention to how you spell your name. Please provide the correct and complete spelling of your first name, middle name (if any) and last but not least your last name (family name) as they appear on your government issued identification cards such as you passport, birth certificate or your driver’s license.

It is not so uncommon that international students who are admitted to US schools will contact the DSO’s (Designated School Officials) of that school to request an updated I-20/DS-2019 form due to incorrect name information caused by the applicant him/herself. In some countries last names/family names are used more common than the first names when speaking to one another. Always make sure to provide your first, middle and last/family names correctly. This will save you and the school time from having to redo the acceptance documents. In some countries very long names are also common, and students can preferred to refer to their names with one single letter of the alphabet. Please do not practice this as this will also create inaccurate information in your application/admission records which will need to be fixed.

Date of Birth: Unless U.S. most of the world using following format when referring to a date (such as date of birth) DD/MM/YYYY. For example if you were born on March 31st, 1980 then you would be referring to your date of birth as 31/03/1980 in your home county, however this format is not acceptable in the U.S. system. Again of you were born on March 31th, 1980, they you should refer to it/note it/write it as 03/31/1980 (in MM/DD/YYYY format). Luckily most online and printed applications now will ask for Month, Day, and Year info in separate columns as a result of such experiences in the past.

Accurate Information: when asked make sure to provide correct and complete information, especially about your academic history. DO NOT deliberately hide any information from the school you are applying to as this may be treated as a falsification on the information submitted in your application and may have unwanted consequences. In the U.S. higher education we refer to the students who have never attended any college/university before as Freshmen. If you have attended any college or university, regardless whether you have earned a degree or not, even if you took one course, you will be most likely considered a Transfer student and will be asked to provide information about this college/university that you may have attended before. Some international students assume that it will be OK to apply as freshman student simply because they have never earned a degree, or would like to start over. In some rare cases international students even apply as a freshman student knowing that they should apply as a transfer student simply because their performance was very poor in their previous college/university and they deliberately neglect to provide this information on their application forms. Remember that even if you have ever attended a college/university but earned all failing grades that is not automatically a reason for your application to be rejected. Honesty should always come first when submitting complete and correct application forms.

Application Fee: Applying to U.S. schools require money, a small fee compared to the cost of education that is awaiting you. However this small cost may add up to a big sum of money especially for those who are applying to more than one school. Most of the institutions require a non-refundable application fee before your application form. Considering that hundreds of applications are sent to each and every school every month, this fee is required to see your initial commitment to the school you are applying to. And remember that lots of work hours go into reviewing international applications (preparing check lists, communicating with students, reviewing documents sent, calculating GPAs, issuing immigration and other acceptance documents etc.) If a non-refundable application fee is request and you have been informed about this requirement on school’s website, printed literature, it is usually not helpful to try to bargain to get this fee waived. So, make sure to submit your complete and correct application form along with your non-refundable application fee to the appropriate admissions office of the school you are applying to. Most school allow you to submit this payment via credit card on their sites, using their safe and secure web payment methods, be sure that you are using a credit card that is eligible to foreign charges. Check with your bank to verify that you can use your card to pay an application fee online in U.S. currency to an American school. And most importantly check to make sure that you have enough funds/spending limit on your credit card/bank card to cover the appropriate amount of application fee. Declined credit card transaction may cause your school penalty fees which they may need to pay to their financial institutions. Large numbers of declined credit card transaction may cause such schools to think about eliminating use of online credit card payment systems from all international applicants or from those from specific countries/regions of the world, which will in return cause much inconvenience for you and for the future applicants. If you are unable to use a credit card to make your payment, then you may be asked to submit a certified check or money order payment. In some countries use of personal checks may not be common. Check with a prestigious bank/financial institution and see if they can issue a certified check or money order made payable to the institution you are applying to.

Always make sure to send the correct amount of application fee payment. Most schools will have different application fee amounts required for different type of students/applicants. It is natural that the international application fees can be higher than the domestic students application fees due to valid reasons (i.e. cost of international mail service, additional time and staff required to issue acceptance documents such as I-20s or DS-2019s etc.) Submitting incorrect application fee amount may delay your admission process.

Affording our students the opportunity to study abroad, interact with individuals from different cultures while educating them to become capable of living and working in a global environment is the common goal that unites us all international educators …

- Taylan YALNIZ, International Educator.

Taylan Yalnız

International Education
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