<p>It does not guarantee admission, but it helps.</p>
<p>
There are few things that guarantee admission to top colleges. Being full-pay is not one of them.</p>
<p>oh 
</p>
<p>What are your backup plans ?</p>
<p>agreed </p>
<p>I agree with Smith and disagree with meriks who only looks at published “stats” and not true acceptances. Your SAT scores are not competitive with other international students who are applying to the Ivies with scores over 2250. </p>
<p>The schools get hundreds of thousands of applicants from many parts of the world who can, and are getting 2300 and 2400 scores. You are competing at the best universities in the world with the best students from your country. These Ivies are not “big” schools. There are only so many seats available and are mostly filled with American students. High stats gets your application considered. Why in the world would you only apply to the most difficult schools who are insanely difficult to gain admittance?</p>
<p>The trend for international students seems to be to only apply in the US, and to only apply for the Ivies. We have 3700 colleges and universities but the international students only have visions of Ivies. </p>
<p>Reality is difficult to accept, but your scores are just not competitive for those schools. You can choose to apply, but realize that acceptance letters are not common at those schools.</p>
<p>@gpednakar - Are you applying intending to apply this year (in which case you are now a week away from application deadlines for most top schools, and should have already requested that test scores, transcripts, and recommendations be sent to the schools you are applying to)? Or are you intending to apply next year? Then you have plenty of time to strengthen your application.</p>
<p>If you don’t need aid, and are applying this year, I would recommend you look into large public universities with strong engineering schools and application deadlines after Jan 1.</p>
<p>this year and my app is nearly complete, but what if i go for jan tests?</p>
<p>i just read that for non native English speakers MIT has no preference over TOEFL, SAT or ACT scores.Is
this true?coz then i think i have a chance :|</p>
<p>Yes for MIT you can send your TOEFL and your SAT II subject tests only. Which is a good idea.</p>
<p>but i just sent all 
</p>
<p>oh :(</p>
<p>i guess theyd consider the best combo, anyways look lively .
It ain’t the end of the world 
</p>
<p>
Yes, that is true. However, MIT also has a 3% acceptance rate for internationals, so even the applicant with 2400 will have an uphill battle.</p>
<p>i guess that’s why it is MIT</p>
<p>@meriks where did you hear that private schools are less need aware than public schools? give me evidence!</p>
<p>@emanneercs323 Which post are you referring to ?.</p>
<p>@meriks the one where you said “private schools are less need aware than public schools”. where did you hear that? </p>
<p>@emanneercs323 Big public state schools are often known for being need aware. UC’s for example said they accepted a lot of internationals because they were full pay. Prestigious private schools are often need blind because they have very high budgets, and therefore they’d rather earn less money and have more qualified students instead. </p>
<p>There are exceptions on both sides of course, but it’s a general tendancy i think.</p>