Help me choose a college

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Ok guys so finally i am kinda clear on my stats.
Ethnicity - Indian male.
Currently I am a junior. I moved to America last year so I am considered and international applicant.
Grades
9th - 65% I know I did terrible but it's India
10th - GPA Unweighted 3.0. Took all honors except history.
11th - currently doing. 2 AP. all honors. Unweighted. 3.5.
12th - going to take 4AP and all honors.
My weighed GPA is around 3.9 or 4 but my unweighted is low because it is difficult to get A in AP classes. I have been getting high B's
Guidance councillor recognizes that my school is very difficult and competitive. It's in Connecticut
Testing.
SAT 2050
ACT - didnt take but I think I can do better on them and will not be giving my SAT scores.
SAT 2. Math 680. Chemistry - 700</p>

<p>EC's
More than 300 hours of community service
Debate club
School newspaper - manager
Robotics - president
Math team
Tutor middle school
Part of military auxiliary.
Did crew for two seasons</p>

<p>Essay- I think I can write them pretty well. I think they will be good
Rec - amazing. Teachers know me</p>

<p>Ok so I was looking at top tier colleges and ivy leagues
I wan to major in computer science.
But I guess MIT is too difficult
I am looking at CMU and UCB.
Please suggest me the best colleges I can get into with my stats. They can be a little bit if reaches</p>

2

<p>Bummmmmpppyyy</p>

3

<p>If you’ll be considered an international, financial aid will be severely limited. How much can your family afford? To be competitive for the Ivy Leagues, a score of 2050 is probably too low.</p>

4

<p>I am not concerned about the aid. My family can pay the whole ammount. I just wanted to get an idea of what colleges are good for me. Well I think I can increase my sat score as I have another year but my primary concern is my GPA. Is that fine?</p>

5

<p>You never told us what your unweighted GPA was. And fine for what? For the Ivy League, Stanford, Caltech, MIT? Or fine for a reputable school with a good comp sci program? </p>

<p>Certainly the latter - probably not for the former.</p>

<p>To figure out your chances anywhere, look at the Common Data Set for that school for the most recent year available. Just google it and go to Section C to check your stats against those of admitted students. Read the section in which the school indicates how it weights various factors too. That should give you a pretty good idea of your chances. The last thing is to find out if your school subscribes to Naviance, which shows how students from your specific school did on admissions to various colleges by unweighted GPA and test score. </p>

<p>Use the search feature on CC to get more ideas for colleges - or at least for selection criteria other than a potential major. You need to think about size and location, among other things.</p>

6

<p>What is your visa status? Are you international for all colleges and universities, or are you in-state for some of the public colleges and universities in the state where you are living? Will you have a green card before you go to college? Can you study in your current status, or will you have to convert to an F visa for college?</p>

<p>How much can your family pay each year? If it is less than 60k each year, money will be a factor. Find out what their maximum is, and be aware of that figure when you conduct your college search.</p>

<p>Does your guidance counselor have experience placing students like you with a partially-international academic record in colleges and universities, or are you the first person like yourself who will graduate from this HS? If there are scads of students like you who have been through your current HS, the guidance staff will be able to evaluate your options, so talk with them. Your counselor also should be able to suggest colleges and universities that don’t look at 9th grade records so you can dodge that whole foreign school record thing.</p>

<p>Even with a US HS diploma, admissions is tougher for international applicants than it is for citizens. This is somewhat alleviated by being full-pay, but it still will be harder for you than for a full-pay US applicant. That means that your classmates’ reaches are super-reaches for you, and your classmates’ matches are reaches for you. Keep that in mind when you run the college matching search engines.</p>

<p>Please don’t forget that if you study here on an F1, you will have a limited amount of CPT and OPT for school year, summer, and post college employment before you need to find an employer that will get you an H1B work visa. Other visa statuses do not come with the OPT and CPT provisions, so you would need an H1B (or green card) a lot sooner. Make sure that wherever you study, and whatever you study, will get you a job outside the US. Work visas are generally easier to come by in Canada. You might consider studying there instead of here.</p>

<p>Lastly, if your parents have not been educated in the US, they might benefit from reading through some of the information at [EducationUSA</a> | Study Abroad, Student Visa, University Fairs, College Applications and Study in the U.S. / America](<a href=“http://www.educationusa.state.gov%5DEducationUSA”>http://www.educationusa.state.gov) and from speaking with people who have been here longer and are more familiar with higher education in the US.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

7

<p>Thanks a lot guys. Ok to answer all your questions. Firstly by the time I will be applying to colleges, my GPA unweighted. Would be somewhere along the lines of 3.4 but that is having taken virtually all honors classes and many AP’S too. I am basically looking at colleges like Carnegie Mellon university and university of California Berkeley. I am also interested in colleges like brown, duke, Cornell, Virginia tech, wpi, rpi, Rit etc. Columbia is a choice too. It will be great if you could give me an idea if my chances.
Also. I am currently a dependent on my dad who has a L1 visa. I will not get a green card before college and I think I am allowed to study and live on this visa. Money is not a factor at all. I mean getting money is always good but if not then I would probably take a loan doesn’t matter how much I have to pay. I just want to get an idea of the best colleges that I can get into</p>

8

<p>Also colleges like Uchicago, BC, BU. upenn, penn state. What else</p>

9

<p>Try using the college search tool here on CC with all of your data. [College</a> Search - College Confidential](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_search/]College”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_search/)
Be sure to expand the number of results at the top (20 by default) and be sure to select “must have” for any important criteria, otherwise it may come up with some odd matches.
What’s good about this site is that it compares your GPA and test scores against the reported ones for the schools and tries to guess the “fit”. It represents the fit as percentage and when you click on the “why?” underneath the fit number it shows you how you compare. It will show the average gpa and 50% range of SAT/ACT scores.</p>

10

<p>Yea I did that. Thanks a lot but I feel I can get into better colleges than most of those which are shown because I’ve never heard of these. That’s why I didn’t trust a calculator and asked what people think I can get into because that’s more realistic</p>

11

<p>Check the common data sets section C for any school you are considering. By looking at the stats of accepted students you can see what is “realistic”.</p>

12

<p>Ohk thanks I will do that. Anyone else with any commebsts</p>

13

<p>Hey, </p>

<p>I am thinking that it might be rather difficult at many of the schools you mentioned with a 3.4 unweighted. </p>

<p>I can totally see why it is not higher, but I fear that in an applicant pool of several thousand students, the Adcoms might not make an exception for you gpa-wise if their normal gpa range is 3.7 and above. </p>

<p>Just because you have never heard of a university doesn’t mean that it is worse or doesnt offer the courses you want to take. </p>

<p>The thing as an international student (I am one) is that even as a full pay, you should be in the better half of the applicant pool, as someone who wants financial aid in the too third gpa an test score wise. </p>

<p>So you should look at schools where the Average gpa of incoming freshmen is around 3.4 so that you compare. Also, the less international applicants a college has, the better your chances to be accepted. </p>

<p>Columbia, therefore, in my opinion is out of reach for you, as are many of the other schools you mentioned (Brown, Duke, Berkeley,Cornell).</p>