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US Universities

I am wondering does anyone here go one of the top american Unis that are in the ivy league, and how hard is it to get in comapered to Oxbridge?

Reply 1

Onearmedbandit

Very hard 'cos you're foreign & there are probably limited spaces for foreigners on their courses. The main thing that puts most people off is, obviously, the money.

If I was successful enough on my course to get onto the JD course at Colombia University (in New York) in a couple of years it'd cost me over £50,000 in total...

Reply 2

crazygirl4521

dont lie it cost that much to study in the us :O thats allot

Reply 3

Earlham

No, that's about right. Colombia's in New York City and that helps to make it even more pricey. For the D.C. law school that I was planning to attend, tuition, rent, etc. was estimated at $50,000 a year. At that rate, £50,000 debt isn't too bad. (Relatively speaking...it's still an atrocious amount of debt, but sadly not atypical after a JD.)

maze.e, what were you thinking of studying? And at what level?

Also, don't forget that there are tons of good colleges (in the US sense) and universities that aren't in the Ivy League! I don't think there's the same gap in performance that people percieve in the UK between the top 3-4 and the rest. There's a book called Looking Beyond the Ivy League that may be of interest.... Oftentimes, international students can scoop up some pretty hefty financial aid money (my alma mater is one example where most of the internationals got an incredible amount paid for) at US schools, although perhaps not at the very big names.

Reply 4

Craigy_Boy

Just so you know, the term "ivy league" actually only refers to the following 8 american universities and originates from the sports league in which they all participate (though the phrase has also come to be shorthand for "top university"): Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_league

But there are lots of other very good universities (oftentimes equally famous and equally prestigious) outside of this grouping that you ought to consider - MIT, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, Duke, Georgetown, University of Chicago, NYU, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan University, University of Virginia etc.

Generally speaking, American universities have huge sums of money to throw around, so even if fees alone are around $30k per year (which is common for the private colleges), many students receive a financial aid package to cover their expenses, which may be a mixture of outright scholarship money and federal loans. As an international student, you may not be eligible for such aid (or opportunities may be more limited), so you will need to consult their admissions materials and see what their policies are on this.

It's also worth bearing in mind that there are three types of university in the US: major private (Harvard, Stanford etc.), major public (i.e. state supported - for example the University of California colleges, like Berkeley and UCLA), and "liberal arts colleges" like Amherst and Williams (we have no equivalent in the UK, and their status is sort of hard to describe, so I'll just link to the wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_colleges and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies).

Reply 5

DianneG

Depending on what you are studying, some "non-Ivy" schools have better reputations in particular subjects than the Ivy Leagues. I would pay close attention to that when applying, rather than jsut applying to a name.
http://www.princetonreview.com/grad/research/advsearch/match.asp is a really good website to find out which university may cater especially to your needs. Also, http://www.gradschools.com/ has rankings, as does usnews.com