Chance me for top US unis as an International Student?

Student Lounge International Students
1

SAT 1520
Subject SATs: Chemistry 760, Molecular biology 780, Physics 790

CIE student, GCSES: 6 As 3 As
GCE AS level: Highest Grade is an A ;
Got 5 As
Predicted A Level Grades: 2 As 2As

For the US viewers, that’s a rough equivalent of an UW GPA: 4.00, W GPA: 4.31
Ranked 1st out of 70 (small HS)

ECs:
Sports House Captain
Student Council
President of the School Charity Club
Tennis, Cricket for 2 years
Head Boy (President of the whole HS)
Volunteering at a Health Centre
Bronze Duke of Edinburgh International Award
More than a handful of MUNs
Debate

Achievements:
An award for MUN
Won a Inter School Science Olympiad
Won awards for academic achievement in English Language.

Intended Major: Biological Sciences
Intended Unis:
Reach Schools:
Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Jonhs Hopkins, MIT, Stanford.
Also, Boston Uni Trustee Scholarship?

Solid Schools:
UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UMichigan.

Safety: Boston Uni, NYU, UT Austin.

UK Schools: Cambridge, UCL, UManchester, Bristol, KCL.

2

I forgot to add, this is for 2024

3

Can you afford to be full pay or will you be needing financial aid?

4

All those schools are reaches, especially if you need financial aid. Admission rates are much lower and much more difficult for internationals than for Americans. NYU and Boston U are your best bets. UT Austin is very difficult if you aren’t from Texas. The rest are lottery ticket type schools.

5

You have a list of all reach schools with maybe BU being more of a match.

A safety is a school where you will absolutely be accepted and can afford. 80% acceptance rate or higher.

What is you career goal? If you intention is pre-med, understand that attending undergrad in the US will not mean acceptance to US med school.

6

Foreign admits are generally limited to 10% or so, which makes it very tough esp at top schools. Not sure how your grades and activities will translate. Your test scores are solid but will not stand out. Suggest you slide your ratings one level - your safety schools should be targets, solids are reach schools, and many of your reach may be big stretches indeed. Even kids with 1600s and solid ecs are not considering NYU and BU as safeties any more, so I would suggest you add some schools where the acceptance rate is above 30-40% if you are set on going to school in US. Best of luck,

7

@InkyDesire Definitely move UT Austin, Michigan, and NYU out of “safety” and put them under “Reach”. 90% of UT Austin admits are from Texas. Only 10% are from outside of Texas-- approx. 8% out of state, and 2% international.

8

It’s a great resume, but, most of the schools on your list are inundated with great applications. That’s why many of them have single digit admit rates.

You didn’t mention finances. If you are full pay for NYU it’s probably a match (not a safety). Same for BU. As mentioned UT-Austin is never a safety and mostly never even a match for out of state. You will need to be full pay for the UCs too. Your “solid” and “safety” schools all have tough admit rates, either overall or for out of state for the state schools, and the odds are mostly even smaller for international applicants.

What college are you intending to apply at for Cambridge? Cambridge and UCL I presume would rank in your list above a number of the US schools.

9

Here’s a thread from last year from an extremely talented British applicant who had considerable success: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/international-students/2056643-finding-an-intellectual-college-for-a-clueless-17-year-old.html

But the biggest difference I perceive is that you want to apply for sciences (although fortunately not Eng/CS). It’s going to be much harder to stand out in that competition when top US domestic applicants (and probably even foreigners) are far more concentrated in high paying, career oriented quantitative subjects. Very different to the UK where the competition at Cambridge will be similarly fierce for English and engineering or computer science and classics. That makes an undergrad degree in the UK followed by a masters in the US a potentially better path to consider.

Also, the US system is probably more interesting to an arts student from the UK due to the breadth of offerings, conversely many U.K. science students might dislike the required general ed courses and essays.

In contrast to the thread I linked above, where she spent time visiting to pick schools that seemed to be a fit, you seem to have a fairly generic list of top schools and big city schools. That doesn’t do much to convince the reader that you’ll be able to explain why you “fit” with each school in a US admission process that is incredibly “holistic” (ie cares more about fit, including your socio economic status and sports, than your academic stats).

10

Berkeley, USC, UCLA, and Umichigan are all gonna be reaches.

11

The UCs aren’t “solids” for you specifically because the UCs are public universities created for California residents.

You are not a resident, so your priority goes down.
Your competition is other international candidates from your country.
There is no financial aid for non-residents, so you are full pay at $65K per year, that is IF you get in.
Where did you get this list of schools? They are ALL vastly different. It looks like you didn’t look at their websites.
Did you pull them off of a list? Did you look at their websites yet to see how they admit?

12

“I forgot to add, this is for 2024”

For admission in 2024? So these scores and achievements are all hypothetical?

13

You need actual matches (30-40% acceptance = much lower for science, within stem much lower for internationals) and safeties (more than 40% acceptance or 35-40% located in the Midwest/South).

14

This got moved to UK forum but I suspect OP is not in fact British, writing CIE? Country of origin may matter for US admissions. Perhaps OP can clarify.

15

Sorry that’s a typing error
2020*

16

minimickey
Thank you so much
All the advice really helped