The Harvard Crimson

Admissions Blog

College application season is a busy time and many students undoubtedly find themselves trying to juggle ask themselves on how to balance their school schedules, exams and extracurricular activities, on top of trying to polish their personal statements. Even busier are those is going through two different application processes, which is the case for most students studying outside the U.S.

International applicants often find themselves applying to both American universities and local ones, causing twice the stress.

Samridh Kudesia, an Indian applicant hoping to join the Harvard’s Class of 2018, split his time between applying to U.S. colleges and preparing for entrance exams to Indian engineering institutions. Kudesia applied to eleven colleges in U.S. while simultaneously preparing for the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination, which is an infamously difficult admissions exam for all government funded universities in India.

“IITJE requires rigorous hard work and practice, which made SAT subject tests not a big deal for me”, said Kudesia. He later added that the Indian exam was his priority and that was able to devote only three weeks to his U.S. application essays.

An early admit to Harvard from Brazil, Henrique Vaz, preferred to have a more balanced division of time between his applications. According to Vaz, the Brazilian application process is extremely different from the American one. In Brazil, students only have to take general exams, through which they are tested on concepts of social sciences, exact sciences, and languages. Vaz said his priority was to optimize his study time.

“While studying for the SAT, I was also studying for the Brazilian exams,” said Vaz, noting that his strategy was to attend high school classes during the day and work on his U.S. applications in the evening.

Richard Sinclair Monteverde, a Peruvian sailing athlete, was accepted to the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, which he said is one of the best universities in Peru. However, Monteverde deferred his attendance until August of this year in order to wait for U.S. admissions results in late March.

He explained that most Peruvian universities accept their students by taking into account only their GPA and interviews. An exam is only necessary if the student’s GPA is not deemed good enough for admission.

“Since [my GPA was good enough] I only had to worry about my applications to the US,” said Monteverde, who mentioned the standardized tests as his biggest challenge on the American process.

Kudesia, Vaz and Monteverde are only some examples of an increasing number of students who decide to apply both to American universities and those in their home country. All three students agreed that while the college application process for international students is not an easy one, the hard work is worth it in the end.