Undergraduate Education

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COMMUNITY COLLEGES (JUNIOR COLLEGES)

Community Colleges are two-year colleges that generally focus on vocational education and beginning college prerequisites. These colleges are the equivalent of the Turkish universities’ vocational schools. Students attend a community college after high school and receive an Associate Degree at the end of two years if all course credit hours have been successfully completed. The students at community colleges are usually required to complete coursework of 60 credit hours to receive a degree. There are usually two different Associate degrees awarded: Associate of Arts (A.A) and Associate of Science (A.S). The application to community colleges is easier than four year universities in that they do not require SAT / ACT scores. The class sizes are usually smaller and credits can be transferred to a four-year university if certain requirements are met.

BACHELOR DEGREE

One of the most attractive parts of studying in the US is that porgrams in bacherlor degree education are so flexiable. You can create you own education program by choosing among various kinds of subjects. You earn your bachelor degree after full time four years education and reaching to determined credit. First year is called “freshman”, second “sophomore”, third “junior” and fourth year is called “senior”. Lectures that are taken first two years are known as lower division when lectures taken last two years are known as upper division.

A Bachelor’s degree is received after completing approximate coursework of 120 credit hours depending upon the major. However, universities may have different prerequisites for the number of credits to qualify for graduation. Courses that form bachelor degree program are as below;

Core Courses: These courses are core and must courses. Students take courses from different fields such as Maths, English, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Some colleges (universities) may ask stundents to take so many core courses while others ask for a few.
Major Courses: It is the field that the student wants to focus on. Generally students choose one topic for major course. Yet, some colleges give options to have double major. Major courses are one fourth or half of the credits that needed to complete the program.
Minor Courses: This is the second intensive topic that student want to choose. Number of minor courses are generally half of the major courses.
Elective Courses: These courses can be taken from any department. They enable student to make researches on topics that he/she is interested and they help to fullfil the necessary credits in order to graduate.

If you want to study Medicine, Law, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Veterinary Sciences, or Nursing, you will have to earn a Bachelor’s degree first, then take additional college hours as well as having to pass certain exams to pursue these professional degrees. To study Law you need to pass the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), for Medicine the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), for Dentistry Dental Admission Test (DAT), for Pharmacy the Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT), and for Veterinary the Veterinary College Admission Test (VCAT). To earn these degrees in the U.S.A. requires an additional six to eight years. However, if students would like to pursue these professional degrees in Turkey, they can apply for graduate programs in these fields. For example, for Medicine, students can take the USMLE and then apply for medical residency in the U.S.A.

Application Process to the U.S Universities

Since, different from Turkey, US higher institutions are not connected to government, each institution has got different application process and conditions. Thus, it is important to get the necessary information from the universities or colleges' web sites. It is best to start the application processes to U.S. universities approximately one academic year before the academic year that you are planning to start your education. Ideally, it is advised to start these preparations eighteen months before the academic year in which you plan to attend. Students should carefully read the information on the universities’ web sites and understand the documents that needed to be sent to the schools. Generally, the following documents are required when making applications to U.S. universities. Additional documents may be requested, so check the university’s requirement on their web sites.

These documents usually are required:

High School Diploma
High School Transcript
SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) or ACT (American College Test) scores
TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (International English Language Testing System) scores
Reference Letters
Personal Statement / Statement of Purpose
CV
Portfolio (Fine Arts and Architecture applicants)
Interview (some schools may require an interview)
Application Fee

The majority of U.S. universities accept applications through an online system, but there are still some universities which have paper application forms. Students need to research the type of application process of universities they are applying and complete either online or paper application forms. After completing the forms, students will need to pay the application fee. The application fee is different for each university. Application fees can be paid by credit card and the required documents must be sent to the universities by the application deadline. Some U.S. universities have “Rolling Admissions” which means that these universities accept applications throughout an academic year.

If a student’s TOEFL or IELTS score is lower than the U.S. university requirement, but the student meets the other criteria for admission then the student may receive conditional acceptance. The student then has to take English language courses to improve their skills and take the tests again in hopes of earning a higher score. Student can learn more regarding this type of admission on the university web site.

If a student is planning on applying to more than one university, they can use the Common Application system. In the U.S.A. there are more than 450 colleges and universities which accept applications through the Common Application system. Through this system, students can make applications to many universities at the same time. A list of universities that are members of the Common Application system can be found at www.commonapp.org. Some universities may ask for additional documents from students even if they are a member of this system. To learn about the extra documents visit the web sites of the universities you are interested in.