Admissions Anxiety Is Felt Around the World

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

This week on The Choice on India Ink, we’d like to draw your attention to an international college search that is taking place elsewhere in the world.

Here is an excerpt from “The Trans-Atlantic College Search,” in which D. D. Guttenplan, a writer who specializes in higher education, describes how he and his daughter began their college search from afar. Perhaps you’ll notice similarities from your own college admissions experience.

The post begins:

LONDON â€" At least I didn’t have to whack anybody.

When I told a cousin that I was taking my daughter to look at U.S. colleges this spring she sent me a DVD of “The Sopranos” episode in which Tony, embarking on a similar tour, encounters a former associate and strangles him with a length of wire while his daughter is visiting Colby. Although Maine is home to several superb schools, it seemed safer to skip the whole state.

I was grateful for anything that helped narrow down the list. You might think I’d have a better handle on this process than most parents. I write about higher education for a living and graduated from both British and American universities. But I’m just as confused as any dad, even though I went through a version of this five years ago with my son. He wanted to remain in Britain and knew what he wanted to study, which renders the British system, with its successive filtering from 10 or 11 GCSEs (nationwide subject exams taken at 16) down to 4 A-levels (taken at 17 and 18) to finally applying to “read” (study) a single subject at university, uniquely attractive. For my daughter, the choice of subjects in a liberal arts education was reason enough to make American colleges worth a serious look.

The line at the Fulbright Commission’s American college fair last fall stretched around the block. Though all the schools there seemed eager for foreign students, some seemed to have little idea how to make sense of British grades, the different school calendar and a very different culture, where the relentless pursuit of exam results tends to reduce extracurricular activities to an afterthought.

I was hit by the explosion of anxiety familiar to any parent faced with the college maze. There was also a financial question: Is the probable higher cost of an American education worth it? Undergraduate courses at British universities typically take just three years, and the 9,000 pounds, or $12,000, annual tuition is covered by a government loan that wouldn’t have to be repaid until my daughter starts earning a decent salary.

After you’ve read the full post, we encourage you to share how your own college admissions experience compares to Mr. Guttenplan’s, using the comments box below.