<p>Hi everyone, I'm posting for a friend again. She is a Chinese student applying to several schools in the US, a few of which offer financial aid or merit scholarships to foreign students. I know that these schoalrships are super competitive, and, as money was anot a primary concern in my own college search, I have no idea where to start. Does anyone have any advice for maximizing her scholarship chances? Also, I know many schools are not "need blind" for internationals, if a school requests a fiancial stament/financial aid form, will having a lot of need drastically reduce her chances of acceptance?</p>
<p>With some schools that give limited financial aid to Internationals, applications are put into two separate piles. One pile with applicants seeking financial aid, and one pile not seeking. Obviously, the pile with financial aid seeking applicants is going to be much more competitive.</p>
<p>I'm not sure about other schools but in Johns hopkins, they categorise all international students together (with subsets of course) and they first make their decisions, not based on financial need.</p>
<p>Then, the accepted students who need aid are sent to the financing office or whatever they call it. And if the school is restricted to giving them their full need, they are cut off from the accepted list.</p>
<p>So yes. Asking for fin aid is a major disadvantage to intels (in nonneedblind schools) because a LOT of intels ask for aid.</p>
<p>The best option would to apply to a need-blind school like HYP, Williams etc. Princeton especially has really good aid program.</p>
<p>If you look at the stats for those internationals who got into non need-blind schools like Stanford, UChicago, Northwestern etc with aid, it really is the cream of the crop thats accepted when compared to those who didn't apply for aid. Money and spaces are limmited so applying for aid really does drastically reduce your chances at many schools.</p>
<p>Kjoodles... are you saying that when Intels apply to HYPM2W (yeah, middlebury and mit) they do not need to be cream of the crop?</p>
<p>shell... I would think that applying for aid does drastically decrease your chances. But do bear in mind that in many Liberal Arts Colleges (those that are not very well known outside the States), they are constantly trying to diversify their campus. And thus it is of utmost importance for them to offer awesome financial aid or else international enrollments will be piteously small. That will probably not the case at those vv well known schools like UChic, Stanford, Berkeley. They can attract rich + academically strong students and thus, the inability to pay for tuition will drastically reduce your chances at those schools.</p>
<p>Some schools that offer great financial aid to internationals (note that they are not exhaustive!!)...</p>
<ul>
<li>Franklin and Marshall</li>
<li>KENYON!!! GO LORDS AND LADIES!!! (arh, sounds very classy yeah? :p)</li>
<li>Middlebury</li>
<li>Colby</li>
<li>Bates</li>
<li>Williams</li>
<li>Many girls colleges, particularly Mount Holyoke</li>
<li>Wabash (for guys only)</li>
</ul>
<p>Less selective ones include
- Dickinson
- Lewis and Clark
- St. Lawrence/Lawrence U
- Furman</p>
<p>Schools that you can forget about applying if you are requesting financial aid...
- Haverford
- Colorado College
- Pomona College</p>
<p>These schools do offer... but it's like to 2 intels each year??</p>
<p>
[quote]
Kjoodles... are you saying that when Intels apply to HYPM2W (yeah, middlebury and mit) they do not need to be cream of the crop?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>OK.. Lemme rephrase ... the cream of the cream of the crop is admitted ... does that make more sense? :p</p>
<p>Yeah :) But come to think of it, you can assume that most LACs practises need-blind admissions for international students because most, if not all of their applicants are usually financial aid applicants! Yeap, so figure that out for yourself!</p>
<p>precisely! instead of saying that international finaid applicants applying to LACs are at a disadvantage, we shd say international applicants not applying for finaid to LACs are at an immense advantage...</p>
<p>Colorado? I am accepted into Colorado with the international full scholarship.(3 each year) One of my friends also got this scholarship in the same year. We are both from China. Besides, a girl who is now in my college got in Pomona with full aid last year.</p>