sent you a private message
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You should add Harvard and MIT (and Amherst) to your list. Harvard and MIT are tops in economics, and all three are need-blind for internationals, along with Yale and Princeton.
You may find interesting this article from Forbes magazine about need-blind admissions, and colleges that are not need-blind, but still generous to international students.
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Please heed the warnings from the above posters. It sounds like you made an honest mistake when posting. Know that whatever you send in with your application will be scrutinized. Any attempt to inflate your accomplishments will not go over well with admissions, especially because of the Varsity Blues scandal.
But anyway, I just noticed that you were planning on applying EA. Why ? Why not binding ED? Your chances would be highest in a binding situation. Some colleges don’t have a binding program (Yale, Princeton, etc). Some have both (Chicago). At Chicago for example the EA acceptance rates are very very low – probably even lower than RD.
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I didn’t understand what does a binding program mean if you are free please explain it, I will surely read more about Varsity Blues and others things.
Binding early decision means that you will attend that school if admitted. You can only apply to one binding ED school, although some schools allow you to apply EA to publics.
Most schools have higher acceptance rates in ED.
That said, if you need financial aid, I would not encourage you to apply ED. You want to be able to compare offers. Even need blind/meets full need schools may not give you everything your family needs to attend. (It’s the school’s definition of need, not yours).
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Thanks for telling these things, I never knew about them, can you please tell me some website or book that can serve as a guide for me while applying?
@momofboiler1 is correct.
ED is binding decision, and you’ll be required to sign a statement that you will attend if admitted. There are some ways to wiggle out, especially if the finances don’t work out. But doing so could lead to a black eye for your HS guidance counselor for future applicants. In general about 2/3 of the class is filled in the early rounds. This doesn’t leave much room for the applicants in the RD pool. This is the reason why most ED pools are filled with wealthy students – since they don’t have to compare financial aid offers.
Yale has single choice early action (SCEA) – which means that if you are accepted, you are not bound to attend. There is no ED program at Yale. This is because they are confident in their yields. Binding ED helps control yield and leads to a more predictable estimate of financial aid. It also leads to less control by students. Princeton used to have SCEA, but this year abandoned it because of COVID.
But know that if you apply to one of the schools above, and get accepted, they will be generous with financial aid. You might consider running the net price calculator on each school’s website as a rough estimate. They are not 100% accurate for internationals. But it will give you a general idea of how much aid you could expect. If you need a lot of aid (>30K per year) then you’ll need to cast a very very wide net. Because most schools have limited FA budgets for internationals.
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I believe that you are an exceptional applicant. As such, I suggest that you look closely at the strength of the Econ departments at the best universities in the US. Harvard is considered one of the best in the country, and will offer you a full ride if they take you, if your family cannot afford to pay for you. Look at the others that I mentioned, too, that offer full financial aid to international students, or generous financial aid to international students, and decide where you want to apply, and if you have a very strong preference for one certain school. If one of the schools you are very interested in doesn’t have a reputation for full fin aid for int’l students, contact the admissions office. Your qualifications are so outstanding that it would not be unreasonable for you to send an email to the head of admissions at that college, saying, “I am so and so, from such and such country. I won such and such international competitions, and I placed such and such in my country’s high school graduation exams. I come from a family with such and such an annual income (in both country’s currencies). Were you to accept me, what kind of a financial aid package might I expect?” I believe that I will require full financial aid for both tuition and housing, as even the travel expenses will be a financial burden for my family.
This is an extraordinary type of email to send, but I believe that your credentials warrant it. Do NOT send this to the schools that are already reputed to be generous with int’l students. You only need to send it to the schools that you would assume would not offer an int’l student much, if any financial aid, and only if you really, really want to attend that school.
In general, all the schools that you have mentioned, and Harvard and Amherst too, are in liberal, accepting areas of the country with significant South Asian immigrant communities. This will be important for your adjustment here.
I believe that were you to apply early decision (binding, assuming enough financial aid) or early action (early answer but non-binding, but Harvard only allows one to apply early action to only ONE private college, meaning if you apply to Harvard early action, you can only apply early to public state schools - you have to apply regular decision to the rest of the private schools), you would get in anywhere you applied. You appear to be one of the top students in India. It is very possible that you will get in everywhere you apply.
A very important issue is that you are going to have to make sure that a highly educated, NATIVE speaker of English proofreads every single word of your application. You got a high score on the SAT English - but your writing reveals that you are not a native speaker of English. You will raise red flags if your essays and responses show any errors - they could think that your scores were the result of cheating.
You need the best possible letters of recommendation that you can get. You need to get them from people who will say things like, “The most remarkable, intelligent, driven young man I have ever met. I would not be at all surprised to see him become the chief economist for the UN”, or something like that. If you still have a high school counselor who will be writing a counselor letter for your recommendation, and if you faced any adversity/challenges along your path (tight family finances, family illness, etc.) you want the counselor to put that in their letter. All of these people need to somehow understand that their letters are not the place to downplay your achievements. This leaves you to write an essay that focuses on your vision for your life, and how your vision for the future was shaped by your life thus far, or on anything you like. You won’t have to write an essay restating what the counselor and the recommenders say for you.
Don’t let anyone make you feel foolish for asking. You are coming from a completely different culture, and unlike some other international students applying, it doesn’t appear that you come from a “citizen of the world”, jet-setting family background. Ask! And if anyone says something negative, ignore them, and keep asking.
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If you apply to Yale SCEA, you cannot apply early to any other programs. The SCEA acceptance is not a binding one that you must accept, but you won’t be able to apply EA to any others.
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@momofboiler1 @merc81 @thumper1 @MWolf @sgopal2 @parentologist Thanks for taking out time from your busy schedules and helping me brothers and sisters, 
this thread helped me regain confidence, I will work on everything that’s been pointed out in the thread, and will surely throw a party once accepted. 
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Varsity Blues was a recent cheating scandal, where celebrity parents paid a crooked college consultant to get their unqualified kids into the top schools. He helped them to cheat on the SAT, and to fake being high-level recruited athletes. The sad fact is that had the parents simply made ENORMOUS financial donations to the schools, their children would likely have been admitted. Essentially, they just bribed the wrong people. It’s nothing new - what was new was that a lot of people finally got caught, and some were celebrities.
You don’t need to waste your time combing through the details of it. It has nothing to do with you. Unless the news in India, and the results from the Econ competition in Russia, have been faked on the internet, you sound like the real thing - one of the top students in India in the last couple of years.
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