College Visits: USC and SNU

On April 17, two universities, University of Southern California (USC) and Seoul National University (SNU), visited our campus for a college visit. Both schools were greatly anticipated by many students at AISG due to their prestigious reputation worldwide. USC had their college visit at 9:40AM while SNU had it at 1 PM.

Maggie Ma, a junior, was one of the students who attended the USC college visit. She said that during the college visit, the international admissions officer from USC first introduced their campus and later elaborated on the application process and the admission rate. When he was finished with explaining, there was a Q&A session which was very helpful for both students and parents. Maggie said, “One of the guests asked about the average SAT score required to be enrolled into USC and the officer replied as 1360-1500[…] Attending this college visit motivated me to definitely study harder in order to survive the intense competition to be enrolled into USC and other elite US universities.”

In the afternoon, Seoul National University knocked on the door. SNU, the number one ranking university in South Korea, had a plethora of Korean parents coming all the way to Science Park to participate in SNU’s college visit. There were also many Korean students, especially upperclassmen, who came to visit SNU’s college visit. The main introducer spoke for approximately 40 minutes about the campus, some statistics regarding SNU’s acceptance rate, the application procedure, and the applicable majors. During the Q&A time, both parents and students asked questions for further clarifications and information.

Peter Park, a sophomore, was one of the many Korean students who attended the SNU college visit. He said, “I think this was the first time SNU came to visit AISG, and I feel fortunate that I had the chance to attend the college visit. I learned a lot about different types of application processes and which application procedure I need to undergo. SNU is unarguably the best university in South Korea—learning about the university motivated me to study harder and endeavor to enroll in SNU.”

Ms. Lindsay, one of our two high school counselors, gave insight to the role and the work of a counselor and the process by which college visits are made. She explained that inviting universities to come to our school is one of the tasks of a high school counselor. She said, “Before I came to AISG 4 years ago, the previous counselor, Ms. Ortman, built many relationships with universities across the world. My job is to maintain those relationships and build more with new schools.” She described that every July, there is a meeting where high school counselors from international schools are invited to a university fair. There, she would have the opportunity to meet many universities, and her job is to request them to come visit AISG.

She also gave the reason why inviting Asian universities is more difficult than inviting US universities. She said that almost all US universities have an office of international admissions where the school would pay their staff to travel around the world and introduce their universities to high schools. Those US universities usually agree that a certain percentage of their students must be international students. However, many Asian universities do not have many international students compared to those in the US, so it takes much more difficulty to invite schools from Asia. The fact that Guangzhou is not one of the major cities in Asia was also one of the reasons behind some universities not coming to AISG for a college visit.

Every year, the number of college visits increases which is pleasing news for AISG students. Many parents and students are concerned with the universities by which AISG students are accepted; therefore, college visits are an important factor to help students to search for their universities and careers of interest.