Top UK And USA University Applications: Expert Tips Every Mama Needs To Know

Getting into top UK and US universities is the goal for many families, but the application process can be long and complicated. We get an expert in the matter to cover what’s actually necessary, what can give your child an extra boost and what is more likely to cause burnout.

The USA is home to the Ivy League, while Russell Group universities are in the UK, both sets of prestigious universities and colleges receive thousands of applications every year from all over the world. We sit down with Andrew Williamson who runs a tutoring and consulting practice in Hong Kong – and specialises in English tutoring and admissions consulting for boarding schools and universities – who gives us some insider tips on what does and doesn’t work when applying so you can help your child start on this journey with your eyes wide open. Hong Kong is known for its high-achieving students with a bushel of extracurriculars under their belt who apply en masse to the ‘best universities’ in the UK and USA – so how can you help your teen stand out?

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Choose IB, A-Levels Or The AP System Based On The University’s Location

First and foremost, remember that even though universities may belong to the Ivy League or Russell Group, there are still huge discrepancies between what they ask of their applicants, whether it’s the subjects they require at IB or A-Levels (even among the same courses at higher education) or the grades students are expected to achieve.

It’s not a uniform landscape at all… colleges within the system are going to have their own unique desires.

With that in mind, all major universities know of the main secondary courses available in Hong Kong and are well versed in how they operate. But if you want to increase your opportunity at a certain set of schools, IB is the more flexible one for US or UK, whereas with the A-Levels, the student is more likely to be UK-centric applicant. Then there’s the AP system which leans more towards US legibility. Either way, ideally you should have a notion well before those final years of secondary where your child might want to go for university, as that will greatly impact both the school they join and the course they take.

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The Importance Of Rounded Student Profiles & Where It’s Most Needed

Especially in the US system, grades are not the end of the game, they’re just the beginning. Grades, standardised test scores and even to some extent extracurriculars are just the foot in the door.

School-based extracurriculars are just one of the boxes that students have to check to be considered as a credible applicant. For the American system, your child has to be doing activities outside the walls of their school, and they should be designing their own pathway to show initiative. This could be a university research position under the guidance of a professor, founding a non-profit or playing a sport or instrument at the highest level. Regardless, it should be outside the bounds of their school as that demonstrates their own curiosity and purpose. With that being said, remember that it should have some connection to their strength within school. For example, if they’re a star maths student, then they can start their own tutoring programme with its own unique angle.

Meanwhile in the UK, universities are much more focused on academics first and foremost. Even the interviews that UK universities conduct are largely academic-focused, whereas in the States the interviews are “more about personality and soft-skill read”. This isn’t to say your child shouldn’t do extracurriculars if they’re applying to the UK (you have to if you’re doing the IB anyway as part of its CAS requirement), but they need to know how to allocate their time most efficiently.

If your child wants to hedge their bets and apply to both the UK and US (and also to other places such as in Canada or Europe) know that this is an even more complicated process. The same applicant can get into schools in both places, but they have to be presented very differently to be suitable to both processes.

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How Early Do You Really Have To Start This Process?

We live in a hyper-competitive environment, so it makes sense that anyone would want to start the process sooner. But it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a very, very long game, and if you start too early, you’ll quickly exhaust yourself and your child.

Plenty of Hong Kong parents fall into the ‘rat race’ way of thinking – during pregnancy (or sometimes even before) they start planning to put their kid in the ‘right’ playgroup, that’ll lead to the ‘right’ preschool, that’ll lead to the ‘right’ primary, then secondary, then university. Guess what? More often than not, you really don’t need to. Williamson believes that operating in this manner won’t “yield the increase in results that will be proportionate to the energy that’s put in” if at all.

You have to look at the process and how it affects your child. Williamson’s advice to all his clients is to avoid subjecting your child to a hyper-competitive and anxiety-inducing environment. The goal is to build a child who is motivated by curiosity and ambition rather than someone who’s operating from the fear of failure, because the latter can quickly lead to burnout.

Universities do not care what playgroup your 17-year-old went to. However, the high school your teen goes to likely will make a difference…

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Hong Kong Schools That Could Give Your Child An Edge

While there are plenty of local and international schools in Hong Kong that offer rigorous curricula and provide world-class teaching, Williamson notes that there are a few secondary schools that are more widely recognised on the global educational stage. These are mainly Hong Kong International School (HKIS) and Chinese International School (CIS), with German Swiss International School (GSIS) and The Independent Schools Foundation Academy (ISF) gaining ground in recent years.

When the Admissions team of a prestigious university is rifling through the hundreds (or thousands) of applications of students from all over the world, there are some schools that stand out more and are immediately recognised. Coming from one of these known schools with the promise of top marks offers a certain level of guarantee to the Admissions officer.

It comes back to the legibility of the transcript; they want to know what that transcript means coming from that school.

Therefore, if you’re looking to give your child an extra leg-up, turning to one of these Hong Kong schools could be the answer. If you have a student with high, but not the highest, grades from one of the top international schools in Hong Kong, they’re much more legible than a student that everyone says is the best student to pass through a lesser well-known school. At both the boarding school level and the university level, Admissions teams are much more likely to respond favourably to the student coming from the school they know better.

I would always advise [my clients] to focus on the process rather than the outcome. Choose the school that you think will contribute best to the growth of your child and impart the values and characteristics that you most want to impart to them. The rest will work itself out.

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Here’s An Important ‘Early Days’ Decision You Can Make

If your child is planning on applying to a prestigious American university, start thinking around Grade 5 or 6 about sending them to a boarding school in the United States for Grade 9 (around age 14).

Sending your toddler to a specific pre-school in the hopes of getting them to Harvard is often low-reward, but you can “make a very high-reward decision” by sending them to a good boarding school if you want them to go on to a good university in the States. Matriculation outcomes from the top boarding schools in the US are mind-boggling and speak for themselves.

The same can be said for the UK. One of the best decisions you can make is to send your child to a boarding school from the age of 11 or 13. Bear in mind though that UK boarding schools have recently been “hit with a substantial tax on tuition income” that have largely passed on to their clients, which has in turn affected the economic landscape of these schools and its applicants. Generally speaking, many Hong Kong families are uniquely able to handle this increase in fees and make use of this opportunity to “change the outcome set for university applications in a material way”.

I recommend that my clients make their decision around age 12, and then spend two years preparing for the application.

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Some Final Thoughts When Preparing For University Applications

The potential negative impact on your child of starting the process at age 6 months is way too great to justify whatever hypothetical impact it could have on the university or boarding school process.

• Going to a bilingual school is a huge benefit, from both a process perspective and an outcome perspective. Students applying from Hong Kong are generally expected to be bilingual.
• If you want to commit to going to a UK university, attending an ESF school for example could be a great decision, but it limits your flexibility for going to the States. Whereas when you go to HKIS or CIS, you preserve your optionality to go in either direction.
• Most SAT prep is done outside the school, so if your child is veering towards the USA, be prepared to find tutors who specialise in this to give them the leg-up needed for most high-performance American universities.
• Among the most recognised universities in Canada are McGill, University of Toronto and Queens, while in Australia, University of Sydney, Melbourne and Monash consistently top the conversation.
• Applications to Switzerland and Singapore have been on the rise lately for Hong Kong students – the reason being that these are relatively safe and well-resourced countries. Switzerland is in the heart of continental Europe and offers several great options for higher education (ETH Zurich being a top choice), and Hong Kong parents love going there for holidays and sending kids there for camps too, so it’s win for the whole family.
• Seasonal camps are best utilised at younger ages (like 10 to 13) and can have an impact with boarding school applications and therefore could indirectly influence the college application process. However, “if you’re a student at an international school in Hong Kong and you went to a summer camp in Switzerland when you were 12 years old, and you’re applying to Yale, that’s not going to have much effect.”
• American universities are mainly looking at the two to four years prior to admission and what the student has done in that time.
• Ultimately, the decisions you make should be developmentally appropriate for your child. Don’t force them to operate beyond their years if they’re not naturally inclined to do that (i.e. it’s rare for a 13-year-old to start their own non-profit, and when an Admissions officer sees that, it’s more likely to raise alarm bells than for them to be impressed).

And finally:

Cherish your time with your child, because you don’t get it back. You cannot reverse time, and you want to raise a child that remembers the time you spent together fondly.