The gearup.org college ranking lost all credibility when it ranked the University of Washington in a mistakenly labeled “4rd Tier” (should have been “3rd tier”) along with schools like Indiana University of Pennsylvania. lol
Even FSU ( Florida State) is ranked in a higher tier.
"I don’t know if being a full-pay international student helps quite a bit at NU but I will say that full-pay Internationals do not have it as tough as full-pay Amercians because they are not effectively competing for the same places. NU targets 10% of their freshman intake for international students and international admission is needs aware whereas the other 90% of NU’s intake targets American students and admission is needs blind. "
“they are not effectively competing for the same places”
This part is true.
"I will say that full-pay Internationals do not have it as tough as full-pay Amercians "
This does not follow.
“NU targets 10% of their freshman intake for international students and international admission is needs aware whereas the other 90% of NU’s intake targets American students and admission is needs blind.”
Right, but how do you know how many applicants there are of each type? If there are as many Internationals as Americans applying to NU (there aren’t, but I’m showing how your logic doesn’t work) and 80% of them are full-pay yet they only have 10% of slots, it would be tougher for full-pay Internationals to get in compared to Americans even if they have an advantage over need-fin-aid Internationals.
@hooverhoo, I read your post #38 twice and I still see nothing to support your assertion that “if you have top GPA/SAT scores (above 75 percentile) and some good ECs, your chance in RD round is actually higher than EA/ED”.
BTW, it also depends on which “tier 3/4” school and major you are talking about.
UW-Seattle is very competitive for CS, for instance.
@PurpleTitan I only address your statement in #33 about “NU and (Ivy/equivalent) peers in its tier. They can fill their entire admitted class with full-pays if they wanted to without a drop in stats”.
I will try to explain why i think “if you have top GPA/SAT scores (above 75 percentile) and some good ECs, your chance in RD round is actually higher than EA/ED” later after meetings. I wanted to explain this to @Ineedoffers anyway
In 2017/2018, there were 37000 NU applicants. Of these 5500 were international students (source Chicago Tribune). Assume 1900 freshman are enrolled, 10% of which international students. Only 14% of international students receive needs based aid. Similar to the number of enrolled students receiving financial aid, assume 50% of all applicants including international students request financial aid. The number of US applicants to the number of US positions is 18.4:1 (31500/1710). The number of fee paying international student applicants to the number of spots allocated to international fee paying students is 16.9:1 (2750/163) .
@lime20002001: “assume 50% of all applicants including international students request financial aid.”
Big assumption and probably incorrect as it’s fairly common knowledge that NU isn’t need-blind with Internationals (and how well known would NU be to non-wealthy Internationals anyway?), so the percentage of Internationals who ask for fin aid is probably more in the 20-25% range.
Almost all universities are needs aware when it comes to international students but they still offer financial aid to needs based international students which attracts numerous applicants hoping to win the lottery. A university such as Wesleyan which is needs aware for international students and offers about the same percentage of funding to international needs based students as NU publishes data on the number international students requesting aid. That suggests 50% is about right if not a little low. I am extrapolating that data as being representative of universities in general. What is your basis for your estimate of 20-25%?
“How well known would NU be to non-wealthy Internationals anyway?”
I believe it would be pretty well known. It is ranked 20th in The Times World University Rankings. It has the 10th largest endowment of US universities. It ranks 54th in terms of the average size of award made to international students who receive financial assistance.
@lime20002001 It is not as well known as the ivies, Stanford, MIT but it is on their radar especially after they do some basic research.
@Ineedoffers Did not have time to dig NU data, but here is why I think you have a better chance in RD.
The ED/EA round pictorially targets on legacy, athlete, special talents with big awards. It also heavily skews to hooked applicants through partnership with college matching programs and community organizations. If you exclude these factors, the acceptance chance in ED/EA is about twice of that in RD. The hook will still play a role in RD but to much less extent. If you have top grades and ok ECs to survive the 1st rounds of computer cut-off into the holistic review phase, which will trim out minimum half of the pool, your chance effectively becomes similar even better. The biggest assumption here is ED/EA applicants are mostly in the upper 50% compared with RD round. I don’t have direct data to support this but, look at the ~20% acceptance rate, look at the 3-4 times higher rate for hooked applicants, look at ED/EA applicants around you, and is your ED/EA your high/low reach/match/safety?
There are about 40% full-pay students at NU, but even after we push the FA cutoff down to 150k agi, there are still only 10% household meets that. It is true these families can provide better education opportunities to the kids, but make it double there are still 20% gap that AOs need to favor the money heavily, just like they do so for legacy/athlete in ED/EA, bigger endorsement. College admission has never been need-blind, unless someone gives me a legit common app that does not ask parents profession, employer, education, nor sibling’s age and education. As long as the applicants are within the academic survival range, there are too many chips to play in the “holistic admission” phase.
This paper from CollegeBoard describes a admission decision making model http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/adm_decision_making.pdf
@hooverhoo Thank you so much for explaining that! It honestly almost made me cry bc it gave me so much hope. I’ve been desperately searching for the stats of other applicants and I was thinking that I wouldn’t have any chance in the RD round. Now I wouldn’t be that worried and anxious waiting for decision:)
@Twinmom1007 : thanks for your points. We have a HS jr daughter who has NU among the top schools to which she’d like to apply. Unfortunately, the number of top schools offering EA is dwindling. Most of the schools she’d like to apply to offer ED but not EA.