I have good scores and ECs compared to people in Peru, but I’m not sure how good my application would look compared to other students.
International is an anti-hook. Peru vs Brazil vs Ghana is not going to make much of a difference.
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Being international is not a hook. We have no idea what schools you are considering. If you can afford the fees and have good grades, test scores, letters of rec, and ECs, you can be a very appealing applicant to all kinds of colleges. There are some selective colleges that will be very interested in an applicant such as what I just described, particularly if the college actively seeks diversity of all kinds.
Just to give you a frame of reference, at Harvard, 2 students have started over the last 8 years from Peru.
It won’t help you at all. In fact, it will hurt your chances. Highly selective US schools do seek geographic diversity from within the US (like coming from Wyoming if you’re applying to very selective schools in the Northeast), but they are not seeking out students from Peru. That being said, if you are demonstrably one of the top students in all of Peru, top schools in the US might be interested in you.
I’m assuming that you would need financial aid. There are a lot of threads on this website about international students seeking scholarships, and which schools might offer this to them.
If you are a US citizen, or US permanent resident, then yes, you would look kind of interesting to top US schools. They can offer you financial aid just the same as if you were in the US, and your having gone to school in Peru would bring diversity to the class. But if you are not, then you would have to be an extraordinarily high achiever, one of the top students in all of Peru, to have a chance at a top school here, and only a few schools would offer you financial aid.
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I’m not sure I agree with the anti-hook sentiment. IMHO, more than a hook or not, it puts you in a different category of consideration (international students) which has its own sets of challenges: less options for financial aid, school reputation, English-proficiency, geographic distribution.
Being from Peru is not particularly special; you will be competing with students from the rest of Latin America (as well as Peru). Some schools do drill down and seek out candidates from areas/countries that might be underrepresented, while other schools seem to focus on countries that have sent students their way previously.
You forgot the biggest one - colleges that cap international percentage. At these schools, international acceptance rates are half the overall rate.
Fair point.
I’d be curious to see what the acceptance rate is for internationals vs US kids at the T20 schools, as well as the corresponding stats.
No college will break out stats domestic vs international. But to look at the differences in acceptance rates, here is an example:
What would be your guess for the average SAT scores for the international students vs the domestic students?