International Indian male for CS at T20s needs a full ride

Title. I know I’m the worst demographic possible for college admissions, and I’m skipping safeties and matches for a particular reason.

SAT: 1580 (780E, 800M)
SAT Subject Tests: Math 2 - 800, Physics - 800

Grade 9: 10/10 CGPA
Grade 10: 9.8/10 CGPA
Grade 11: 86.2/100
School doesn’t rank, but it’s prestigious and sends a bunch of kids (4-8) to T20s every year. I’m probably top 10% based on grades.

Awards and honors:
A couple of semi-prestigious or maybe slightly prestigious international awards, and several national honors - all related to CS/aerospace.

ECs (I have several leadership positions, but not specifying in which clubs or activities. I’m also being extremely vague about these intentionally.):

  1. CS Club - lots of selective and non-selective stuff, very involved
  2. Student Council
  3. Aerospace Club w published reseach paper
  4. A few STEM (CS) projects (theoretical+prototype based) - some environment oriented, a few random machine learning apps
  5. Vinyl collector
  6. Taught kids programming
  7. Theatre Club
  8. Taught kids theatre
  9. Made a space balloon
  10. Have a little business
  11. An internship at a physics lab

I have a couple of amazing recs from my math and physics teachers.

Essays are subjective, I know, but I’m a good writer and already have a few drafts and supplemental essays ready.

College List - pretty much a shotgun
Cornell ED (probably)
MIT EA
UChicago EA
Stanford
Harvard
Vanderbilt
Williams
Duke
Haverford
Dartmouth
Brown
Columbia
Princeton
Yale
Amherst

Hopefully you get in one of those schools, I’ll assume you’ll be full ride due to need.

You’re smart enough to know the odds are seriously against you since you’re applying to schools with extremely low acceptance rates, especially for international students.

So go ahead and apply. Just have a back up plan. Because right now, your plan for American schools is a bit like playing the lottery.

Besides MIT & Stanford, you’re list looks like you are interested in business or law.

What do you plan on studying?

^ not sure why you think that.

Your odds of being rejected everywhere are high. If I were you I’d apply REA/SCEA to a need blind/full need college in order to increase your odds.

^ they didn’t state their intended major.

The title says “T20 CS”… but then lists schools that aren’t T20 CS schools.

@Greymeer, the title of the thread is “CS at T20s”- ie, Computer Science.

Although I am a bit puzzled by Greymeer’s characterization of most of your college list as being primarily for law or business students, I do agree that quite a few are not particularly strong in CS- I can only assume that it is the ‘meets full need for internationals’ criterion that has them included.

OP, just be clear that there are only a tiny number of (usually named and exceptionally competitive) “Full ride” scholarships out there. The rest are “meets full need”, which is NOT the same thing. ‘Meets need’ means that they meet what that university defines as your ‘full need’, based on their review of your family’s (documented) financial profile. Even at super-generous schools they will expect you to pay something, including from summer work and on-campus jobs.

Looks like you are throwing darts in the dark. You need to really research these schools because right now your list looks unrealistic. Have a plan b in case you don’t get any acceptances. Grade 11 86/100? not too great.

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Some of the most highly rated CS schools are state schools, and those are unlikely to provide financial aid to an international applicant.