I am an international student and I have selected ‘I want to receive an application fee waiver’ on my common app. My counselor has also verified my eligibility.
Now I have applied to Columbia and this is what they state on their application:
If you do not qualify for the Common Application fee waiver but feel that paying the Columbia application fee will be a significant financial burden for your family, please select “Yes, I qualify for one of Columbia’s fee waivers,” complete this form and send it to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.
I am pretty sure that I will NOT need to complete that form and thus I have selected, “NO, I do not qualify for one of Columbia’s fee waivers”. Can anybody tell me if this is the right way?
What you mean by ‘Do you qualify for fee waiver’? My family income is around 18,000 dollars so yes. My counselor has also verified my eligibility. Now if you could answer my question, that’d be really great. Thank You.
I’ll bite. You need to contact Columbia and ask one international students qualify for application fee waivers.
But I will add…you will be required to send Columbia the Profile and your SAT or ACT scores…and those are not free to send. I don’t believe the college board gives fee waivers to international students.
yeah @thumper1, I have done all that. I’ll contact admissions then. But they don’t start reviewing my application until everything about application fee waivers has been cleared out right?
In other threads, you have indicated that you are in India, have a 2280 SAT and need a lot of financial aid. (“To be honest, I require a lot of aid. About 80%.” and “My family income is around 18,000 dollars.”)
Besides Ivies (which are very difficult to gain admittance to), I see you have applied to UIUC. How are you going to afford UIUC? From the UIUC website:
“There is no need-based financial aid available to international undergraduates, and F-1 visas allow very limited opportunities within the University for students to work. Thus, all foreign undergraduate students must have sufficient funds for their entire period of study.”
I am glad that you state you have backup options in India.
Why wouldn’t you check ‘Yes’ and get the Columbia waiver form JUST IN CASE the common app waiver doesn’t work? Belts and suspenders, take all offers and have a safety plan. All Columbia can do is reject issuing its own waiver because you received the common app one.
I suspect the Columbia one is pretty automatic as it’s not worth it to them to spend a lot of time evaluating whether this student’s need for an application waiver is worthy while another’s is not They probably just issue them routinely.
From what he quoted, it sounds like Columbia is encouraging applicants who need help with the application fee to check the box and fill out the form. What does he have to lose by doing that? All they can say is No.
I took out a print out of the form and have filled it. I guess I should just send it to Columbia. And the Columbia website says that ‘Regular Decision can check the status of their applications between Feb 8 and March something’. That is just too late to check the status.
Anyways Thanks People.You have been of tremendous help to me. I really appreciate it.
nd @ClarinetDad16 I have applied and when I did so, there was a message that said ‘You have indicated on your common app that you are requesting a fee waiver. Proceed to submission’.