Students with no acceptances will want to tune in to this episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, in which we will help you best handle an admissions season gone awry and offer suggestions for moving forward with your college plans.

As an international student, you may have heard that American colleges and universities apply a holistic approach to the application process. But, what exactly does that mean? Colleges look at everything you accomplish in your high school years by assessing the rigor of your curriculum, your grades, standardized exams, essays, recommendations, and activities. How do you contribute to your school and your community? How do you balance your education with participation outside of school? How are you active outside of the classroom?

Once an international student has decided upon their set of undergraduate studies in the U.S., there’s often a lot of planning that goes into making their stateside academic journey a success. But the academic calendar isn’t the only aspect of U.S. collegiate life that needs plotting. Don’t find yourself unwittingly caught off guard by the academic breaks your American peers might more easily fulfill at a moment’s notice by virtue of their proximity to home. Some university breaks aren’t long enough for a complicated international trek to see family and might, instead, require some thoughtful alternatives. Here’s a quick primer on the breaks an international student might encounter while studying in the U.S. and a few quick ideas for taking full advantage of them.

What is a Third Culture Kid?

Are you a dual citizen? Do you live in a country outside of your citizenship? Do you dream in multiple languages? Do some of your friends look at you funny when you call soccer “football” or talk about “maths” class?

If you answered yes to more than one of the questions above, you might be a third culture kid.

Guest post by educations.com

Higher education is always associated with costs. While tuition is something that is taken for granted for many of us, the extent to which it becomes a concern fluctuates from year to year. A study on student trends by educations.com found that tuition is one of the growing major concerns for prospective students wanting to study abroad. This trend is visible across the different continents.

Fun fact: There are approximately 185 different types of visas in the U.S.!

These 185 visa classifications break down into two main categories: non-immigrant for individuals who are here on temporary stays, and immigrant for individuals who will reside permanently in the U.S. For more information, visit the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs.

On the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, Elizabeth Heaton is back to cover everything you need to know about bargain hunting for dorm supplies, looking for universities in the UK, and welcoming your students back home after having been away at college.

The college application process can be a source of stress for any student, but is often particularly overwhelming to international students hoping to study in the United States. The U.S. is geographically and culturally diverse, and so are its colleges. With close to 5,000 U.S. colleges to choose from, how do you narrow your choices down to a manageable list of no more than ten schools to apply to?

For students applying to U.S. colleges and universities from abroad, it’s not only a challenge meeting the benchmarks defined by one’s own national curriculum—either secondary school leaving exams or applications to one’s own set of national universities—there’s the added work of deciphering how local successes translate over to USA admissions standards, a system with its own set of quirks. Will a set of classes taken abroad even fulfill the course requirements of a U.S. college? As with most answers: It depends.

The U.S. college admissions process can be perplexing to international and domestic students alike.  Why are some seemingly qualified applicants denied admission, while others with outwardly similar qualifications are accepted?  The answer lies in the fact that U.S. college admissions officers are not tasked with simply admitting individual students, but with shaping a diverse class that meets a variety of institutional needs.