I am a refugee from Russia, my skin color is White.I moved to USA a little more than a year ago. Im 25.
I have attended my motherland’s university for 3 years and my GPA there was 2.7(it was 8 years ago). I am currently attending 3rd semester of Community College. My GPA here in CC is 3.6.
My extracurricular activities are:
-Chess, 1st category. Rating 1900. Multiple prizes in Moscow Championships in junior category. Participated multiple times in junior Russian Championships and once in junior Europe Championship.
-Sambo 4 years
-Piano 5+ years
-I have also studied German and French, both for 7+ years. Mostly in school and university. I don’t remember much of it, but I can refresh my memory and get back to proficcient level in few months.
That’s about all the activities I ever had. Volunteering isn’t really popular in Russia.
Job experience:
2012-2014 worked as logistics specialist
2013-2016 I had my own business, and it was somewhat successful. Nothing amazing, but I had $3,000-$5,000 revenue practically every month. For Russia it’s really a lot of money.
I’ve also invested money in Etherium back when it was worth around $14, and I earned more than $15,000 pure profit on it. I’m currently invested in other altcoins, not sure if I should list it in my extracurricular activities.
January 2017-July 2017 worked full-time at low-paying job here in USA. I also studied full-time while working. Again, not sure if I should list it or not cause it was really low-paying but I basically was required to do nothing for like 6-7 out of 8 hours during the day. I earned a little more than 11,000 during these 6 months.
I am not sure if I can get any recommendations from my profesossors in Community College because even in classes where I got A, I didnt talk much, Im kinda very introverted so I didn’t have any special relationships with any of my profesosrs. Even if they give me recommendations, they will be generic.
I think I can write a really good essay if it’s something related to my life or struggles I had to overcome. It will be much worse if it’s “Why did you choose our college?”
My major is Computer Information Systems. I’m admitted in my local college for Spring 2018. It’s not a very good college, but it’s somewhat decent. It has %75 acceptance rate. I want to try and get in any top50 school, BUT I know I just won’t be able to afford out-of-state tuition. Pell-grant will only cover 6000, so the rest must be in their scolarships or these colleges can just generally have cheap out-of-state tuition. Am I right to assume that I have some chances to get into colleges with %25-40 acceptance rate and that I can definitely get in colleges with %50+ acceptance rate? I also need the college to be accepting applicants for Spring Semester and the deadline has to be not earlier than 1st November so that I would have time to send them required transcripts. Yeah, I know that my choice wasn’t big in the beginning, but now it’s even smaller. I also can’t use shotgun method and apply to 10+ schools because I have to pay application fee and 2 transcript fees(1 of them is $70 WES fee).
Am I being realistic about my chances to find something good before Spring? So far, I found University of Delaware(Tuition with Room and Board is 23,000. It’s kinda affordable, but the school itself isn’t the best, I’d be willing to spend this ammount for like top10-20 school, but I really have doubts about spending it on this college if it’s only a little better than the one I’m accepted in). I can also apply to Purdue University, but I am not sure that they will give me enough financial aid. I could apply to Collgate University(they meet full financial aid), but I can’t find my major there and I’d rather not major in Computer Science. Tufts University through REAL program(http://admissions.tufts.edu/apply/applying-as-a-transfer-candida/real-application/) but 15% acceptance rate is kinda scary. They also offer full need meet and they are my 1st choice so far, I’d love to be admitted there.
Thanks for reading it all. I’ve spent whole week trying to find good universities and this is all I could find so far. Please can you tell me other schools that I could apply to? Thanks.