Chance me please...

Student Lounge International Students
1

<p>I'm an international student from West Africa
SAT: 680 CR, 800 M, 720 W
SAT 2: 760 M2, 730 Phy ( I didn't have enough time to prepare as I was taking my final school exams, so I used what I learnt in school)</p>

<p>CUMULATIVE GPA: 87.5 (It's virtually impossible to get 100 or above 100s in our country, its even rare to get a 90, but if I use the numbers of As I have as a factor then it is 3.97)
IGCSEs: 4A*s 3As
Rank: 2/84</p>

<p>ECS:
Orchestra Trumpet 2 player- Played in a couple of assemblies, Christmas Carols and popular events
School Choir: Tenor Singer
Church Choir:Tenor Singer
Debate Team: Won a couple of debates throughout high school
Quiz Team: Won a couple of quizzes for my school
Science Olympiad
Community Service: We urged the School to all donate $10 to Haiti (a boy brought the idea up), we came up with $5000 and a certificate from UNICEF. We washed parents cars when they came to our school and got about $500 which we donated to Charity. We organized school raffle draw in which we got a profit of about $600. We give to the Orphans and Less Privileged around our school $250 a week. We've done a lot more that I'm too lazy to list.</p>

<p>Volunteer Work:
I always arrange the Library for the Librarian after school
Helped the Librarian take care of the Library while she went to take care of her baby at home.
Taught some Kids who were having challenges and didn't understand their teachers
Arrange the assembly hall ( I didn't do this a lot because they were already people who did this)
Helped some lazy teachers mark Junior Students exam papers</p>

<p>Work Experience: Worked at the Electrical Engineering department in ECOWAS Headquarters.
I also learned a couple of programming languages including iOS </p>

<p>Academic Honors:
Valedictorian
Bronze Medal in National Science Competition
Overall Best Male Student throughout High School
GI College Award
A lot of subject awards from my school.
School Annual Quiz Award -Most Valuable Participant
Stam Annual Quiz Award
My room is literally filled with certificates and plaques do they matter?
Financial Aid: My mom is a single parent of two is that a hook? She can pay about $30000 but the rest I'll need financial aid.</p>

<p>I'm looking to apply ED to Cornell, RD to UCB, UCLA, MIT, Stanford (I'm not sure if they give financial aid to Internationals), Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, GTech, Princeton, Yale, Brown and about four safeties. Please chance me and tell me those that give reasonable financial aid to International students.</p>

2

<p>

Berkeley, UCLA, Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon don’t really give financial aid to international students. Cornell has a reputation for being stingy to international students: many international students will be admitted with no or insufficient financial aid, though some students do get their need covered. May I ask what your safeties are? If you are applying for aid, your safeties may not be nearly as safe as you might think.</p>

<p>

No. Quite to the contrary. There are lots of single parents and applying for financial aid will put you at a great disadvantage.</p>

<p>

iOS is an operating system, not a programming language.</p>

<p>

I wouldn’t exactly phrase it like that! :slight_smile: Try “library assistant”, “tutor” and “grader” instead. Or omit the positions completely if you didn’t put much time into them. For example, if you were grading papers every week, it’s a position that should go on your resume. If you helped for one or two afternoons, it’s not really worth mentioning. All of these little jobs will distract attention from your main accomplishments.</p>

3

<p>

Okay you are making me really frantic right now. Thank you anyways for telling me the schools that don’t give aid, I’ll cross them off my list. Do you know any other way I can cover my fees?

Are you serious? It’s not a hook then??? Wow but I thought schools like Cornell were need-blind and they assay regardless whether you applied for financial aid. And if they at all give me aid how much are we talking about on average???</p>

<p>

I know iOS is an operating system; it’s right in the name. It was just to late for me to edit it and substitute “and” for “including”</p>

<p>

Thanks for urging me to be concise; I was just trying to gloss over though!
Thanks for taking your time to reply, however you seemed to have slipped from the main question of chancing me? Do I have a decent chance or an epsilon chance? Also please can you tell me part of the top 30 schools that give aid to internationals? Those that are need blind and the average amount? I’m completely blank. Thanks once again in advance!</p>

4

<p>I didn’t chance you because I cannot chance you. I have never worked in an admissions office and I have no idea what’s going on behind closed doors. Your profile seems strong enough that you should have a non-zero chance of admission, but I cannot tell you how much above zero. </p>

<p>FYI, international admission rates are typically lower than domestic admission rates at prestigious universities and colleges with financial aid. For example, MIT’s international admission rate in [url=<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats]2012[/url”>Admissions statistics | MIT Admissions]2012[/url</a>] was 3% compared to a domestic admission rate of 11%. That number is quite disheartening.</p>

<p>

Cornell is “need-blind” for international students but does NOT promise to meet your need. In other words: applying for financial aid won’t hurt your chances of admission, but you might be admitted without financial aid. In contrast, “need-sensitive” colleges would flat out reject you when they cannot offer you sufficient aid. You can find the average financial aid package of enrolled international students in Cornell’s college profile on collegeboard.org. However, keep in mind that that number only reflects students who did receive enough financial aid to attend. All the international students who had to turn down their offer of admission because they couldn’t afford to attend are not counted.</p>

5

<p>

Unfortunately not. Almost all financial aid that originates in the US is awarded by the colleges themselves and selective public universities rarely give scholarships/financial aid to foreign students. Many private universities don’t either. Georgia Tech does occasionally grant out-of-state tuition waivers to international students: to students who have completed at least 2 semesters at the university and whose financial situation has changed unexpectedly. The conditions are such that the tuition waivers can only be used as “emergency funding.”</p>

<p>That’s for US sources of funding. Some international students get funding from their home country, but whether that’s available really depends on your country. For example, some governments will give their students loans to help them study abroad. Others will pay the actual study abroad fees on behalf of the student; in turn the student makes a commitment to return home for x number of years after finishing college. Oftentimes study abroad funding is restricted to certain high-need majors or limited to a year. Your own country may or may not offer such funding.</p>