Chance me for Dartmouth ED

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics: Indian Intl Male, Middle East Resident, Applying for Financial Aid

Hooks: yeah

Intended Major(s): Psychology with Policy/Philosophy/Math idk

ACT/SAT/SAT II: SAT: 1590 (800M, 790EBRW)

UW/W GPA and Rank: CBSE, school does not rank, does not offer APs

9th: 91%ish (Likely top 5%)

10th: 97% (Top 5%)

11th: 90% (idk)

12th: Midterms: low 80s, Predicteds: low 90s (not sure if I’ll need to submit both or just my predicteds but I’ve got an explanation I’ll have my counsellor attest to anyway)

APs (external, self-studied): Psych: 5, Calc BC: 5 (AB sub: 5)

Coursework: PCMC w/ Financial Markets (couldn’t take psychology without dropping math and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study until pretty late so I didn’t)

Awards:

  1. Quora Creator Award - Top 500 creators of 300M active users [10]
  2. $12000 Grant - one of 4 in 278 startups to be funded; only U18 representative ever invited at event [11]
  3. Accelerated Ability Program - Top 5% of class every year eligible | School Scholar all years| Math Proficiency Award
  4. ASSET Talent Search Gold Scholar - 99P & #3 (shared) Globally of 770,000 [10]
  5. #1 global consecutive (unshared) in 5850 - [REDACTED] Mental Math Competition x2 [9]
  • 15 more small ass awards I’ll list on a personal website I’m creating

Extracurriculars:

Founder & Executive Director, Non Profit: Managing 42+ students to train & employ young adults w/ ASD. Working w/ 120 users, placed 17. 11 corporate partners. 4 global chapters. $12,000 grant. [10, 11, 12]

Neurodiversity Employment Research Lead, Ministry of Community ([Country] Government): Studying 11,200+ [Country & ME] disability license holders. Run surveys, make reports, lead team of 7 to identify factors in ASD employment discrepancies. [11,12]

Published Author, Book Name (Under Ms. Prof Name, MIT Philosophy) | Quora Writer & Top Creator: Founder, Writer at Psychology Spaces w/ 55.4k followers & 5.3M views | Author, digital ethics book, 110+ sold, to be placed in 4 National libraries.

Volunteer, Organizer, Autism Center & National Volunteer Org: Assistance Volunteer for 14 w/ASD, recruited new members | helped organized donation of 1000 plants to temple & weekly food drives for famine victims [9, 10, 11, 12]

Literature Review under Ms. Prof Name, Local University | Social Masking in People w/ ASD: Review paper on social masking; to be published in Dartmouth Undergrad Journal of Sciences. Also published 2 DUJS online research articles. [11, 12]

Intern, CogniAble (Diagnostic & Research), Innotechnotronics Solutions (Prototype Design): Helped diagnose 85+ children w/ ASD using film footage sets, trained model | Directed 3 assistive products for people w/ cog. disabilities (unpaid) [9, 10]

Team Lead, Innovate | Founder & President, The 5AM Club (11th, 12th): ME’s largest Self-Actualization Society, School Name: Expo 2020 navigation system - #1 at conf. | Oversaw 74 juniors at 5AM, mentored 15+ sociology projects. Organized workshops, cross-school movement. [11, 12]

President, Gavel Club: Elected President (9th), rebranded & organized weekly themed meetings for 65+ active student members. 110+ speeches. Toastmaster’s Youth Leader Award. [9, 10]

Chief Operations Officer, Startup founded by '23 Dartmouth Students: Creating new avenues for Constructive Discourse: Develop marketing roadmap, incentive structure. Lead team of 8. Rebrand, grow to 500+ Dartmouth users. Expand to 3 schools in Canada. [12, maybe 11?]

Filmmaking: Neurodiversity sensitization events at 18 companies. Nominated LumieLabs lead tester for Britannica (place #1 global). Directed & film 4 school plays. [9, 10, 12]

Other ECs (likely only gonna mention on website): Kaleidoscope Psychology Summer Program, NYAS JA member, Co-compiler of anthropology, School Mental Health Officer, Co-founder of Intel-recognized refugee project

Essays/LORs/Other: Essays: 7.5 - 8

LORs: no clue yet, hopefully solid 8

Schools: Dartmouth ED, Swarthmore ED2, HYPS + Vanderbilt, Williams, Amherst, Colby, Richmond, UT Dallas, Drexel + 35 more LACs and state schools. Have fee waivers for all.

I’ve been in love with Dartmouth for a good while now but this cycle will not be fun. Will me not having a school psych course be a major red flag? And is placing three creative mediums (speech, writing, film) too all-over-the-place? Thank you!

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40+ schools ?

You know many don’t have aid for international or not significant and many are need aware.

Why the drop off in 12th grade ?

What’s your hook ??

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You need to convince them that you are happy to live in a cold middle of nowhere place.
This is a separate box you’ll need to check apart from everything else.

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What’s the hook? And how much aid do you need?

Nobody will care that you didn’t take Psych in HS.

Do you really think an Adcom is going to wade through your personal website? You need to figure out how to communicate what makes you special in your essay and the rest of the application, and not assume that every adcom is going to devote a week to delving through dozens of awards and activities. Figure out what’s important to understanding you and edit out everything else. And 9th grade activities are significantly less interesting than what you did more recently… Rebranding the Gavel Club-- really?

Why do you love Dartmouth- and how can you possibly do a quality application for 40+ colleges???

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I’m very aware about the financial aid stats of the schools on my list, I’ve compiled it after a year and a half’s worth of research.

12th dropoff is due to migraine attacks an unavailability of retests.

The hook thing was sarcasm, should prolls remove that.

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Not sure I understand your point about research. Many of the schools on your list will likely gap you (i.e. accept you but not give you aid) so not sure what your year and a half of research has taught you. Getting a fee waiver to apply is great, but that won’t satisfy the requirements to get a student visa where you will need to show how you are paying for college.

There is a short list of colleges in the US that are need blind for Internationals AND will fund your need. I promise you that the 35+ state schools are not on that list.

We can help you. But you need to let us know how much money you need…

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You have a bunch of higher level positions listed on your activities. Chief Operations officer, and founder and executive director. I’m sorry but these are just not believable for a high school student. Please please don’t exaggerate your activities. Put down what you really did.

If I’m having a hard time believing all of this happened as you wrote it, I would imagine that an adcom will view it with even more critical eyes.

You are an international student. Acceptance rates for international students at some of these colleges are in the low single digits.

Why Dartmouth?

Not sure how you plan to pay for Drexel. School doesn’t meet full need for all accepted students. Many state schools don’t meet full need either. What’s your plan?

What can your parents pay annually?

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I can afford a third of full price and potentially slightly more at privates.

I’m applying primarily to LACs good with financial aid and state schools that offer great merit aid. I’m not too worried about my list because I’ve got safeties like UTA, UTD, UHoustoun, USF, and Drexel that I’m more than sure will bring my COA/year down to <15k because of my stats. I’m also going to be demonstrating heavy interest in a few of my top choice LACs.

As much as I appreciate your advice the apply-to-need-blind advice is patently unhelpful for most applicants. All 7 need-blinds are unbelievably competitive for internationals and there’s a sizeable number of schools that are need-aware on paper but aid the majority of their intl batch (see williams, connecticut college, kenyon, depauw, dickinson, macalester, etc.) that are a better bet for almost everyone.

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As this is a chance thread I will respond accordingly. I think your chances at any and all schools will be limited by your underlying tone of arrogance and condescension and your poor academic performance senior year.

Wishing you well and hoping you gain self awareness before it further adversely impacts you.

Either your being deliberately rude or perhaps worse you don’t realize it. You apparently have it all sorted out so why even ask us novices.

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I’m only interim COO and haven’t committed nearly as much time to that EC as I have to others. I can see why cumulatively my ECs may look a little embellished but I don’t think any of these individually will through an adcom off - I’ll be providing more reference material on my site anyway.

Dartmouth because it’s a perfect fit in every way, I’ll write the best essay I can and hopefully my involvement with the community before applying helps.

Drexel has brilliant merit aid for internationals scoring 1580s and above, I’ve looked at many weaker profiles and my cost of attendance should range from 8k/year to 20k/year, both of which I can afford.

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My post is neutral. I can see why my first two replies could be seen as impolite, I was only trying to make it quick and to-the-point because I had somewhere to be. The second reply is neutral until the last paragraph where I break down why I think the staple tip is unhelpful and I’m genuinely annoyed while doing so because of how many times I’ve encountered it - I apologize for my delivery, my intent was not to provoke. Any case, thanks for the advice.

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As noted above by @Blossom, don’t expect the adcoms to wade through your site. If it’s important, make sure it’s on your actual application.

Dartmouth is a perfect fit…how? Have you visited? Are you very familiar with the culture at the school? The climate, the location, etc.

Your list of schools is quite random ranging from smaller LACs in rural locations to larger universities in cities.

How will you write the “why this college” for schools with such diverse characteristics. Who helped you craft this list, and what criteria were used?

How did you get fee waivers for 40 schools? If you are very low income, how can your family afford up to $20,000 a year?

Many of the schools on your list will require submission of the CSS Profile for consideration for need based aid. There are no fee waivers for the Profile for international students.

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This is the embodiment of a lack of self awareness and arrogance.

If people find your responses to be offensive your opinion doesn’t matter only the feelings they elicit in the person they are directed to matters. Similarly your opinion won’t matter when you apply to colleges, only the AOs trained insights count.

You have reinforced my belief that you will have a much tougher go than some of your stats might suggest.

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I’ll keep that in mind and providing context on my app, thank you!

I haven’t visited but I’ve watched what I think is virtually every vlog on youtube and spoken to 15ish '25s and '26s. It’s a perfect academic fit because of the d-plan and it’s great location because I crave a dramatic shift from the middle east climate I’m currently in.

I don’t have a strong locational or class-size preference, my rationale is that I’ll apply to the schools that a cursory look tells me would be at least decent fits for me and then do the research if I make in (it helps that close to half have no supplementals).

Fee waiver was before my father received a raise and because our counsellor is very lax and hands them out with little restrain. I’m okay with paying the CSS profile fees.

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If you no longer qualify…perhaps you should be honest about it and pay. That’s my opinion.

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the feelings they elicit in the person they are directed to matters

and for that I apologized, I genuinely am sorry if I came off as inconsiderate or condescending and that’s partly because I arrived on this site with some preconceived notions from reddit and that’s on me. But I believe what matters also is what’s true, my post is neutral only because it’s a repository of facts and I make no judgemental references to anyone else. It isn’t fair of you to choose that to characterize me, just as it would be unfair of me to identify your proclivity to using conjecture and use that to characterize you as someone that’s condescending in their real lives and is only here to make judgement calls.

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Thanks for not doing that and clearing up my misconception. A quick reminder you came here and requested judgement.

Worth considering the words of Maya Angelou…

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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With this list of ECs and awards, if your LOR will only be about an 8 then I think acceptance will be tough.

AOs will want confirmation that you are who you present yourself to be. They want some respected adult who can compare you to your peers say, “This is the most distinguished applicant you will see from XYZ country.” It can’t be hyperbole — Dartmouth probably will accept only one student from your country this year and they want to know they are accepting the very best.

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As a rule of thumb, take the acceptance rate and cut it by half as an international applicant. That’s the unfortunate reality. For schools that aren’t need blind for international students, it’s going to be even more challenging. The good news is Dartmouth is need blind for international students.

You made the right decision to prioritize math over psychology. Not a red flag at all.

And lots of students do a many ECs in HS so no, I think speech/writing/film are just fine and not “all over the place.”

The good news is that your budget is better than many international students and I think you’ll have some affordable acceptances in the US.

I will caution you though that applying to 40+ schools is going to be a crazy amount of work. The selective schools will all have supplemental essays. My daughter applied to 8 schools and had to write 19 unique essays. You can’t rush them and in many cases, they are so specific you can’t re-use them.

My advice would be to pare down your list so it’s more manageable.

Good luck to you.

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this is all very helpful - thank you so much!