So I am an H-4 visa holder but am an only child with parents who have a total income of $200,000 and are on the greed card line. So would my visa hurt my chances for HYPSM even though my parent can pay for it and my stats meet the requirement for these colleges? Also, how would I be compared to my peers?
Yes. Not only can it hurt, it will hurt. You are an international applicant. Most top schools have a cap on the percentage of international applicants will comprise their student body. As a result, the acceptance rate for internationals is much lower than the overall rate. Most colleges do not break out international acceptance rates, but as an example of one that does, MIT accepted 2.4% of international applicants compared to 7.9% of US applicants.
https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats/
Doesn’t matter. HYPM are all need-blind for admissions.
That is the case for most applicants.
I assume you are applying green card, not greed card. I don’t know whether green card holders get treated similarly as us citizens in terms of college admission pool? You might want to find that out if you are close in getting the GC.
Are your parents naturalized US citizens now?
As skieurope says, H4 counts as international. Domestic is current citizen/green card only. Also bear in mind that if you will turn 21 while you are at college and you/your parents have not adjusted status to green card holders yet, you will need to apply to change your status to F1.
They are. But one first needs a green card. Being “on the line” presents no advantage at all.
^agree, certain people in the “green card line” off H status can literally wait years - in some cases up to a decade - and there is no guarantee of being granted it, or that the family will not leave the US before that happens. Colleges will not consider such a student domestic without a green card in hand.
I don’t think it’s going to hurt that much. If You are an international applicant but are not applying for financial aid, it’s not a huge impediment. International admissions are NOT need blind so that’s a huge hurdle. Though there are caps on certain countries at some colleges, the top ones in particular, it’s still nothing like needing financial aid.
Yes, green card status would put you on equal footing with US citizens, but just being on the list for the green card doesn’t do anything
@cptofthehouse , OP was specifically asking HYPSM. Other than Stanford, those are all need blind for internationals.
I might be wrong, but if the OP is a US high school student living in the United States continuously, he/she might be considered a domestic applicant by most colleges regardless of immigration status. Undocumented students who attended local high schools are treated as such even by state publics, although they often have to pay out-of-state tuition and usually do not qualify for FA.
When I was a senior in high school, I was told that I wouldn’t be able to attend college because of my status (I was a B-2 visa holder, later converted into F-1), but my guidance counselor sent out apps for me anyway to several schools, both private and public, that I marked on my SAT forms, and they all offered me admission (my scores were good but not phenomenal since I was still learning English, so academically I was in the midrange of the admission profiles for each school). Had I been able to finance my studies, I could have attended and would have been issued a student visa, if needed. Unfortunately, I had no way of paying for college and no one to pay for me, so I had to wait quite a few years to fulfill the dream, but the OP does not have this problem. I think that he/she needs to do some research (possibly by contacting the schools of interest) to find out how they treat domestic students who are not green card holders for admission purposes. If the OP does not require a student visa, the approach might be the same as towards undocumented students: admission as domestics, OOS tuition.
You are indeed wrong.
Some (and emphasis on some) colleges will consider undocumented applicants as part of the domestic pool; that situation does not apply to the OP.
@NYCgirl999 , my daughter is a green card holder and a friend”s daughter is H4. We have investigated this extensively. Only green card holders and citizens are included as domestic applicants. Of course, OP is welcome to contact colleges to confirm this.
By the way, your GC was correct that you would not have been able to attend college on a B2 visa (I presume you know that attending high school here was also in violation of your B2 status, but colleges check immigration status whereas public schools generally don’t.). Your situation was not in any way unusual in getting admit offers - student visas are linked to a particular college, so colleges making an offer to a student who has yet to get a visa is the normal course of things - they first need to get an admit offer and accept it to be able to get a student visa… OP happens to already have a visa that allows him/her to study here (at least until turning 21 when changing to F1 will be necessary if the family does not yet have green cards) but it does not turn him/her into a domestic applicant.