Understanding the Process: Studying in the US

The US application process is a “Black Box”. In other words “it produces a particular result but no one understands how it works”. However, we can observe and analyze the results it produces and try to wrap our heads around the system.

Before trying to understand the system, let’s get used to a few terms that we will be using throughout the article.

Holistic: Throughout the application process you will see this word being thrown around. What it means is taking into account all possible factors while characterizing or evaluating an individual.

Financial aid: The concept of financial aid is completely different from scholarships. It is a form of financial help provided by the university to make the tuition/living expenses more affordable.

GPA: DO NOT CONVERT. GPA and the percentage points or letter grades you get on your high school transcript points aren't the same. In the US, the GPA is weighted as a result both are completely different.

Common App/Coalition App: It is the application portal used by universities in the US for managing the application process for students. You have a limit of up to 20 colleges on the Common App while you can apply to any number of colleges on the Coalition App.

Counselors: A counselor is an individual who represents the institution you were studying to the college. It can be a teacher, an advisor, principal - basically anyone who can represent your school. Their roles include uploading your transcript, uploading one of your letters of recommendation, etc.

Application Process

The US college application process is completely holistic, where your application won’t just be judged on the basis of one measure. Let’s list a few broad measures that are used by colleges to evaluate an application:

SAT/ ACT: Both the SAT and the ACT are widely accepted by universities. Both tests share quite a lot of similarities. The entire test will be divided into 3 major sections: Reading, Writing and Mathematics. Reading involves quite a lot of critical thinking and extremely fast reading skills. While writing is memorizing the grammar rules and applying them. Mathematics is technically easy as it involves basic high school. Even though both are very similar with the difference in time constraint where ACT demands you to be quicker as compared to SAT. According to the increasing trend among test takers, it seems SAT has been more popular among international students than ACT. For learning more about the test and how to prepare for them I will be linking a few websites and resources at the end of the article.
IELTS/TOEFL: The SAT or ACT is used by admissions officers to test your critical thinking abilities and basic math skills. As an international student you need to be proficient with the language of instruction too which is TOEFL/ IELTS. My recommendation would be IELTS because it is accepted around the world, not just the US. Another reason to choose IELTS over TOEFL is the fact that the former is offline. Taking a test online vs offline might not be a big deal considering the pandemic, however taking the test offline takes away the minute hurdles like stable internet connection, etc. I will link all the available test papers for IELTS. However I believe once you have prepared for the SAT, scoring a high IELTS band should not be that difficult.
High school scores: Universities in the US ask for transcripts from grade 9th to 12th. The reason being high school in the US is considered to be 9th — 12th. Uploading the scores should not be from your common app account, instead you should be asking your counsellor to upload them on to the common app for you. [Note: I know scoring well in 11th grade is very hard in India. However, you should be fine as long as you are able to show the counsellors that you are having a constant growth over the period of 4 years.]
Essays: It is one of the most important components of your entire application. One, because this is the only space you get to communicate with the admission officer and show them that you are worthy of getting a seat in the class. Two, because this is the only component of the application you have complete control over. You can edit it as many times as possible while you cannot go back in time to edit your grades. So, put everything into your essays. There will be one common essay, that will be constant for all colleges and a few sub essays, which vary depending on the colleges you apply to.
LORs: Letters of recommendation are very important. Your high school teacher writes a letter and uploads it to the Common App. The letter has to be addressed to admission council/officer. There is not much for you to do in this part. If your teacher is not familiar with writing a letter of recommendation, I will be linking resources and sample LORs that they can refer to.

These are the basic requirements that you would need to start the application process for any US university.

In another article, I will be talking about how to choose the colleges you should be applying to. I will also discuss a few cost saving techniques you can use to maximize your funds.