A Pathway program allows international students who want to study in the United States to take English as a Second Language (ESL) courses, and the credits earned in this program are transferred to the second year of study. These programs last about one year and usually offer “conditional admission” to the college or university with which they are affiliated. This means that students who complete the program with an acceptable level of English proficiency and a sufficiently high GPA are automatically admitted to the partner institution.
Pathway programs are especially useful for international students who want to study in the United States but do not yet have the level of English required to achieve strong results on standardized English-language tests that are required by U.S. colleges and universities.