I require the combined power of CC to help me pick colleges!! Need recommendations

College Search & Selection
1

Hey guys,
I’m an IBDP student from India, just graduated. I’m looking to apply to a good business program and here are my stats:

IB score: 34 (6,5,5 in Business, CS and Math HLs respectively)

ACT: 33 (single attempt)

ECs:
Took part in a group project where we adopted a class from our local rural school and gave them knowledge and skills regarding computers and technology.
Founded a Japanese Culture club in my neighborhood. (Since I’m deeply in love with Japan especially regarding its food, history and most importantly anime/manga)
Part-Time Freelanced as a photoshop-editor/graphic-designer for a year, then did freelance photography for another year. (I had to take up freelancing since I was desperately looking for Internship/Part time job but no one in my city was ready to take someone younger than 18)
Held the “technology director” position in our schools “Interact Club” (Our school’s version of a student council)
Did a summer course at UCSB (took math-calculus and public speaking courses)

Right Now, I got pretty exhausted and required a real break thus I took a Gap Year. I’m planning on taking a professional cooking course, 2 internships in business/finance, 1 internship in photography and taking part in a volunteering program

Could you guys recommend some small universities/ LACs for me? The real reason I’m looking for your help is because I can’t gauge my chances on admission (according to college’s acceptance and my stats) and don’t really want to take chances since I’m already on a gap year.

Any help would be much appreciated! :slight_smile:

Just recommend universities from top of your head (Universities that I can get into :P)

Edited title for accuracy
ED

2

Do you need financial aid or not? Also, there’s so many options that it’d be helpful to know what you are looking for besides business programs and somewhere you can get in. :slight_smile:

Large or small? Urban, suburban, or rural? Cold weather, warm weather? Sports culture? Lots of international students? East or west coast or somewhere in between?

3

What is your budget? Are you looking only for schools in the US? What area would you prefer? Urban, small city, or rural?

How small is considered small?

4

Congratulations on your hard work and success!

The first question is the huge one: Will you require financial aid? US colleges/universities have high “sticker prices” and typically offer only limited aid to international applicants. The difference between being full pay and requiring significant aid makes all the difference in the range of schools that might be accessible to you. So answering that will be very helpful.

But assuming, no need for financial aid,

In general, I always like to point out that there are very many outstanding universities and colleges in the US where a student can get a great education, not just the Stanfords, Harvards, MITs, etc. I never recommend a school that I would not be happy having a friend or family member attend, if it was a fit.

In the US, small LACs often do not have business programs. They maintain traditional liberal arts programs, more or less including the arts and communication majors, social science majors, and math/science majors. Universities have these and typically business and/or engineering and/or other more professional programs of study.

So the number of small schools offering strong business programs is pretty small. Babson College (not an LAC) is an excellent one, with an entrepreneurial focus. Bentley University is another one. Washington and Lee is an LAC with a business school. It has a notably “Greek” culture, in that fraternities and sororities are very significant to social life, which is something to consider. Great academics though. Maybe Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. First two are outside Boston, W&L is in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Worcester is a mid-size city in Massachusetts. I’m sure others can add other names.

I might suggest you also consider what I’d call mid-size national universities, with something like 4000-10,000 undergraduate students (compared to usually 1500-3000 at an LAC). Many of these will have business schools. Some that come to mind William and Mary, University of Richmond, under 4000 undergrads), Santa Clara University (in Silicon Valley!), Creighton (in Omaha–Warren Buffett), University, Southern Methodist University, Emory University (most competitive among these), Lehigh University, Pepperdine (on the beach in California and an excellent school, only 3000 undergrads).

I can’t really say which schools would be accessible to you in terms of admissions. International students are usually treated as a separate applicant pool (as are US students in different ways at different schools). Emory is extremely competitive, W&L and W&M too, and Richmond and Lehigh. But knowing very little about your record, I wouldn’t necessary rule them out. I’d think you’d probably be a reasonable candidates at the others, although I don’t really know about the profile of accepted students at Babson and Bentley.

But many of these would look for an international student to pay a considerable amount toward their education, so that financial question is an important one. Good luck!

5

Except for institutions that guaranteed admissions for specific stats, and that extend that policy to international students, the basic guideline is that what would be a safety for a US applicant with your stats is a match for you, what is a match for a US applicant with your stats is a reach for you, and what is a reach for a US applicant with your stats is a super reach for you. That of course assumes that you are a full-pay applicant.

If you will need financial aid, the situation is even more challenging.

6

LACs tend to be a bit easier for international students to get into.

Here are some good ones that offer a business degree:

Washington & Lee
U of Richmond
Bucknell
Skidmore
Dickinson
Rhodes
Franklin & Marshall
Muhlenberg

There are also obviously small or mid-sized universities that offer one – Penn, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, Washington U, Emory, USC, Boston College, and Lehigh, to name several.

If you wanted less overall academic breadth, you could opt for Babson or Bentley.

7

Thank you all so much for the lovely responses. I have answered some of the questions below about my preferences.

Need for Financial Aid: NO
Size: Medium (<13000) (Now I’m also thinking I should restrict myself to LACs, so I’m considering all small/mid-sized universities)
Setting: Urban/Sub Urban
Weather: would prefer hot (but it’s not that important)
Sports Culture: Not Important
Number of International Students: Not Important
Location: Near East/west coast
Budget: very flexible

I also compiled a list of colleges but I still can’t tell if I’m good enough to get it. I think there has to be a correlation between a college’s admission rate and the IB/ACT score needed to “check off that box” for an admissions officer.

For example, I’m 100% sure UPenn, Georgetown, USC and Carnegie Mellon are out of my reach. Emory, Boston College and Washington U maybe? And I’m pretty sure I would get into Lehigh if I apply ED (then its admission rate is 60%). Furthermore, I personally think that if a LAC has an ED acceptance rate over 40%, then I can get into it.
Also, I’m planning on pursuing an MBA after this. So, would the choice of LAC over university hurt my chances in post-grad admissions?

Your thoughts and recommendation? (Major help would me to gauge my accessibility in terms of admissions to these colleges)

Again, I can’t be thankful enough for all of your help.

8

If you plan to get an MBA, an undergraduate business degree might not make sense. Also, Carnegie Mellon and USC are no more competitive from an admissions standpoint than Emory or Boston College.

9

Yeah, that’s why I need help :P, I don’t exactly get the competitiveness of all these universities.
So instead of a business major, economics would be beneficial? What other majors can work well?

This article greatly influenced me into the business major,
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2009/11/20/which-undergrad-major-is-most-preferred-by-the-top-mba-programs

10

This is very helpful. Attending an LAC will not hurt your MBA pursuits. Many LACs are well known and respected by graduate schools. Many students interested in business major in economics or finance at LACs.

With LACS, be sure to show a lot of interest by contacting the admissions officer this summer or early fall, asking for an interview via skype, and making the supplemental essays very specific to what the college offers and why you are interested.

I think you are on the right track with your list and your definitions. However, since you don’t need aid, I think Georgetown, USC, and Carnegie Mellon are high reaches – but it’s not out of the question that you’d be admitted in my opinion, though I’m not truly familiar with how much harder it is for international students.

The key is is have a balance of reach, match, and safety schools. And with top schools it is a numbers game so while you don’t need to apply to 20, applying to 10 or 12 is not a bad idea if you have the bandwidth to do that many this fall.

You’ve had some good suggestions so far. Here are some others to look at, though these are not safeties.

LACs:

Grinnell – they have a goal to be 20% international within a few years and they have a large endowment with a lot of resources. It is in isolated area, however, and cold in winter. High match?

Davidson – in the South, top 10 LAC and has a lot of students who go into business. Near Charlotte which is a major banking center in the US. Reach.

Claremont Mckenna in California – also a top 10 LAC. It’s known for economics and students on business track. Reach.

University of Richmond – This was mentioned already, but I think would be a good match for you – warm location, strong business program.

Mid-sized:
Duke-- in the South. Sends lots of grads to work on Wall Street. High reach.

George Washington and American – both in DC so mid-Atlantic coast. GW is more urban campus and American is on the edge of the city with a more traditional American campus feel. Reach.

Rice in Texas and Tulane in New Orleans are both somewhat like Emory and WashU so you might want to look at them. Low reach perhaps?

Bigger school:
I suggest UNC partly b/c it’s my alma mater (!!) but also because it has a top 10 undergraduate business school in the country and is located in the South. It is larger – 16k undergraduates - so might not be your cup of tea. High reach too b/c it has cap on students from outside of North Carolina, but it’s a great place! :slight_smile:

Again – I don’t know the international admission rates as well but I hope this helps. Good luck!!

11

I’m absolutely head over heals for UNC, but it’s business school is VERY competitive and I don’t think I can get in!

12

Major in whatever makes the most sense to you, what you want to major in. You can go to MBA school whether a business major or not. MBA schools accept students with all different majors–sciences, social sciences, arts, business. And often students work for a year, a few years, or several years before going back and getting an MBA.

I’d caution against going ED just based on a higher chance of acceptance. It might very well be helpful, so you might want to do it. And it’s great if you have a first choice, and it accepts a much higher % in ED. First, the gap in ED/RD acceptance % can be exaggerated by the fact that lots of recruited athletes, legacies, etc. apply ED and might naturally have an advantage. Second, if you apply ED you won’t have an opportunity to compare offers and different schools. So just think about it. Enhancing your chances at a school like Lehigh might be worth it, given your preferences.

Good recommendations above, given your preferences, basic stats: Southern Methodist, Santa Clara, Richmond, Tulane, Lehigh, Boston College, George Washington, Case Western Reserve University, Georgetown, Wash U, Rice, Tulane, and Emory. The last five would be considered reaches for almost every US student applying. The first ones are also very competitive. It is much harder to give solid advice for internationals, in terms of acceptance. First, there’s less data. Second, I think the international applicant pools can vary more year to year, and a small change in a school’s policy toward international students could easily impact the numbers. For example, a small LAC brings in approximately 50 international students a year and then bumps it to 75, a 50% increase in supply.

With just a little info, it seems like you’d be very competitive at some of these schools. AND if you are really set on coming to the US next year, I’d advise having a quality school that would appear to be an absolute safety . . . Creighton, Bentley, Houston, etc.

13

SMU Santa Clara Lehigh are very selective

GWU and Case Western are more so these days.

BC Tulane Emory crazy competitive. A reach school for almost all US students. Uber selective for US students

Wash U. RIce and Georgetown are just about the same as applying to the Ivy League. As hard as statistically possible.

International students are a different mix. They have to be in the same category of the us peers and more suited the other international students.

Schools in DC are very popular. I would guess GWU is very very hard for an international admittance.

14

For admission to a good MBA program you will need to have at least two years of increasingly responsible work history. Three to five years would be better. At the present time, international students who can find an employer who will hire them, can work in the US with a visa extension after graduation (OPT). The length of time depends on what the student has studied. Longer periods for sudents with degrees in STEM fields, shorter periods for students with other majors. If you are thinking about a US undergrad, then two years of work here, then a good US MBA program, you will need a major in a STEM field. If you would be happy with a lower-ranked MBA, or if you don’t mind getting most of your pre-MBA work experience outside the US, then you have a lot more flexibility in what you study.

Run a quick search for STEM Designated Degree Program to get a list of majors currently approved for longer OPT.

15

GWU is competitive, but it does have lots of international business students. Frankly, there is a pretty big emphasis on international students who are full pay, have solid English skills, and a verifiable academic record. Those things count a lot.

16

While you express that you don’t consider the number of international students important in terms of the experience you’re looking for, it can be important to look at in terms of gauging your prospects. A decent-sized international population at a school is often an indicator that there are at least enough spots reserved for internationals to make for reasonable odds of acceptance.

I agree that you don’t need an undergrad business degree if you plan to get an MBA. A business or econ minor is fine too. An econ major is great but not an absolute must. As with med school and law school, you can major in anything you want as long as you complete the prerequisites. What’s catching my eye here is your enthusiasm for Japanese culture (and language?). There would be nothing wrong with minoring or even majoring in Japanese language and culture. It’s a very useful knowledge base for business.

Let’s look at U of Rochester, as a proof-of-concept example of a mid-sized LAC-ish university with a flexible curriculum that would allow you to explore multiple interests. You’re actually required to choose “clusters” of classes in completely different areas from your major concentration. In addition to Japanese language and traditional/historical culture, there’s a whole Japanese Pop Culture cluster: https://secure1.rochester.edu/registrar/CSE/clusterView.php?clusterNumber=H1JPN010 There’s quite a lot offered in the field of photography and digital media studies, too https://www.sas.rochester.edu/dms/undergraduate/index.html The economics department offers majors in econ and financial econ, and also a business major with multiple tracks. There are also econ and business minors, should you decide to major in something else. There’s an International Relations major/minor in the Poli Sci department, a certificate in Mathematical Modeling in Econ/PoliSci… and you could put all this together as you choose, in the context of their “Build Your Own Curriculum” philosophy. https://www.rochester.edu/college/academics/curriculum.html About 20% of Rochester undergrads are international, and it appears to be a match for your stats, with about a 30% admit rate.

Other schools to look at:

Claremont McKenna (admits almost 70% of class ED - ED admit rate is 32%, vs 7% RD)
Tufts
Emory (fills more than half of entering class with ED)
WashU (fills more than half of entering class with ED)
Wake Forest
Wesleyan (fills more than half of entering class with ED)
William & Mary
Brandeis
Macalester
U of Richmond
Santa Clara
Fordham
Lehigh
Bucknell
TCNJ

Larger private U’s that might worth considering
Northeastern
Boston University
USC
Tulane
U of Miami
NYU

Plus there are many large public U’s that are excellent and worth a look if you’re looking at big schools

SAFETIES:
U of Puget Sound, a LAC of 2500 students in Tacoma, WA, accepts about 80% of applicants, but it’s a has a competitive Business Leadership Program that might be a good fit. https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/undergraduate/school-of-business-leadership/business-leadership-program/ Puget Sound has majors and minors in business (business administration or international emphasis), economics, environmental policy, global development, and international political economy. It also has an Asian Studies department with both majors and minors in Japanese language and culture.
https://www.pugetsound.edu/studentphotog/

U of Denver has a 53% admit rate and also has the more competitive “Pioneer Leadership Program.” It has 5800 undergrads and has both programs in business analytics, accounting, international business, econ, marketing, etc., an active Asian Studies department http://bulletin.du.edu/undergraduate/coursedescriptions/japn/ , and a program in “emergent digital practices.” https://www.du.edu/ahss/edp/degree/index.html

17

It can be very challenging to assess admission chances for international students.

  • colleges usually don’t publish much admission data broken out for internationals;
  • the Common Data Set does not cover IB Scores;
  • you have not provided your class rank or an unweighted GPA (which might not be too meaningful, even if you did).

The CDS does indicate the percentage of internationals enrolled in each student body … but it’s not clear to me that a relatively high number necessarily is good, or that a relatively low number necessarily is bad, with respect to admission chances.

In your case, the most useful piece of data we seem to have is your ACT score.
You may want to focus on schools with composite scores below 32 or so.
Possibilities (small to mid-sized schools, ~near either coast, that seem to have respected business programs):
Northeast
Boston College
Bentley
Mid Atlantic
Villanova
George Washington
University of Maryland (College Park)
South
University of Richmond
Wake Forest
Washington & Lee
Emory
Tulane (not on either coast)
West
University of Southern California (much bigger than you may want)
Pepperdine

I’d say all of these are high matches or reach schools in your situation
(but I doubt any are out of reach for a full-pay international student with your scores).

18

Like the list but full of reaches. Bentley isn’t really in the same category as most of these. A fine business (almost exclusively) school. More business college than research university.

19

To follow up on @happymomof1 's comment about work experience vis-a-vis majors, visas etc. - that’s a good point that the path to work experience in the US should be considered. That could be a point in favor of co-op schools/programs, which typically extend your time as an undergraduate to five years but build in around 18 months of work experience alternating with regular course work. This not only allows you to graduate with work experience on your resume (I can’t speak to how business schools view co-op jobs on the continuum between “internship” and "real job, but there’s definitely a real difference between a summer internship and a full six month block of employment), but also it connects you with employers who could be more likely to do the paperwork involved in hiring you when you graduate. Co-op schools generally are bigger and (not surprisingly) more pre-professional in vibe than LAC’s, but many have great offerings in liberal arts subject areas as well.

Northeastern (from my “bigger schools you still might want to consider” list above) has an unbeatable location and student experience in Boston, and loves full-pay international students. (They’ve gotten extremely competitive for domestic applicants - for whom they meet full financial need - and they’ve actually been criticized for relaxing their standards for some full-pay international students - akin to the way the U of CA schools have been criticized for admitting OOS students with slightly lower stats than their in-state admit pool.) They have business majors (with or without an international focus) and also an interesting range of Business + X combined majors (perhaps Business + Econ would interest you) http://catalog.northeastern.edu/undergraduate/business/business-administration-combined-majors/ (also the programs in the CS school that combine CS, Info Science, or Cybersecurity with Econ or Poli Sci) And, they have minors with great course offerings in both East Asian Studies http://catalog.northeastern.edu/undergraduate/social-sciences-humanities/asian-studies/east-asian-studies-minor/#minorrequirementstext and Photography https://camd.northeastern.edu/artdesign/academic-programs/photography-minor/

Rochester Institute of Technology (just ~3 miles from U of Rochester) has an exciting range of majors and minors http://www.rit.edu/emcs/admissions/academics/majors including several specialty areas within photography, media arts and design, etc… many different “flavors” of business, econ, poli sci, CS/info science, and “applied modern language and culture” which includes Japanese https://www.rit.edu/programs/immersions/modern-languages-and-cultures-japanese

Drexel University in Philadelphia and U of Cincinnati in OH are also good co-op schools.

Just another angle/possibility to think about. The LAC/small-U thing sounds like a great fit for you too, but it might not be terrible to float an application or two in the co-op direction and consider the possibility.

20

Thank you all for the wonderful recommendation!!!

After a lot of further research, I decided a small/mid-sized university would be great for me since I can benefit from the small student to teacher ratio along with smaller class sizes while enjoying a great flexibility in majors/minors.

For the MBA and work experience, my dad has applied for the EB-5 visa which will mature in 10 or so months so I don’t really need to worry about finding ways to stay in the US.

For ED application, I’m thinking of applying to Lehigh, U of Rochester or College of W&M (still need to narrow down the options). As per international and ED acceptance rates along with the composite act scores, I think I stand a decent chance of getting in any one of them. (Still, have to prepare a list for RD)

Among these 3, what would you all recommend based on business (preferably finance) major and quality of life (like food, dorms, community, etc.)?