<p>If an international student is applying to Uchicago for full financial aid, does it automatically mean that he/she will be rejected, even if he has brilliant test scores, academic success and interesting extracurriculars?</p>
<p>Well, no. Granted an international applying for financial aid may be at a disadvantage compared to non-financial aid international applicants. But it’s not impossible or anything. I know many international students on financial aid.</p>
<p>Also, University of chicago meets 100% of need so there is no “partial financial aid or full financial aid.” If they see that you have need (which varies for eveyrone) and you are accepted, they will cover the full need. Obviously, not everyone gets financial aid though. 47% of the Class of 2016 received financial aid.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that UChicago does not guarantee to meet 100% of need for international students. But maybe they have changed this?</p>
<p>This was posted by the UChicago rep the other day in response to a similar question:</p>
<p>off2college: I am not able to estimate your likelihood of acceptance or receipt of scholarship, but can say that we do fund students who require aid but are not US citizens; we can consider the request of aid as part of our admissions decision, but do admit and provide aid (still guaranteeing to meet 100% of need, so we would not admit a student who required aid but then not provide the aid they would need) every year to international students who require support.</p>
<p>The Key question is “FULL AID”. That is around 60K per year, including tuition, room and board and books.</p>
<p>To that, the answer is NO FULL AID to internationals. I don’t think the school even grant FULL Aid to US students. If the OP is that good, he/she should try to get aid from the country where he/she is coming from BEFORE apply to UChicago or elsewhere.</p>
<p>I’m also an international students and want to ask the same question.
I may not apply for full aid, perhaps 3,5000/yr–still a lot.
Will asking for less aid raise my chance of getting in ?</p>
<p>There’s a lot of playing with semantics here.</p>
<p>The University of Chicago will award financial aid that meets 100% of the need it determines a student has. Of course, people can disagree about exactly how much “need” there is in a particular situation, and not every student and his family will be happy with the University’s determination. But I don’t think the University plays deliberate games with determining need. The methodologies it has used in the past to deal with things like home equity value, small business ownership, and restricted retirement savings assume more sacrifice is required from students’ families than some other colleges.</p>
<p>Financial aid packages almost always assume students will earn some money by working and use that to fund part of their expenses. That’s why, perhaps, “full” aid from the University is elusive. But that hardly means that a student with no resources will not be able to afford an education at Chicago. The expected contributions from student jobs match up with jobs the University offers to its students.</p>
<p>Financial aid packages may also include loans that have to be repaid in the future. I believe the University has gotten much more conservative about asking students and their families to take on lots of debt for college. For U.S. students, the college will not require any loans if the family has a low-enough income and asset base, and I believe (I am not certain) that the same program applied to international students.</p>
<p>In determining need, the University takes into account not just tuition, fees, and dorm and meal plan charges. It also considers the cost of books, health care, and modest discretionary spending, and for international students especially travel. So the base on which financial aid is calculated is fairly realistic.</p>
<p>No one can apply for a pre-determined amount of aid. You either apply for aid or not, and the University figures out how much aid it will give, which may be $0.</p>
<p>With international students, the deal is that there is a specific (undisclosed) financial aid budget for internationals, and the Admissions Department takes that budget into account in determining which international applicants to accept. So international students who don’t need any aid can be admitted without any tough budget decision, but admitting an international student who has little or nothing to contribute means rejecting another two or three applicants who only need partial aid. That’s why it’s tougher to get admitted as an international student who needs aid.</p>
<p>JHS has stated it well. What UC does is meet full need “as the school defines it” not the way a student or family may define it, not the way another college defines it for all accepted students. However, international students who have financial need have that issue taken into account when admissions decisions are being made. Once the fund for aid for internationals is depleted, that is it.</p>