Dear American parents, I am a father from China, and I notice that many Chinese parents and students pay more attention to the US News college rankings. They love the IVY collges and the Top 50 colleges. Foe example, they do not know liberal arts colleges or nice state colleges much.
But I am sure there are some great colleges that is familar to American parents and students and not to Chinese.
Could you please introduce some nice colleges to me?
Thank you !
If you can get a copy of Colleges that Change Lives (there is a website, too) you will get a very nice list of colleges to start looking at. You are absolutely right, there wonderful colleges that are not in the top 50 that often are ignored by international applicants. You would do well for your child to start including them in your search!
The big issues for what determines realistic universities in the US for your child are:
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What can you afford? Do u require financial aid?
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How attractive/competition a candidate is your child? What grades, test scores, leadership, talent qualities does the student have? How good is english ability?
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If child is not a particularly good student, then does the family have any special brag-worthy celebrity status?
Until u answer those questions, then no one can suggest feasible schools.
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I can afford 30-40K us dollars per year.
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My child is top 1% in the class. Tofel 109. SAT will be taken in 2016. He is a leader of table tennis club at school.
Thank you.
We need to know the SAT score. I suggest u take a test now as a benchmark. The test can be re-taken many times to try to increase score.
Table tennis is not a common competitive sport in the US, so that probably will not be a particularly compelling extracurricular activity.
Keep in mind that the colleges will compare your child to the other applicants from China. You need to help your child stand out from that very crowded & competitive Chinese application pool.
From that 30-40k/ year, don’t forget to include incidental expenses & travel costs.
Can you narrow it down a little? Is your son or daughter interested in the east coast, west coast, south, midwest? Warm climate? City, suburb, or rural?
Also, it would be helpful if you could order the Fiske Guide to College 2015.
http://www.fiskeguide.com/
We like New England district more.
We do not like a college which has many Chinese students, Because we want to enjoy the American education.
We want to study knowledge ,not to take parties.
City or rural is not very important.
First, we want a safe campus and a safe off-campus envioment.
A Chinese exchange student that stayed with us for a few weeks is attending Boston College. I would consider that a nice college, along with a host of others in the Boston area. Three other non ivies that come to mind in the Boston area that I consider very nice are Brandeis, Boston University and Tufts. Here in the Minneapolis area a few private colleges that come to mind immediately are Macalester, St. Olaf, Gustavus Adolphus and Carleton, as well as the University of Minnesota for a good state school. What are you looking for? Warm weather or cold? Coasts or middle of the country? Big city or small? More selective or less selective? A nice under the radar one (on CC anyway) that comes to mind in the Bay Area (Northern California) is St. Mary’s in Moraga. Public Universities may be your best bet if you are looking for something under $40k. One that looks interesting to me that someone suggested on another thread in George Mason U. in the Washington D.C. area.
The other question that needs to be asked is, what is the student interested in studying? Particularly with smaller schools, one has to make sure that the school has a strong or acceptable department in the students intended or possible major(s) and other areas of academic interest.
Note that a school with a high ranking (in whatever list you see) does not necessarily have a strong or acceptable department (or any department at all) in a given subject.
Most US universities do not have that many Chinese international undergraduates, for cost reasons (Chinese international graduate students are probably fairly common in some subjects, though, and may be encountered as teaching assistants at research universities. However, some US universities do have fairly large numbers of Chinese American undergraduates.
Within your $40,000 per year price limit, you may want to consider the State Universities of New York in the northeast region. Outside of the northeast region are schools like University of Minnesota (various campuses, including the flagship at Twin Cities and the small liberal arts college at Morris), Iowa State, North Carolina State, Truman State (a liberal arts college), and the California State Universities (including the California Polytechnics and a liberal arts college at Sonoma).
Financial aid and scholarships to reduce the price for international students are much less common than for domestic students. However, some of the large scholarships at http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ may be available to international students (University of Alabama, Howard University, and Louisiana Tech may offer them to international students, but ask the schools first). For need based financial aid to international students, it is mainly a small number of very wealthy schools, most of whom are famously high ranked names, who offer that.
Parents in this forum are very nice and warm-hearted,thank you very much. I am studying your posts that is so helpful. May your kids have a very good future!
Are you working with a private counselor or agency? If not, you should find a reliable one with a good reputation. It’s a complex process for international families that don’t have college experience in the US. Many, many Chinese students are attending state schools. Maybe not enough in LACs and for good reasons - they are expensive and they may not be as helpful in the job market as they are largely unknown in foreign countries.
If you trust the US News rankings, have a look at schools in the “National Liberal Arts Colleges” list, starting with the top 50 or so (if your kid’s qualifications are strong enough for those schools). Almost all offer small classes, good to excellent need-based financial aid, attractive campuses, and strong focus on academics (without the big Greek and D1 sports scenes common at many larger schools). Most of them offer much better financial aid to international students than you’ll find at most state universities. So although they have high sticker prices, after financial aid they may be much cheaper than the public alternatives.
Many colleges with the most generous need-based aid to international students are small liberal arts colleges. They are wealthy colleges, but not necessarily very famous or among the very most selective.
http://www.desperateguide.com/us/top-25-financial-aid-colleges-in-us-for-international-students-need-aware
A possible downside to LACs is that they usually have no engineering or business majors, and (as panpacific points out) won’t be very familiar to employers overseas. In the subjects they do offer, they seem to provide excellent preparation for graduate and professional schools. Of the 50 colleges with the highest per capita rates of alumni PhDs in STEM fields, about half are LACs (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/, see Table 4). Among the top 10 for PhD production in many fields, about half also are LACs (http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html).
These schools just aren’t very well known among international students. That can work to your advantage in admission and aid decisions.
EducationUSA is a not-for-profit organization funded by the US government for the purpose of helping international students find good places to study in the US. Read through the website to learn all about the college search and application process, and to find useful information about looking for colleges/universities: https://educationusa.state.gov/ You can use the search function to find the advising center closest to where you live: https://educationusa.state.gov/find-advising-center The counselors will be able to give you a lot of help.
Wishing you all the best!
If you work with a private counselor, it would be advisable to be sure they are an independent consultant and not an agent who gets money for placing students in certain schools. There are ethical concerns about the latter.
Some of the best liberal arts colleges in New England are Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin and Middlebury. Swarthmore in Pennsylvania is very strong.
Dont forget schools like Bard, Hamilton, Colgate, Vassar, Wesleyan, etc. The grades and tests scores will be important, though there are some test optional schools.
US students who go directly to university tend to go to the best or nearest public university in their state. We pay less to go to public schools in our own state than other schools (with a few exceptions… For instance the University of Toledo in Ohio charges instate tuition for kids from Monroe county Michigan). Many of these public flagship universities have good liberal arts programs as well, though the environment is different than a liberal arts school. Some of these will have high Chinese populations (I know Michigan and Michigan State do but I don’t know about other universities) in liberal arts programs but many won’t. Public universities, even as an international, will tend to be slightly cheaper than private schools. In addition, you’re getting a lot of suggestions for liberal arts colleges (with no or very minor graduate programs), but there are also liberal arts universities outside the Ivy league, such as University of Chicago.
If your kid has some idea of what they want to study then you can probably get more targeted suggestions.
Many USA kids (I would say majority) select based on location. And this includes top of the top of the valedictorians from the best high schools in the USA. So, OP, you will hear different opinions on CC as families are more familiar with colleges around them. Many do not use any ranking at all, they select based on their personal criteria in addition to location. These are self-reliant kids who aim at Graduate Schools and Merit scholarships for undergraduate education.
What I am saying that you will find plenty of very top kids at any college, Honors colleges at state publics are full of them.
Start looking into these schools:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Athletic_Association
and these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Small_College_Athletic_Conference
They may not all be suitable for your child, but they are all excellent schools.
Sorry, but this is far, far from true.