Sciences-Po Paris

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I think it depends more on your GPA but your SAT's are good, if you have a GPA above 3.8, you definitely have a chance!

Oh I'm happy! I have exactly a 3.8 gpa so hopefully that will be enough at least for sciences although sciences po + Columbia seems like a strech unless they go easier on non-natives taking sats

Reply 281

dgokten

Yeah I think applying as an international student living in a different country then their own helps a lot when applying since the diverse the better thing that most of the schools have :biggrin:

Where are you from?

Reply 282

kasiacheng

Does anybody know anything about the general academic requirement for science po? I'm currently predicted a 42 slash 43 out of 45 for the International Baccalaureate, is this okay?

Reply 283

ceceforealz

Original post by kasiacheng

Does anybody know anything about the general academic requirement for science po? I'm currently predicted a 42 slash 43 out of 45 for the International Baccalaureate, is this okay?

Damn. That's high (good job). I'm doing the IB too. I've just emailed SciencesPo to ask them about their entry requirements but I think like most american unis, they're very holistic in the sense that they won't just look at your grades.

You'll probably want 35+ in my opinion but even with that, they'll want to see your involvement outside of school etc etc.

What campus are you thinking of applying to?

Reply 284

kasiacheng

Original post by ceceforealz

haha thanks! I'm thinking about Dijon, how about you? :smile:

Reply 285

ceceforealz

Original post by kasiacheng

haha thanks! I'm thinking about Dijon, how about you? :smile:

First choice is Reims and second choice is Le Havre! Oh and SciencesPo replied saying "No minimum score is required for the IB, please note that we will take your entire application into account for the assessment (personal statement, recommendations, transcripts...)."

Reply 286

Gabrielxucram

Original post by dgokten

Yeah I think applying as an international student living in a different country then their own helps a lot when applying since the diverse the better thing that most of the schools have :biggrin:

Where are you from?

This is a rather late reply. My apologies. I am from Brazil :smile:

Reply 287

Isabel2255

Hi, I'm applying to the Nancy campus, it's a bit of a long shot but I have to try! Has anyone written their motivation letter yet? Who else is applying this year? :smile:

Reply 288

norhanmadkour

Original post by Isabel2255

Hi, I'm applying to the Nancy campus, it's a bit of a long shot but I have to try! Has anyone written their motivation letter yet? Who else is applying this year? :smile:

Hey
I'm applying this year as well but to the Menton campus. I've already submitted my application so I'm hoping to hear from them soon :u:

Reply 289

Isabel2255

Original post by norhanmadkour

Hey
I'm applying this year as well but to the Menton campus. I've already submitted my application so I'm hoping to hear from them soon :u:

Good luck! How did you begin and end your letter? What teachers wrote references for you? Did you include professional experiences in your application? Sorry for all the questions! :smile:

Reply 290

norhanmadkour

Original post by Isabel2255

Good luck! How did you begin and end your letter? What teachers wrote references for you? Did you include professional experiences in your application? Sorry for all the questions! :smile:

Oh, its fine.

I chose my Economics and History teachers to write my references. On the website they stated that they prefer the references to be written by teachers who teach any of their 5 social sciences (econ, history, politics, law, sociology). If you don't take any of those subjects at school, then don't worry, you could give them to any teacher you like and likes you back of course. However, the website also says that they wouldn't want language or PE teachers writing the references.
I recommend you start off your application by choosing your teachers so they have time to write it while you can get on with your application.

Info about referees:
http://www.sciencespo.fr/admissions/en/undergraduate-international-references

The letter (personal statement) took me ages actually. Not because it's challenging, but because I naturally take my time when it comes to writing. This is how you should structure it:
a) Intro of yourself
b) Describe the reasons that led you to apply to Sciences Po's Bachelor Degree Program
c) Explain how and why the educational environment at Sciences Po will help you achieve your professional and personal ambitions.
d) You may also want to articulate how you foresee your engagement in campus life beyond the walls of the classroom.

If you're thinking of applying to 2 different campuses, you should mention your motivation for each campus when writing your personal statement. Even though I only applied for one campus (Menton), I still mentioned my motivation for that campus.
I recommend you take your time with this letter as well as it plays a crucial role.

I included professional experience in my application, however it's only optional. If you've had any sort of part-time job or summer job, then include it. Over the summer I had a job so that's what I included.

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask again. Hope this helps you :smile:

Reply 291

itsm

Hey guys, I'm not from the UK but I couldn't find information anywhere else, I hope that's not a problem.

I'm looking forward to applying for the international undergraduate programme with the Emile Boutmy scholarship, which is for international students in financial need. I think my profile fits quite well with what the school is aiming for, and studying there would undoubtedly benefit me a lot, especially because my family can't even dream of paying full price for college.

The thing is that I'm uncertain about my academic background making the cut. They seem to want academic excellence, but my high school average aggregate was only 79.33%. I'm most worried about a specific period in which my grades were abysmal; it was due to a personal problem and once it had passed I was able to get back on track, but I don't know if I can/should write about it in my personal statement, or if they would even care about my situation, or if they would appreciate the effort I did to recover from it. In the national tests I did a lot better, I got 90+ on everything except for Physics (around 85) and Maths (70); and on my country's equivalent of the SAT I got 84,7% which I think is pretty okay, but again, I don't know how that fits into the "excellence" frame.

So does anybody know what my chances are? I really want to get in, at least for the lowest of possibilities, but the cost for applying is 95e and my family can't waste that much on a whim .

Sorry if this is too off-topic or too specific, but it's really important for me. Merci d'avance ! :biggrin:

Reply 292

dgokten

Hey there! Not to be a bummer but I don't think they're gonna care about your special situations and how you managed to bump up your grades. Since the personal statement is only about the school and your interests(the interview is also like that) there is not a space you can explain those stuff to them. But I think it's still worth applying, you can try to email them about a fee waiver. But my advice is that never keep saying stuff about your family and how bad things you've been through because it makes you seem unprofessional for an 18 year old. Best of luck!!

Reply 293

itsm

Original post by dgokten

Thanks for the reply! And yeah I don't want to seem too desperate either, that's why asked here first :biggrin:

Well, I hope my extracurricular activities can make up for those ups and downs. Just one more thing, should I really not mention anything at all about the economic hardship? Of course not as a main topic (I don't want to make a sob story or anything like that), but since it's for a scholarship I thought it may be important to mention it; or is it better to just let the papers speak for themselves?

By the way, have you already been admitted or are you applying this year as well?

Reply 294

username2301951

Original post by itsm

Okay sorry for answering a bit late but your post just caught my eye…

Actually, I think they might even like some ups and downs in your grades. They don't want robots who have shown they are able to work like machines for the last three years, they are looking for sensible students who can overcome their limits. Three years ago I was among the worse students of my school ( I follow the french educational system in an excellence lycée in Madrid and my average mark was 10/20) but now I have reached an average mark of 17/20; and I am more likely to catch their eye than someone who has had excellent marks for the last years. Still, they are not interested at all in your personal issues (although that might sound a bit cruel, french people are just like that). Any problem you've overcome only interests them in the way it has made you stronger and more trained, so you have the profile they are looking for in a student. If you feel like you can transmit this when telling them about your issues, then go ahead. Also, don't make it the main topic of your personal statement; you might lose their attention.
I am currently applying to Sciences Po Paris, which one are you applying to?

Good luck :smile:

Reply 295

rin.7

Hi everyone. I am currently trying to write my personal statement to apply to the LH campus and failing miserably. When I search for examples on Google, I can only find extremely professional-looking pieces that look like they were written for A level English Language paper. Always having failed to succeed at writing good, proper English essays, writing this personal statement is shredding my brain into pieces. These are the instructions given on the Sciences Po website:

"Please introduce yourself. Describe the reasons that led you to apply to Sciences Po’s Bachelor’s Degree program. Explain how and why the educational environment at Sciences Po will help you achieve your professional and personal ambitions. You may also want to articulate how you foresee your engagement in campus life beyond the walls of the classroom."

But then I mean, I can't just write "My name is blah blah and I want to study here because blah blah', right?How's everyone doing with their personal statement?

Reply 296

dgokten

Hi! Sorry for the late reply I was super busy with the college apps in the US. I don't think there is an indicated space for an essay or writing in the scholarship section so I'm not very sure if you can mention your past to them. But in my biased opinion, just let the papers speak for themselves and if you'll have a chance to talk about your past in the interview then go for it. I'm also applying to Sciences Po Reims this year and struggling with the letter :frown:

Reply 297

itsm

Original post by Madgalyn

Thank you so much for the detailed response! And yeah I wasn't trying to leech off of my issues as much as I was trying to communicate what I have learned from them. I'll still keep it at as a minimum mention, if at all.

I'm applying to the campus at Le Havre, hopefully one day I can go to Paris! Best of luck in your application!

Original post by rin.7

Hey Rin! I'm keen of writing so I'll try to help ya out. However, I haven't written my own statement yet and deep down I'm quite anxious about writing it, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

[textwall incoming, sorry]

Some people might disagree with my point of view, but I don't think following each English essay convention to a T necessarily means you're writing a good essay, because some of those conventions and guides are complete bullocks. For example, I remember hearing you should format it in a descending order, in such a way that your strongest argument and strongest imagery is at the top and your weakest at the bottom; but that ain't good, you might catch the reader's attention but you will lose it, eventually. I think all paragraphs should be given equal importance in an essay. Furthermore, if you take a look at essays by great writers like George Orwell, you will find out most of them don't follow -and even sometimes downright violate- these conventions. And it makes you wonder why your perfectly formatted, A-graded high school essays aren't being sold in collections or being read by people other than your English teacher. Once you get rid of these "rules" everything becomes a lot simpler and you can just go with the flow.

Of course some of those rules exist for a reason. The usual structure of Main Idea > Support > Support > Conclusion is very sound, but it's very intuitive as well and I'm sure most, if not all, people follow it unconsciously.

Also, remember this is not an essay per se, it's a personal statement. It is meant to showcase you as a person, your skills and personality, not how many esoteric terms your capable of mustering in 600 characters. I'm not going to presume I have any idea of how the guys in charge of admission think about these things, but in my mind an overtly hoity-toity, long-worded essay would be a huge turn off for whoever is reading, regardless of the setting.

Welp, this ended up being a rant about all essays I guess. Sorry about that, hope you can take something from it anyway.

A tip that's more related to what you were actually asking: maintain a sense of storytelling.

I don't know if it was done on purpose, but the key points ScPo is asking you to mention in your statement lend themselves very easily to a story. Check it out:

Who are you? > How did YOU ended up applying for THIS SCHOOL?
(as in why is this the inevitable path of the elements who compose who you are, the ones you mentioned before) > What can THIS SCHOOL contribute to YOU? (as in, what do you think is the symbiosis between WHO YOU ARE and WHAT THE SCHOOL IS) > What can YOU contribute to THIS SCHOOL (same as before, but backwards) > What can BOTH contribute to the world? (as in, what will this symbiosis melt into? What will the combination of YOU and the SCHOOL make possible for the world at large?)

Or something like that. It was clearer in my head but you get the point. I hope, at least.

Also note that it's structured ambivalently with reality and expectation. The first two elements are real (who you are and why you applied) and the rest are expectations (student/school symbiosis and further). You can use this as an advantage, the first two, real, concrete elements should be the backbone to support your unlikelier ideas in the other two. So for example, "I love football and I want to play with the Real Madrid" is a lot more feasible than "I love football and I want to fix world hunger".

When it comes to how to start, which is certainly the scariest part, you need to start with a punch.

Don't waste your time with literally introducing yourself. You already told them what your name was, what country do you live in, what languages you speak, what your academic performance was, what your job experience is; even your hobbies and your cellphone number. They don't want you to repeat yourself.

If you remember those level A essays you found in Google, most of them start with ideas that can usually be summed up with "my love for education" or "my love for X started with...". That's what they want to hear: something personal, not a retype of your CV. Though I would still advice you to not copy that formula of "education/[insert what you want to major in] is/changed my life", it may be an earnest sentiment, but it's been done a trillion times. I don't know anything about you, so I can't give you something very specific, but be original.

Well, in the end I think it all comes down to inevitability. They want you to convince them as to why you MUST be admitted, as to why that is the only right choice they could make. They should feel your entrance was something inevitable that was just waiting to happen.

Again, sorry for the wall of text. Hope it can help in any way.
Best of luck! I hope we can meet at Le Havre!

Original post by dgokten

Thanks again!

By letter you mean the personal statement? If so, check out my unnecessarily long reply above.

Reply 298

drishtishah

Hey. I am a student from India and am planning on applying as an undergraduate for 2016-17. I wanted to know how you went about your application and what sort of profile you had so I can know if I am suited for it. If you could share your application details and also how it is to be an international student while applying and if admission decisions for international student are different from french nationals. Anticipating your swift response. Thanks :smile:

Reply 299

Bennyuni97

Hey