I think she has it backwards. As far as I know, international students cannot change their financial status once they are admitted. Colleges are crystal clear on this point: If students don’t apply for aid at the same time that they initially apply for admission, they’re not going to get it later.
I’m still not clear what this family’s situation is vis a vis need-based aid. Generally speaking, need-based aid is easier to achieve than merit aid, but you have to demonstrate need. That’s what I’m not clear on – how much need-based aid this family would qualify for and how much they can realistically contribute.
Net price calculators are not completely accurate for international families but they’re a good starting place. After that, she should contact the financial aid departments of a few schools that guarantee to meet demonstrated need and ask them how much she need-based aid she could expect to receive. She might see if Chicago would give her that information now since she’s on their waitlist. Schools use different formulas for need-based aid, but one or two schools’ responses would give her an idea if she’s in the ballpark.
I can list 25 schools – including U of Chicago and many of the same calibre – that guarantee to meet full demonstrated need for internationals. Only six colleges in the US are need-blind for internationals; the others consider your need for financial aid when they make their admission acceptances, but they still award a significant amount of need-based aid to the internationals that they admit.
I don’t think that her Chicago waitlist is necessarily a token courtesy. Most likely they had other North Asians whom they decided to spend their money on.
Korean is a crowded demographic in US admissions, but this student’s credentials are quite good. The problem is that schools only accept a handful of internationals that need aid, so the odds are low. I think the best approach would be to re-apply next year to a wide net of schools that guarantee to meet full need.
She should also contact QuestBridge for help in targeting appropriate colleges. She should start this process right away, but first she needs to flesh out her gap year plans.
I think this student could easily fill up a productive gap year. She just has to think about how to finish this sentence to her advantage: “I took a gap year because I wanted to . . .”
“Because I wanted to improve my SAT score” isn’t an appropriate answer. She has to get over belief that going from 2200 to 2300 on her SAT will be what gets her over the top at Chicago. It might help a little, but not that much.
I would tend to agree that she should focus on “elite” schools only, and at the same time should try Asian/Australian schools. I think her mistake is that she should have applied to more selective schools like U of Chicago and fewer schools that may have been admissions safeties but turned out to be financially unworkable. That’s the contradiction: schools that are the hardest to get into are often the most generous with need-based aid.