Help! What Safety Schools should I look at?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey, I'm an international student applying to ivy-league level colleges in the United States. </p>

<p>My school doesn't rank but my GPA is about 3.88</p>

<p>I took the SAT 1 twice and got a 2250 and a 2280 ( 2350 superscored)</p>

<p>I have a couple of SAT twos and AP's. Scores are Pretty high. </p>

<p>My EC's are ok, certainly not below average (i think..?) </p>

<p>I need financial aid!!!, which is a big problem. </p>

<p>What safety schools should I look at?</p>

<p>I'm thinking about Georgia Tech (as I'm planning to major in engineering),</p>

<p>but I am open to other majors (I'm flexible)</p>

<p>Just to make sure, I do have the potential to make it into schools such as Dartmouth, </p>

<p>Brown, Cornell, Williams, Columbia, Northwestern, etc right?</p>

2

<p>Posted here is the 2010 US News engineering rankings: US News Undergrad Engineering Rankings 2011</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/981759-us-news-undergrad-engineering-rankings-2011-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/981759-us-news-undergrad-engineering-rankings-2011-a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>thanks for the info! but the rankings don’t give me much help…</p>

<p>although columbia is ranked like… 26th? I don’t think it’s going to be a safety school. </p>

<p>but thanks anyway!</p>

4

<p>*I need financial aid!!!, which is a big problem.</p>

<p>What safety schools should I look at?</p>

<p>I’m thinking about Georgia Tech (as I’m planning to major in engineering),*</p>

<p>Georgia Tech doesn’t give money to int’ls, so take that off your list. Virtually no publics give financial aid to int’ls. A few will give merit scholarships to int’ls.</p>

<p>Int’ls that need money only really have limited choices. It is VERY HARD for int’ls to find safeties if they need money since most safety schools don’t give money to int’ls.</p>

<p>Int’s can apply to schools that give int’ls “need-based” aid, and they can apply to the few schools that give int’ls “merit-based” aid. Those can be your safety schools IF your family will pay for what the scholarship doesn’t cover.</p>

<p>How much will your parents contribute?</p>

5

<p>My mistake. I forgot to mention that my parents will be able to afford Georgia Tech, but that’s as far as they can go. For the more competitive schools, I was mainly looking at schools that provide need-blind admission, such as Darmouth, Williams, Amherst, Princeton etc. What I’m confused about are the second-tier schools. How “outstanding” do you have to be in order to gain FA? I am aware that they provide aid to just a few international students. Will my stats not be enough?</p>