Chance me at IVYs and other TOP schools (international student)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I’m a junior high school student that will apply all over the world and see where I’ll get in. I want to apply to IVYs, Oxford, Cambridge, Melbourne, NYU, other top schools…
How would you chance me for these colleges ?

Country: Sweden
School: Private French school
Country of origin: Syria but born and raised in Saudi Arabia
Gender: Female
SAT: 1500/1600
SAT Essay: 6 6 6
SAT subject tests: Won’t take any (I can’t afford more exams lol)
Unweighted GPA 4.0
French GPA: 16/20 (I got though 20/20 in maths all high school years till today and I hope to have this grade next year too)
NO APS
NO RANK
NO AWARDS

Extracurricular:
-Activist in “Djurens Ratt”, Swedish organisation for animal rights (have been a vegan for 3 years so far)
-Member of the Youth Advisory Council of Plan International Sweden
-Blog on cycling
-Cyclist with club
-Cycling Race (no rank, you just have to finish it) 300km long! (It’s called Vätternrundan)
-MUN school : just participation
-Instagram health&fitness account (500 followers so far lol but it’s a passion so I don’t care much)
-Go to the gym a lot (into bodybuilding)

Job/Work experience:
-Private Maths tutor
-Private English tutor
-Bike shop intern
-Interpret (English-French) at a 1-week conference between “Plan Sweden” and “Plan Senegal” (at Plan Sweden)

Summer activities:
-AstraZenecas 2 weeks research summer school 2018
-1 month summer job (this coming summer I’ll work at a school where I’ll read out loud stories to kids haha)

Essays:
I plan to write about my (road) cycling passion.
Also maybe about culture shock in Sweden.
I have other ideas.

Financial situation:
I got no money to finance anything lol so scholarships (full ride please) + loans + jobs + what not

Intended major: I use to know but I changed my mind so many times. I considered first law but that means I’m stuck in the same country my entire life, then I thought psychiatry but the study path is too long, then I thought dietician (which I would SOOOO love doing) but my parents think it’s too deceiving after all the hardwork I’m putting in my current studies, so then I thought alright I’ll do something with business/economics… Lol I have no idea, I’m lost as you can see!

WHAT CAN I DO TO STRENGTHEN MY APP?

2

So, a few facts for framing the conversation:

→ you can’t apply to both Oxford & Cambridge- you have to pick one. 16/20 is in the average range for both, though Cambridge says that in recent years, the actual marks of accepted students have been higher than that.

→ financial aid is not an option for Oxbridge, and it’s not clear what the fees will be for EU residents.

→ most universities outside the US expect you to pick one subject, prepare for that subject in your last 2 years of secondary school, and apply to study that subject. Oxbridge takes that to a whole other level: you are expected to love your subject and be able to show that. Unlikely that it is a good place for somebody whose interests are not already clearly defined.

→ except for a few subjects (such as architecture, often engineering, sometimes CS) most universities inside the US are fine with your not knowing what you want to study until your 2nd year of university

→ US give two kinds of financial aid: need-based and merit-based. Most of the top schools give only need-based aid; merit aid is given to attract students that they particularly want.

→ Need based aid can be “meets need” (the uni figures out how much they think you can afford to pay and they cover the rest) or “financial aid” (they give you some amount towards tuition and/or room&board). A key variable is how much they expect you/your parents to borrow.

→ there are very, very, very few “full rides” for international students and they tend to be at the super-top colleges (eg, Harvard, on a full ‘meets need’ package); OR specific highly competitive scholarships (eg, Stamps); OR at much lower ranked places that are using financial aid to get high stats applicants to come (eg, University of Alabama at Huntsville).

→ in general, the admission rate for international students is a fraction of what it is for domestic students.

→ you say ‘no rank’- but irl everybody has an idea where they stand: are you in the very top tier of your class? would your teachers write that you are a superlative student?

→ spend some time over the summer really researching the US colleges (the Fisk guide is often recommended around here). Learn the differences between Dartmouth and Columbia, Harvard and Brown, Cornell and UPenn, etc.

3

THIS^^^

Pay full fees and you should be able to get into some schools.

4

“most universities outside the US expect you to pick one subject, prepare for that subject in your last 2 years of secondary school, and apply to study that subject.”

Strictly speaking this should at least say “outside of North America”. In this one regard, Canada is the same as the US. I thought that Australia was similar to the US and Canada in this regard. However, …

“I got no money to finance anything lol so scholarships (full ride please)”

This restricts the OP to a small set of schools in the US who offer full need based aid to international students. As far as I know, there is no school in Canada that offers significant need based aid to international students. I do not know about schools in Europe or Australia. However, it sounds like finances is a huge constraint in this case.

5

1° Your 16 qualifies you for Oxbridge but you need to be highly specialized in ONE subject. You could apply for archeology if you can work on digs this summer and during the Fall, since it’s a little bit more interdisciplinary than the others, but you’d need experience and high marks in history; in addition, your mentioning Maths indicates you’re likely in S, which is the wrong section for that… So, I don’t think Oxbridge would be a good fit.
2° You could apply for Scottish studies at UEdinburgh (it’s totally interdisciplinary) and similar intersciplinary programs in Scotland: university would be tuition-free. You’d be free to work. Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon guarantees this for all Europeans, until 2021 (ie., the year of the new Referendum). But unless you get some sort of stipend from Sweden, you wouldn’t
3° As a high level Math student in a French school, you automatically qualify for “prepas”. They’re HIGHLY intensive and selective, so adding some of the classes at schools like Dautet in La Rochelle, Bertrand de Born in Périgueux, Vaugelas in Chambéry, Mistral in Avignon, would give you better chances- you can of course apply to the big ones like Fermat, Louis Le Grand, Fénelon, Henri IV, Le Parc, keeping in mind acceptance rate at those is around 20-25%. Housing is included with “internat” and priority goes to low income students for these (because rent is very very low, like 20% normal rent). The intensity would prevent you from working though. MPSI have 10 hours of Math, 6 Physics, 4 Chemistry, plus English, Philosophy, and CS. PCSI have 8 hours Math, 8 hours Physics, 6 hours Chemistry, plus English, Philosophy, CS.
4° Investigate Sweden’s possibilities wrt financial aid - might they have scholarships to study abroad?
5° The US: your SAT score qualifies you for competitive scholarships. Look into Wilson at Appalachian State, UCincinnati’s Cincinatus (and there are further scholarships like Lindner honors for business), U Maryland, Ohio University, Miami-Ohio, USC Columbia Honors, UNC Johnson Scholarship, Vanderbilt’s CV… They’re few and far between, and have hundreds of superb applicants, but your story, activities, work, results/scores, etc, don’t put you out of contention.
Then, you have all the LACs: St Olaf, Dickinson, Middlebury would certainly be interested, as well as national universities such as Tufts, Georgetown… You’d have to be strategic for your choices and pick universities that meet full need. The only universities that meet full need for internationals AND are need blind (ie., don’t reject you because you’d cost too much) are Amherst, Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton.

Obviously, being a Syrian refugee in Sweden enrolled in a French Lycée makes you interesting right off the bat and quadrilingual (Arabic, French, Swedish, English). BTW, depending on the college, you could apply to study Arabic/French or French/English in the US, as those subjects really want strong applicants. You could add a Statistics or CS minor, or switch majors later at universities that allow that.

Your work with Plan Sweden would be very interesting to read about in an essay.

6

@MYOS1634 Thank you for your detailed answer!, one thing I should have mentioned however is that I’m not in S but ES :confused: which also has maths but less in depth.

7

Then you need to find ways to study math on your own because the S math S curriculum is already light compared to other curricula (such as AP calculus or A-Level Maths) and the ES curriculum is good for stats but light for calc.