What classes or topics are you currently working on?
Are you a boy or a girl ? (it makes a difference)
Are you an Indian minority (Jain, Dahlit, Naga, Adaman, Parsi…?)
For someone who’s truly dedicated to math, beside the obvious colleges already cited several times (+ NYU because if they have someone who’ll work at the Courant Institute they may offer sufficient aid - it’s a gamble since it’s VERY unlikely to offer sufficient money!), I’d look at HarveyMudd. They offer financial aid based on need to internationals, even if they’re very picky. Let’s say that being exceptionally good at math won’t really make you stand out among their admits. https://www.math.hmc.edu/program/department/facts/
Northwestern also has an accelerated math program but they’re very need aware and they’re unlikely to offer you admission because you need a full ride ($4,500 will cover airfare and health insurance, basically, not even the books).
Look into Howard for a safety if you have a sufficient combined SAT or ACT score - prep now (do NOT assume that you’ll score well without prepping just because the material’s easy: you need speed and accuracy, and those can only be obtained through sustained practice), take the ACT in September, apply to Howard for their full ride+. It’ll be a good safety to have. Note that Howard is an HBCU but there are international students from all ethnic groups.
Have you taken the SAT Reasoning or the ACT?
Since you know German, can you imagine taking an SAT Subject in German? (because the overwhelming majority of Indians apply with Subjects in Math and one or two sciences… and your goal is to stand out). Taking the ACT will also allow you to skip the SAT reasoning AND subjects - so ACT + German would be good (due to your math background, adcoms will presume an SAT math2 800).
For many US colleges, the acceptance rate for international students is roughly half the overall rate, so, assuming your test scores are within range, you’re looking at roughly a 5-7% chance.
Plan to take the German subject test.
Find a free online test and see how well your score, to give us an idea.
Check out Khan Academy.
Surely you’ve heard of search engines
Your safeties would be schools that have automatic full rides or near-automatic full rides for your stats. These depend heavily on SAT or ACT scores. And of course the SAT is changing so it’s a gamble, so you also need to check out the ACT.
@MYOS1634, yes, but what was that about someone working at the Courant Institute?
Also, I did really well on the online test. I think I should be able to do swimmingly with a little preparation.
Re: topics, I’m studying some commutative algebra so that I can study algebraic geometry from Ravi Vakil’s brilliant course notes for the Math 216 course at Stanford. I’m super excited about this.
OP is obviously a top student with the Olympiad. It might be worth it applying to top US school even with the financial aid in Asia issues. People are talking about schools like Rutgers or Howard. I don’t see the point in that. You could probably get a much better education at more competitive schools in India than those. I wouldn’t consider anything not at least a top 50 school.
As mentioned, you can do undergraduate in India and apply to US graduate schools. For graduate school, you pay no tuition and get paid a small stipend.
I know you want to do theoretical math, but I would give some consideration to fields such as numerical analysis or computational math. Theoretical math has poor career prospects and is not practical.
OP needs to win a medal at the Olympiad first. If OP succeeds, there may not be any point in applying to a safety school. Rutgers is a very fine school, even for a top applicant. OP is interested in more than just prestige, evidently. OP wants to learn! And this means having access to graduate level classes. Do Indian universities allow for this?
‘Theoretical math has poor career prospects and is not practical.’
It’s really too bad you can’t find a total of 16K or so. I know that for a middle class Indian, it’s an unthinkable, unfathomable amount of money, but it means you could compete for full tuition scholarships rather than full rides for your safeties at least. Is there a way you can win that money (contests, competitions), or that a relative can loan you some (that you’d pay back of course)?
How likely is that IMO qualification?
For example, the highest-ranked university with automatic full tuition scholarships, UAlabama Tuscaloosa, would offer you a full tuition scholarship for 4 semesters. If you’re so advanced you can take graduate courses in math plus have some AP credit (you’d need to figure out how to do that though, you’d have to register by the deadline and take the tests in the Spring of 2016, you can “self study” subjects that overlap with your own curriculum or that would most advantageously provide you with gen ed credits over a variety of disciplines), you can get your bachelor’s degree AND master’s degree in math in 8 semesters rather than the customary 12. Their Honors College is quite reputable and very strong, you’d get to take special classes or graduate classes, you’d get to do research.
Of course, for pure math, it’s better to study with leading mathematicians and in a “famous” math program, but if push comes to shove, having a guaranteed solution that’s better for your needs than what you can have in India would be something.
First, you need to register for the September ACT and/or the October SAT.
@MYOS1634: I’m pretty set on not working towards olympiads, actually. I don’t really find that kind of mathematics enjoyable any more, even though it’d be greatly helpful now.
I’d prefer to actually try working toward getting into a “famous” univ for grad school, although the 8-semester thing is intriguing. The information about finances is interesting – do the UCs give out full tuition scholarships?
No, the UCs give NO scholarships to internationals, not full and not partial. You can’t go there if you need even 5K in scholarship and can pay 50K a year (and since you’re far from having that much, forget the UCs). The sole purpose of international students is to fund California students who can’t get in after funding cuts. There was a fight between the UC chancellor to get the per-student funding that they used to get in 2008, and hte governor, and I have no idea who “won” but right now there’s a cap on how many internationals and OOS American students can be admitted to some UCs.
For the 8-semester thing, in fact you’d go to a “famous” grad school for your PHD, obviously. But you’d have a Master’s degree, which means for an international that you have priority over BS/BA internationals for an H1B visa (work visa) after your OPT. Having a Master’s degree, for an international, is very interesting administratively speaking. Of course you may not intend to need OPT nor H1B but it’s still a good
LACs may well have graduate level classes - some 2nd year classes at LACs may be 3rd year classes elsewhere (for instance, a university where students often start at Precalculus because most of their applicants only completed Algebra2 in high school, will have Calc2&3 as 2nd year classes. Colleges where most students have had calculus may well have calc2&3 as a first year sequence, etc.)
Beside Harvey Mudd, look into Williams and Amherst. Amherst would be a good bet for ED since it’s one of the few need blind/meet need colleges for internationals and because of the 5-college consortium that would let you take graduate classes at UMass Amherst. If you can be one of the THREE international students with financial need who are admitted to Harverford, you could take advanced math classes at Penn once you’ve run out of classes to take there.
So, essentially, don’t limit yourself; as an international student with financial need, you have to apply widely or you’ll be stuck home.
If you CAN get an IMO qualification, whether you like that type or math or not is irrelevant. Your admission to a US program depends on it. So you suck it up and you do your best to qualify. Because if you don’t your odds of going to the US are fairly low and certainly not to any sort of university ranked in the top 50.
