<p>I know that at JHU, (confirmed by their admin officer), the admissions process goes like this:
They first look at all international applicants, regardless of whether aid is an issue or not.
Then, the accepted intels go on to the financial office.
If they dont need aid, great, they are accepted.
If they do need aid, the finaid office looks at their needs.
If JHU cant afford to pay for them, sadly they are rejected.
If JHU can afford to pay for them, luckily they are accepted.</p>
<p>(BTW, JHU is not need blind to international students). This clarifies 1 thing: international students that are accepted, regardless of their fin aid situation, are of the same caliber in terms of quality of applicants.</p>
<p>Yes that is true for JHU.
Now why is it that way for JHU?
because JHU gives aid to around 7-8 intl students a year.
and their avg aid package is around 20000$ USD. (which means accepted students usually have to pay more than half of the total cost of education)
(as confirmed by CB.com)</p>
<p>You can't just take JHU's example and generalize it for all colleges. The admission process varies from college to college. BUT, it can be generally noted that colleges, like say liberal arts colleges or colleges such as Cornell/UPenn and most other non-need-blind colleges where quite a large amount of aid is offered to a lot of intl students, being able to pay makes a large difference.</p>
<p>I am an international financial aid student who has actually conducted research in this very topic.</p>
<p>It is not that it is an advantage to be able to pay, it is a disadvantage to not be able to pay. </p>
<p>aritct, you are quite confused when it comes to this issue. You say "that statement isn't valid for HYPMS". However, as far as I recall it, Stanford is in fact not need-blind for international students, and as such they have to separate applicant pools for internationals. The same goes for every single university that is not need-blind for applicants.</p>
<p>At Penn, around 50 financial aid packages are awarded to international students. How do these students differ from the other internationals? These spots are used by the university to capture interesting and diverse backgrounds. As someone said before, the occasional Mongolian student falls in this cathegory. As such, many of the financial aid students might - given their comparatively limited financial resources - have lower test scores than their non-financial aid peers.</p>
<p>Also, there are the international versions of Stuyvesant, Deerfield and such - The UWC schools and Le Rosey, or St Pauls, for example. From those schools, a lower class rank and GPA means you still have a fairly good chance of getting in. Do not mistake the advantage in coming from these high schools with an advantage in being able to pay - a financial aid student from one of these schools have a VERY large chance of getting in compared to other financial aid students.</p>
<p>As for GPA and test scores in general between the admitted students from the two applicant pools, they don't vary that much. The financial aid pool is of course more competative, but the compatativeness lies more in background and in ECs than in test scores.</p>
<p>First of all, sorry about the double post. I didn't notice snipanlol's post.</p>
<p>@ snipanlol -- I said this before and I will repeat again. I do not know much about Stanford admissions. I only said HYPM'S' because of b@rium's post about Stanford.</p>
<p>About Penn, that's why I posted before that some colleges have a quota and/or a class engineering system. Thus they reserve aid for students with unique backgrounds.</p>
<p>@ the 'Stuyvesant' example -- When I said 'average' student I did not mean only test scores or gpa. I meant the over application. SAT scores were just an example.
BTW I am studying in such a school.</p>
<p>"As for GPA and test scores in general between the admitted students from the two applicant pools, they don't vary that much. "</p>
<p>Could you please provide some official statistics to back up this statement (especially of schools such as Penn/Cornell). That, I suppose, would end this argument once and for all.
And if you can provide the statistics, please don't do so for schools which provide a small amount of aid to intl students (like JHU) because that would be pointless as I posted before.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And if you can provide the statistics, please don't do so for schools which provide a small amount of aid to intl students (like JHU) because that would be pointless as I posted before.
[/quote]
I don't see why that would be pointless. The less aid a school gives out, the more competitive the aid would be, wouldn't it??? And the more competitive the aid, the more qualified should the average student with aid be than the average student without aid, don't you agree?
[quote]
Could you please provide some official statistics to back up this statement (especially of schools such as Penn/Cornell)
[/quote]
Where is the statistical proof of your assumption?</p>
<p>@ b@rium -- No, actually I disagree.
The less aid a school gives out, the less likely a high-need and high-achieving candidate is to apply there.
Especially a school like JHU, do you honestly think a high-achieving candidate who needs a 40K scholarship would apply when there average scholarship is 20K.
As NoFX said, if schools like JHU cannot afford to pay for an international student, that students gets rejected.</p>
<p>Thus I believe that the real competition can be found in the top schools which give out a lot of aid.</p>
<p>@ statistical proof -- There is almost no statistical proof behind most of my assumptions. Its just what I have inferred after coming in contact with many intl applicants and adcoms for over a span of almost two years. I wouldn't have posted the above if I had found any statistical proof AGAINST my assumptions.
That's why I asked him for proof, so that the argument could be ended once and for all, and I would finally get a definite answer to all my questions and assumptions. Especially since he said he was an international financial aid applicant/student who has conducted research in this very topic.</p>
<p>You have as little proof for your assumptions as we have for our's.
The main problem might be that no college I know publishes that kind of statistical information.</p>
<p>Here is another theory. Let's say UPenn enrolls about 200 intl students with aid and 1000 without (I am too lazy to look up the exact numbers now). I am pretty sure that the "best" 200 of the 1000 no-need students are of about the same caliber as the 200 aid students. I am also sure that none of the 1000 no-need students has lesser credentials than the US kids that are enrolled.</p>
<p>UPenn currently has 1136 international students enrolled out of which 263 students have received aid. That means 873 students are enrolled without aid. Even if say, the best 300 no-aid students are as good as the 263 students who do receive aid, that leaves around 573 other free slots to be taken up by candidates who are do not apply for fin. aid.
Hence if you're competing for 563 or even 863 free slots, don't you think the competition would be much lesser than if you compete for 263 slots.</p>
<p>(data taken from CB.com and the UPenn brochure)</p>
<p>aritct, if you write HYPMS, I will assume that Stanford is part of that. I can not infer from your post that you in fact do not mean Stanford despite writing Stanford. </p>
<p>As for your anecdotal evidence, it is first of all anecdotal, and thus moot. Also, since you yourself claim to go to one of the international Ivy feeder schools, the "average" kids you know are most likely not that average - theydo after all go to those feeder schools.</p>
<p>Also, no one has claimed that it is not harder to get in with financial aid than without - on that point everyone pretty much agrees. Everyone agrees that applying for financial aid to a non need-blind school puts you at a disadvantage (which is the definition of non need-blind). </p>
<p>What people do argue is that there is not a significant difference in academic qualifications. In fact, I argue that some times the financial aid student might actually be less qualified because of very different resources available to them. I argue that the international financial pool to a very large degree is used for diversification.</p>
<p>Oh come on aritct: If Penn has about 1100 Int'ls enrolled, then easily about 10000 applied. Now to say that only 300 out of those 10000 who didn't apply for aid where equivalent to the numbers who did apply for aid is stretching reality to a very high degree. </p>
<p>Plus we all do agree with you on relative degrees of hardness (see snipanlol). What we disagree with is the assumption that because it's slightly easier for those not applying for aid to get in, that they are somehow less competitive than those who did apply for aid.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with artict, at the end of the day we have to be less idealist and more realistic; who would you pick, a paying customer or a non-paying customer. BTW, I know someone who got into Stanford with a 1790 on his SAT, although not mainly, because he was a "paying customer"</p>