<p>hello you all!
i right now have these following colleges on my list:</p>
<p>REACH</p>
<p>Cornell University
New York University
U of Virginia
UCLA
USC
U Michigan
U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</p>
<p>50-50
College of William and Mary
U of Texas at Austin
U of Wisconsin Madison
U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
UC Irvine</p>
<p>SAFE
Purdue University
Indiana U Bloomington
Penn State University Park
U Washington</p>
<p>I want to cut down to around 10-11. please help? ):
my stats: 3.76 GPA; 1950 SAT
my preference: a school that offers int'l financial aid, nice mild weather, not a too big school, lower teacher-student ratio.</p>
<p>any suggestions?
also im not sure about the categories (reach, 50-50, safe...)
gimme advise if you can. thanks sooo much!!!!</p>
<p>Sorry, I can’t help much, because I am also international and don’t know many of those schools. All I can tell you is that as far as I know, NYU does NOT offer any kind of fin aid for international students.</p>
<p>Take out NYU (Very Cheap with $) , Michigan & Cornell have crap weather and are huge (bad teacher:student ration) so I’d take them out and replace them with Pomona and Claremont McKenna (both good weather and low teacher:student ratio). I think that you should apply to West Coast LACs: good weather, low student: teacher ratio and not a big school.</p>
<p>I do not think that there is a school on your list that is need blind to international students so your ability to pay will be a factor in whether or not you are admitted.</p>
<p>Since you indicated financial aid in your list of requirements, you need to check each school’s policy on FA to international students. Most of the schools on your list are public schools where you will be OOS at many of them. The FA will be few and far between (if accepted, you will probably pay the bulk of the full freight to attend).</p>
<p>I can’t offer much help with the financial aid situation but i can offer you advice on the feel for some of your schools since you are an international student.
University of Wisconsin is absolutely beautiful but the winters are wicked and they last from october(ish) to april. The temp is very very cold.
I’ve heard great things about Michigan- but once again the weather is awful.
On the other hand William and Mary is another great school ( my brother goes there) but every time i visit i wonder why students like it. Every building is brick and its stuck in the middle of a colonial tourist trap. Honestly you walk right off campus and you see people dressed up as colonial people- its bizarre. The weather at the beginning of the school year and at the end is dreadfully hot, muggy and humid.
Personally i do not like NYU at all. i live about an hour outside of the city and have no desire to ever live or attend school there. At night i do not feel safe walking around and in the day its just nothing special. Pretty much all of your other universities have campuses and NYU is just scattered around the city.If your a city person you may love it but I’d take that off your list.
And since i live in New Jersey i know TONS of people who go to Penn State and its just a huge party school. Plus the majority of people who go there are from Pennsylvania.
Indiana University is beautiful!! i love it! its on my list of schools as well and with your scores you should have no problem getting in.
Also if you are hoping to get into cornell, i’d get your SAT scores up.
** Penn State & University of Wisconsin are HUGE schools! </p>
<p>LACs are primarily relatively small, residential colleges with an emphasis upon undergraduate education in liberal arts fields of study. The education is intended to provide general knowledge and develop intellectual capacities. A liberal arts education prepares students to work in a variety of jobs. In constrast to other types of education where students develop professional or vocational skills for a specific job.</p>
<p>Generally, liberal arts fields include the following fields: English language and literature/letters; foreign languages and literatures; biological sciences/life sciences; mathematics; philosophy and religion; physical sciences; psychology; social sciences and history; visual and performing arts; area, ethnic, and cultural studies; liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities; and multi/interdisciplinary studies.</p>
<p>Looking at your list I suspect you are focusing on schools with low OOS tuition, which may be prescribed by your finances, but that will limit how well you can match your other criteria. Financial aid is difficult to find anywhere in the states for any international student, and the limited stats you show are those of a very good but not outstanding student. The other criteria you list: mild weather, not a too big school, lower teacher-student ratio, are easily checked with any one of a half a dozen standard references (USNWR, Petersons, Barrons, …) and a simple map. Most of your schools have more than 20,000 students, and low teacher-student ratios. Several of them have very cold winters by my standards: Cornell, Michigan, and Wisconsin, others have winters that you might consider cold. OTOH with appropriate clothing others from the tropics have enjoyed cold winters. The admissions session we attended at Colby was by a former student originally from Malaysia, who radiated love of the place and you don’t get much warmer than Malaysia or much colder than Colby and have a place habitable year round.</p>
<p>Someone also mentioned this but i thought I would highlight it. Wisconsin is super cold for 6 months a year. If you’re from any country in the tropics or sub tropics, you will probably never have experienced anything like it.</p>
<p>Aside from the humidity during the summers, the non-winter seasons in Madison are fairly pleasant. What you might not gather from these average temperatures is that with windchill, it is fairly common for the temperatures to be -20 deg Fahrenheit to -40 deg Fahrenheit for a couple of weeks. Frost bite is a serious concern and since the Madison campus is large, you conceivably might be walking for an hour at those temperatures, maybe even across lake Mendota. There are campus buses but during those times of the year, they get really crowded and less reliable.</p>
<p>Madison is in fact quite a bit colder than Ann Arbor in the winter, especially in daily low temperatures:</p>
<p>January
Ann Arbor ave. low 18 F (-8 C)/ ave. high 32 F (0 C)
Madison ave. low 5 F (-15 C)/ ave. high 27 F (-3 C)</p>
<p>February
Ann Arbor 20 F (-7 C)/ 36 F (2C)
Madison 10 F (-15 C)/ 33 F (1 C)</p>
<p>March
Ann Arbor 28 F (-2 C)/ 47 F (8 C)
Madison 22 F (-6 C)/ 44F (7 C)</p>
<p>April
Ann Arbor 38 F (4 C)/ 60 F (16 C)
Madison 33 F (1 C)/ 58 F (14 C)</p>
<p>May
Ann Arbor 49 F (10 C)/ 72 F (22 C)
Madison 44 F (7 C)/ 70 F (21 C)</p>
<p>That 13 degree difference in the January daily low temperature makes a huge difference in comfort level, believe me—as does the 10 degree difference in February. Having spend some time in both cities in the winter, I’d say there are many days when the weather will be pretty similar. But the big difference is that due to its location, Madison is far more likely to get several stretches of bitterly cold, - 20 F weather in January and February, bringing down its monthyl averages.</p>
<p>But neither city will win awards for its weather.</p>
<p>Well it depends on how much aid you need… if it’s only about $10000 then you have a better chance than if you needed say, a full ride.
NYU doesn’t really give aid. Also, any colleges in NC generally prefer in-state students as they different taxes or something like like.. anyway you don’t have a good chance and Chapel Hill. Then Washington, USC, and UVa don’t give a lot of funding - so you need to chack out their websites and see how much you can pay and what they can fund you. Purdue is a good bet. I seem to remember that they offer up to full tuition? You really need to spend time on the univerisities websites to get a real feel of what kind of students they’re looking for and what their FA policies are. (oh and LAC is liberal arts college)</p>