I live In France and I would like to attend university in america, correct me if I am wrong but, I heard that students apply to university in the fall for the next year’s fall, and that applying to say january is considered late. Whereas in France, we have till april 3 to submit our application to universities for the fall.
I am not comparing the two system or implying that one is better than the other I am just curious as to why the deadlines are so early?
9 comments
Some universities have early admissions. Which is what you typically see with a fall application deadline.
Because there’s shit like housing and admin stuff that need to get done. Probably better off asking in a college related sub. Why is France’s so late?
Admissions to American universities is somewhat competitive. We have early admission deadlines and regular admission deadlines. The early admissions are usually due in November of the year prior to starting. Regular admissions are usually due in February. Decisions are made by April to give incoming students plenty of time to secure loans, housing, etc.
Why is the admission deadline so late in France?
Because there are many many variables that need to be worked out for both the student and the school between now and then. That said, from fall-to-fall would be longer than normal, you are likely seeing the deadline for early admissions.
It varies by the institution. The admissions cutoff for my University was March 15th. April 3rd sounds reasonable, there are probably schools that accept applications that late.
Some schools are competitive, and have tons of applications to sort through. That takes time, so they make the deadline earlier.
For schools where admission is highly competitive, students expect a decision to be made by Spring if not before then
It would be really impractical to accept applications in the spring when decisions need to go out that same time.
It’s also typical for a document deadline (deadline to submit things like lawful presence verification and transcripts) to be after the application deadline, so that adds time.
Consider that historically Americans have attended college far from home and needed to set up housing, transportation, etc well in advance, and that colleges have to arrange to have thousands of people arrive on campus from all over the place. Additionally, students may apply to many selective schools and want to visit the ones they get into before making a decision.
Even for people and schools where this isn’t true anymore, it’s the way the system is set up for the most historically selective schools, and thus it flows down to all but the least selective ones by a combination of interns, traditional, and logistics.
they’re not
There’s a lot of logistics with so many incoming students. For grad school it was much later – a month or two in advance is pretty common cut off point for grad school admissions, but earlier is better generally.