<p>I've been hesitating a lot...but, well let's do that ! First, I'm an international student (French) and I've also applied for colleges here (almost no selection). I just wanted to know if I should start to take care about visas and so on or if the probability I end up in an American college is really really low.</p>
<p>Here are the colleges I applied to : </p>
<p>-Amherst
-Brown University
-Claremont McKenna College
-Columbia University
-Cornell University
-Dartmouth College
-Duke University
-Georgetown University
-Harvard College
-Macalester College
-MIT (already out of this one...)
-Northwestern University
-Princeton University
-Stanford University
-Trinity CT
-Tufts University
-University of Chicago
-Vanderbilt University
-Williams College
-Yale University</p>
<p>These schools are highly selective, I'm aware of that. </p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (single sitting): 680 CR
700 W (10 essay)
770 M (one damn mistake !!!)
[</em>] SAT II: (biggest weakness in my opinion) : Bio E : 690
World History : 690
Math 2 : 590 -->I know...I know... (bye bye MIT)
[<em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 20): 16.81/20 (including mid-year report-->this one was awesome, like the best I ever had since...6th grade !!!)
[</em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): top 10%
[<em>] Senior Year Course Load: most rigorous (I'm the ONLY senior having that many classes...)
[</em>] Awards: ranked 3rd at academical geology Olympiads and...a German proficiency degree (given by the Goethe Institute, but not really high level: B1 (for Europeans))
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[<em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Well, here they don't matter at all and mine are kind of weak (I think, I hope, the adcoms are aware of that...)
5 years of classical guitar
4 years of dance
tutoring (paid and for free)
school chaplaincy (awesome !)
[</em>] Essays: Some were great (9/10), others good (7/10 -->8.5/10)
[<em>] Teacher Recommendation: My German teacher one was crazy ! I guess my bio teacher was very good.
[</em>] Counselor Rec: very very good. My school is really small and she likes me. She has spent a huge amount of time on it, with another counselor.</p>
<p>[/ul]Other[list]
[<em>] Country (if international applicant): France
[</em>] School Type: small private (much cheaper than the American ones), kind of competitive (one went to Duke), many end up in "pr</p>
<p>i reiterate my demand : please, at least one answer…</p>
<p>bump ! bump ! bump !</p>
<p>It’s an interesting post, considering that most International posts are from Asia. Your statistics are solid enough but being an international student is a tough road since the number of international seats are limited. The biggest unknown is the amount of internal competition your will have from France & the EU. Like with Asia, the more competition the lower the chance. Is there a lot of French students applying to American Universities?Also all your colleges are all considered dream schools, hopefully you applied to some lower tiered schools.</p>
<p>First, thank you for answering 
Well, I hope my thread will help because as you noticed most of internationals here are Asians and it can be hard to indentify oneself. My interviewers told me that the extreme majority of French applicants were coming from american schools in France or at least bilingual which is not my case at all. Therefore, I don’t know if the adcoms will put me in another box “french one without any anglosaxon background” or if they won’t make any difference. There are usually one or two French (at least who lived in France because there is a quite numerous American community here) each year who go to top schools. Indeed, only 3% of students leave France just after their French Baccalaureate and most of them attend schools in the EU.</p>
<p>bump ! bump ! bump !</p>
<p>harvard is waaay outta reach. sorry.</p>
<p>Well, that is what I thought too, don’t be sorry : seriously LOL
What about other schools on the list there ?</p>
<p>Chances are you won’t be accepted at
The ivies or other top one’s such as Stanford
But you do have a chance at them
You would get into at least one of them
Chance me back</p>
<p>Well, that is what I thought too. Thank you for answering (I really need American point of view)
Any other opinion ? Maybe which would focus on each school.</p>
<p>-Amherst - Low reach
-Brown University - Reach
-Claremont McKenna College - High match/Low reach
-Columbia University - Reach
-Cornell University - High match/Low reach
-Dartmouth College - Reach
-Duke University - Reach
-Georgetown University
-Harvard College - High high high reach
-Macalester College -
-MIT (already out of this one…) - High high high reach
-Northwestern University - High match
-Princeton University - High high high reach
-Stanford University - High high high reach
-Trinity CT
-Tufts University - Match
-University of Chicago - Reach
-Vanderbilt University - High match/Low reach
-Williams College - Low reach
-Yale University - High high high reach</p>
<p>If you’re taking the french baccalurette or whatveer which is supposed to be incredibly hard, then I’d pull all the ones down a notch. I might be wrong, actually I probably am wrong, but I’m just judging based on your GPA.</p>
<p>-Amherst - Low reach
-Brown University - Reach
-Claremont McKenna College - High match/Low reach
-Columbia University - Reach
-Cornell University - High match/Low reach
-Dartmouth College - Reach
-Duke University - Reach
-Georgetown University
-Harvard College - High high high reach
-Macalester College -
-MIT (already out of this one…) - High high high reach
-Northwestern University - High match
-Princeton University - High high high reach
-Stanford University - High high high reach
-Trinity CT
-Tufts University - Match
-University of Chicago - Reach
-Vanderbilt University - High match/Low reach
-Williams College - Low reach
-Yale University - High high high reach</p>
<p>If you’re taking the french baccalurette or whatveer which is supposed to be incredibly hard, then I’d pull all the ones down a notch. I might be wrong, actually I probably am wrong, but I’m just judging based on your GPA.</p>
<p>Well thank you a lot (but like really) for your detailed post : extremely useful ! I am actually taking the French baccalaureate. I honestly think that if I’m admitted to a HYPS, it would be a real MIRACLE (no hyperbole here).
Any other ideas (even though I think you guys really helped me there to get a more precise idea of my situation) ?</p>
<p>See, if you directly convert your GPA, it’s too low for almost all the schools on your list. I, however, remember reading about someone who had a 15 and got into a great university ( I think it was Brown) and I also do have many French friends who say it’s actually REALLY hard to get high scores, so I mean, I think the Universities know that. You can’t know till you have a mode of comparison, which none of us do.</p>
<p>Well, the French embassy considers every grade above 15.5 (from 10th grade to 12th) as an A+. Actually a B+ is 11.5-11. That is true that some of my teachers sometimes say things like : “You can even aim for a 16”, like if it was madness whereas it seems not that incredible for foreigners.
Thank you a lot for your post and thanks to every other people who took time to answer to my request.
I think I quite have an idea of where I stand now, (even though bad surprises and miracles can happen…).
Thanks :D</p>