I really would love to apply to Stanford but I haven’t got a clear image of how financial aid works for them.
I was born and live in Panama, also with Spanish nationality. My father passed away 2 months ago, so I only live with my mother. She earns around 40,000 USD a year and have around 38,000 USD in savings only, so I would need whichever university I choose to pay almost all costs if not all. In case of any merit-based scholarship questions, my unweighted GPA is 3.8 and my class rank is #1, with 4 strong extracurriculars.
I would like to know if Stanford would be a suitable choice for me given this data.
Stanford is among the most generous schools extant – but also the most difficult to be accepted. But know that if accepted, you’ll be expected to contribute with summer savings as well as work-study. If accepted, you’d receive a generous, need-based package from Stanford.
Are you a US citizen or permanent resident? Perhaps not? If not, then know that international applicants face worse odds than everyone else. When you’re talking about less than 5%… well.
Why are you asking about Stanford and Ivies? YOu should be looking at a broad range of schools, not ones where even the most gifted have terrible odds of admittance.
Try the supermatch tool on the left panel of this page.
Unless it has changed the policy recently, Stanford admissions is only need blind for US citizens, so for citizens of other countries ability to pay is taken into account. That’s not to say all international students are full pay, but probably more of them are than US students.
There are a handful of US universities that are need blind for internationals (IIRC a few of the Ivies and MIT) but most aren’t.
So if you are the top couple of people of all the international applicants to one of the top Universities in the world, you won’t be getting financial aid from Stanford.
There are 3000 other colleges in the USA. Check out educationusa.gov
Financial Aid
Regardless of citizenship, applicants are reviewed in the context and country where they attend high school. In addition, Stanford is committed to meeting demonstrated financial need for all admitted students (regardless of citizenship) who have requested financial aid during the application process.
If you are not a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen, your request for financial aid will be a factor in our admission evaluation. While financial aid resources are limited for international citizens, Stanford does offer admission to a number of these applicants each year. International citizens who indicate on their applications that they will not be applying for financial aid and subsequently are admitted are not eligible to apply for financial aid at any time during their four years at Stanford.