I'm a last-year high school student from Portugal. I've been programming for a few years and always planned to follow Computer Science or an equivalent degree such as Informatics Engineering. It was always a plan for me to take I.E. on my local university - it's cheap and it gets me a job. However, I've been thinking a lot about American universities and their attractive opportunities lately and so I've started to wonder how hard it would be for me to get into one and what I would have to do.

I'm obviously going to be honest about it - MIT, Harvard, Stanford and other "big names" are the universities that most attract me but, of course, those are also the most expensive and never in the world would I be able to afford any of those. On the other hand, I try not to be modest about it, and consider myself as a university-approved student because I can fluently speak English and have been programming for a few years. I also have certain things to vouch for me such as my GitHub[1] or my Launchpad[2] account. I also consider myself a nice guy, the kind of guy who wants to learn new things every day and I believe I have almost all of the characteristics that would make a university want me as one of their students.

I do know that a GitHub account is probably not enough to get me into college with a scholarship but I was hopeful it would help.

For me, it's okay if I take my degree where I live, it's not like I'm going to be sad, but lately the idea of studying in an American university has been occupying my thoughts and my parents said that I shouldn't give up on my dreams even if I can't afford them without help. I'll be finishing high school in a couple of months with good grades and I'd also like to know if it's too late to get into an American college/university this September.

[1]: https://github.com/davidgomes/ [2]: https://launchpad.net/~davidgomes