Chance a Canadian International Student for US Schools~

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • International student studying in the US with Canadian citizenship
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity: Asian, Female

Intended Major(s)

  • Computer Science/Engineering

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.96
  • ACT Score: 36

My school doesn’t weight GPAs or have class rank.

Coursework

Took 14 AP Classes:

  • Comp Sci A (5), Comp Sci Principles (5), Physics 1 (4), Physics 2 (4), Calc AB (5), Calc BC (5), Chem (4), Seminar (4), Research (5), Lang and Comp. (5)

  • I’m taking Lit, Bio, Gov. and Politics, and French currently.

Awards

  • Science Olympiad Awards (~5 awards- regional, not state level)
  • Technology Student Association awards (~7 state, ~2 national)
  • FBLA (~2 state awards, joined junior year)
  • 1st place IEEE Women in Engineering Award from a Summer Camp they held

Extracurriculars

  • State level officer for Tech. Student Association
  • President of Science Olympiad
  • 2 unpaid “internships”
  • State science fair winner
  • State level position at a well-established, international high school non profit in Computer Science
  • Data Analyst at a well-established, international non profit for STEM
  • Researcher at my local state university within Astronomy and Machine Learning
  • Prestigious summer program from MIT (not MITES though)
  • Another prestigious summer program

Essays: 8/10, don’t think I was too cliche
LORs: 8.5/10 overall, one of my teacher recs is 10/10

Cost Constraints / Budget
My parents are willing to pay 25k USD a year for the US schools

Schools

US:
Cornell
Duke
MIT
Stanford
Princeton
NYU
UMich
UVA
Georgia Tech
CMU
UW Seattle
all the UCs

Canada (no financial aid required, also considered domestic student):
University of Waterloo
University of Toronto
University of British Columbia
Queens University

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Wow - great profile - no doubt you’ll get in somehwere (like a UC) - when you say all the UCs do you really mean all the UCs? How about Cal Poly SLO?

I can’t chance you but your profile is certainly wonderful.

Edit - I missed budget - thanks @islandmama1

A lot will depend on what the schools say you can afford. Is your budget $25K because that’s what you can afford or it’s simply all they’re willing to spend. If it’s the latter, then all schools are gone and you need to apply to a school like Alabama that will get you there through Auto Merit.

If their demonstrated need will be high, some of these schools will work - but not all - and most that do meet need are need aware meaning that your finances could impact your admission decision.

So figure out your need - which is different than what your parents are willing to spend. Once you know what your need is you can re adjust but it’s likely every public will come off the list and some of the privates. Good luck.

PS - these schools are need blind and meet 100% of need - so your finances won’t in any way impact an admission decision - but again, we need to find out if you have need - or just parents unwilling to spend above their stated budget (which I can appreciate).

  • Harvard University.
  • Princeton University. …
  • MIT. …
  • Yale University. …
  • Dartmouth College.
  • Amherst College.
  • Bowdoin College
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I’ll let the more experienced chance you, you’re obviously a great candidate for many schools, but my concern is your budget.

I don’t think $25k will get you far as an international student at most of the schools you list, including the UC’s at over $70k/year for international students.

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Cross off all the UCs, CMU, UW, UMich, and GA Tech; you will not be able to afford in 25k, and FA ranges from little to none.

Add schools, like @tsbna44 suggests

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My parents are willing to spend more, I was just being slightly conservative.

Since I don’t want 100% of the financial burden to fall on my parents, I will probably end up taking a small loan (~15k a year) and the rest will be paid by them.

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Without considering finances (as my parents are willing to help me pay full, just being conservative with 25k), what are my chances at those schools?

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so they’re willing to pay $360K over four years? - US $, not Canadian.

And for engineering, would that make sense? You can go to a much cheaper school and have a similar outcome.

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They are willing but their (and my own) main concern is exactly what you said, that a similar outcome can be reached with Canadian schools / other cheaper schools.

However, if its MIT (my dream school), they would consider it.

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That’s the tradeoff - and I didn’t mean Canadian schools.

You really have to do a net price calculator to see if they have need. Maybe MIT will fund part of your education.

But a Purdue is half the price - is it half the school?

Alabama will be $20K US a year; my son just got a great gig from there, one above the average salary at higher ranked schools (unless their salaries go way up).

MIT is the dream - but why? And then is it worth over $400K Canadian? And you’ll take loans. Do you have access in Canada and how will you pay them back?

Besides the name MIT, what is attractive about it to you?

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With your grades, to me the Canadian universities that you are applying to look to be close to safeties. They are also very, very good universities. Correction: As I was reminded by a comment below, top universities in Canada do admit based on major, and CS and engineering are particularly competitive. My experience involves other majors, so I am not as sure.

I expect you to get some acceptances to US schools at prices that are not even remotely close to $25,000 per year. Given the excellent quality of universities in Canada, and given parents who are comfortable spending $25,000 per year, I do not understand why you would spend US$80,000 per year, or even US$65,000 per year, to attend university in the US. Note the exchange rate.

US$60,000 total in debt might be just barely manageable if you have a very marketable major (such as computer science or engineering). However, it is still a lot of debt. Also, without US citizenship or permanent residence staying in the US after graduation could be very difficult, and at least in my experience Canadian employers seem to prefer to hire from the very good Canadian universities. This could make the debt awkward to deal with.

Are you applying for financial aid at the US schools? If so, have you run the Net Price Calculator for these schools?

I think that you are not all that far from the average international applicant (ie an exceptional student) for Cornell, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton. I think that you know what the international acceptance rate is. I do not know Duke as well. NYU, Michigan, Georgia Tech, CMU and UW Seattle might be low reaches. UC Berkeley and UCLA are also reaches (whether low or otherwise). The other UCs mostly seem likely to me, but I do not know why I would attend any of them over Toronto or Queens.

My parents, siblings and one daughter attended university in Canada. My wife, other daughter, and I attended university in the US. I noticed one difference that you should be aware of: In the US there are significantly more required classes that are outside of your major. In Canada, if you want to, you get to take more classes that are relevant to your major. You should look at the general education requirements for MIT and for other US schools, and decide if you want to take that many classes outside of your intended major.

One small nit: When my daughters applied to universities in Canada from a high school in the US, a few missed the fact that they were Canadian citizens and along with the acceptances sent us information on how to apply for a student visa and what the costs would be for an international student. I called admissions and they had me fax a copy of either their Canadian passport or Certificate of Canadian Citizenship and they fixed this very quickly and easily. If you run into the same problem then do not panic, this is easy to fix.

Edit: What is your status in the USA? If you are a permanent resident, then some of these comments are less relevant. If you are a permanent resident in the US and also a resident of California, that would both reduce the cost and improve your chances at the various UC’s.

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Most of the schools on your list have single digit acceptance rates. As an international applicant, your chances will be much lower as the international applicant pool is extremely competitive.

Very sound advice :point_up_2:

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US citizen college students can’t take out that much in loans per year, will you be able to qualify for that much as a Canadian national, or will those loans be on your parents?

Did you apply EA to any of the schools on your list (of the ones that offer that)? Have you received any admissions decisions yet?

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Congratulations on being an excellent and competitive applicant. I will only address the UC’s.

All UC’s are test blind, so your ACT will not be considered for admission purposes or merit scholarships.

The current cost of attendance listed for UCLA as an example is $68,474 so expect your costs to be similar for all the UC’s. The UC’s do not offer need based aid for International students. Merit aid is highly competitive, offered in small amounts which has little impact on the overall costs. As an International applicant, expect to be full pay.

Since you are attending a US HS, you can calculate your UC GPA using the Calculator below. The UC’s only use 10-11th grades for the a-g course requirements in their GPA calculation and only AP classes will be given the weighting in the calculation. The UC’s consider 3 GPA’s: Unweighted UC GPA, Capped Weighted UC GPA and Fully weighted UC GPA.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

The table below uses the Capped weighted UC GPA, does not take into account residency nor major. Computer Science/Engineering will have much lower admit rates.

Campus 4.20+ 3.80-4.19 3.40-3.79 3.00-3.39
Berkeley 30% 11% 2% 1%
Davis 85% 55% 23% 10%
Irvine 60% 31% 14% 1%
Los Angeles 29% 6% 1% 0%
Merced 97% 98% 96% 89%
Riverside 97% 92% 62% 23%
San Diego 72% 25% 2% 0%
Santa Barbara 73% 28% 4% 1%
Santa Cruz 91% 81% 46% 9%

These are the 2022 Overall International admit rates and can determine which campuses might be Reach and Targets.

UCB: 5.5%
UCLA: 5.8%
UCI: 21%
UCSB: 19.7%
UCSD: 15.5%
UCD: 43%
UCSC: 55.4%
UCM: 68.3%
UCR: 81.7%

UCLA CS admit rate 2021 was 5.4% and Computer Engineering was 2.4%
UCB CS admit rate for CS L&S was 2.9%, EECS was 4.5% and Engineering overall was 7% in 2022.
UCSD/UCSB have no major specific admit data but both CS/CSE will be comparable to UCLA/UCB numbers.
UCI’s admit rate for CS 2022 was 5.8% and Comp Eng was 21.7%.
UCD has no major specific admit data but CS/CSE would be competitive.
UCSC 2022 admit rate for CS BS was 60% and BA was 51% while Comp Eng was 46%.
UCR‘s admit rate for 2022 CS was 36% and CSE was 51%.
UCM 2022 admit rate for CSE was 91%.

The more likely schools would be UC Davis, Santa Cruz, Riverside and Merced. You are competitive for all but the UC’s tend to be unpredictable especially for CS/CSE.

Best of luck.

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Admission to all of the OPs Canadian choices will be to some degree holistic not just grades based, and while I agree that Queen’s and probably UBC are likely safeties, UofT and Waterloo are not “safeties” for anyone applying to CS or Engineering.

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Yes. I forgot that top Canadian universities do admissions based on major. Oops. My mistake.

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