The US university system is very different from the rest of the world. Jono, what is it like and what’s the difference between how we should view the UK process and the US process?  

If we start with the UK side of things, we have UCAS, a beautiful one-stop shop for all applications. Students can apply to any universities up and down the country. The focus of this application in the UK is very much on academics. The process essentially is asking what GCSEs have you got? What are your predicted grades?  Some universities will read a personal statement, but not all. Some may read our reference. But it's a very, very straightforward process. 

The U.S. on the other side has a much more holistic approach. Every individual is considered in many different areas, and the admissions tutors are really trying to shape a cohort of students and they're therefore looking for each student to essentially be the right fit for that cohort. This means the application process is much more complicated and it is very much tailored to each individual institution. The U.S. use an app called the Common App which essentially is their one-stop shop, but within the Common App, they also have individual requirements. Students write an essay which gets sent to all applications but then additionally, each university may ask for their own supplemental requirements and supplemental essays. It is worth noting that some universities out there don't fit that application system. 

Timelines are worth touching on as well.  Thankfully, they do sort of match up with the UK, so it does help us a bit. But the UK early applicants would be applying on the 15th October. Over in the US, that's on the 1st November. The sort of regular round, or what we call in the UK the equal considerations rounds, they're both in January. 

If you decide to go down this route, what are the chances?  

This depends on where you apply. There are 4, 000 institutions from top to bottom in terms of academic credentials. If you want to study there, you can study there. 

But I think when you're talking about return on investment in terms of how much money it costs to go over there and the places that some of our students want to aim at, that's when things do get a bit tougher. Let's be really honest about it, it's important to note that last year there were well over 30 US universities that had lower acceptance rates than Cambridge. 

The field of applicants is often really large for those places, and these are competitive universities such as the Ivy League, chances are really, really slim. International students accepted at Princeton last year was 3. 8%, Columbia 3. 1%, and Harvard 2. 5%, Cambridge was 15%. So that really highlights for me the importance of this open mind when researching and we really encourage our students to do that. 

Having five to ten university choices, including those ambitious options as well as the safe ones is what we encourage. We do want our students to be ambitious and as many of them have additional talents which give more strings to their bow, our acceptance rates would massively look favourably on those percentages. 

This year we've already got students holding offers at Stanford. UPenn, Princeton, Yale, and Chicago. Fantastic institutions. So, yes, chances of success, so long as it's targeted right, should be good.  

Find out more on the US university pathway, including a typical day in the life of a US university student, how Millfield Futures can help students apply to universities in the US and the best time to apply by listening to our recent podcast here: https://bit.ly/3zdHIpA