<p>I know that competition for merit-scholarships are intense among international students.
Unfortunately, my parents do not have money, and I am looking for at least full tuition or full rides at ANY decent engineering school.</p>
<p>Here's my stat, </p>
<p>UW GPA 3.8/ 4.12 (l know, it sucks)
ACT 33
SAT II Math IIC 800 , Physics 800
School Type: Magnet School
Ethnicity: Asian (Male) International Student</p>
<p>Math Club, Mu Alpha Theta, Peer-to-Peer Tutoring, etc.. </p>
<p>I'm planning on majoring mathematics or physics.
Hope? Or no hope? </p>
<p>Can you please tell me any decent engineering school that will likely to offer me at least full tuition? What are my chances of getting into decent engineering school that might offer me (International Student) full tuition??</p>
<p>If you are in the US, would you qualify for in-state status at your state universities? Does your state university have generous scholarships for in-state students?</p>
<p>Either way: We are not really in a position to judge your chances. I would suggest that you take a list of engineering schools (e.g. [Undergraduate</a> Engineering Rankings](<a href=“http://www.cefns.nau.edu/Academic/CS/misc_docs/UG_engineering_ranking_08.pdf]Undergraduate”>http://www.cefns.nau.edu/Academic/CS/misc_docs/UG_engineering_ranking_08.pdf)) and check each one of them for scholarship opportunities. The first schools that came to my mind were Villanova (full tuition, room and board) and Drexel (full tuition, plus 5-digit income during mandatory co-op semesters) for merit scholarships and Caltech, Stanford and Harvey Mudd for need-based aid, but there are certainly more universities out there.</p>
<p>Hi! I’m also an international student and I was looking for engineering schools too. Not sure what counts as decent for you, but if you noticed most of the top 10 from USNWR are publics. I didn’t apply to any of them (except UW Madison and UMN Twin Cities as my safeties) because they do not offer scholarships. UMN Twin Cities gave me the highest scholarship they offer to internationals, which brings the costs down to around $22,000. If that’s still not affordable to you, I suggest you scrap all the publics from your list no matter how highly ranked they are. </p>
<p>That leaves the top science schools like MIT, CalTech, Northwestern, etc. I didn’t apply to any school that requires the SAT IIs because I didn’t take them so that further narrowed down my list. Here are my results to help you out and see which schools are generous (I’ll be part of the class of 2015). My stats are more or less similar to you, I think.The amounts I listed refer to the amounts of GRANTS they gave me.</p>
<p>I was rejected/waitlisted from Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Bucknell and Notre Dame. I got in a few other schools but I won’t list them anymore because they’re not known for engineering, and I applied to them with the intention of doing the 3+2 engineering programs.</p>
<p>Since you took the SAT IIs, you should have more choices in terms of the number of top ranked engineering schools. Good luck! What country are you from?</p>
<p>I just re-read your post and saw that you plan on majoring in math or physics… not engineering? I’m confused now. In that case, you can add LACs to your list. Most of the LACs offer 3+2 engineering programs so you can’t really count them as “decent engineering schools” but they do offer math/physics majors.</p>
<p>@kaitlin: I find it a bit odd that Colgate and Lafa gave you much less aid than Vanderbilt. This is not to say that I doubt your number, I’m just curious as whether there is any reason this happened. I’m under the impression that Colgate and Lafa are pretty generous to those they admitted.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you’ve heard about Vanderbilt, but Vanderbilt is one of the most generous schools in the US. Their endowment is much bigger than the other 2 schools. Yes, I have heard too that Lafayette is very generous to internationals, and I was also surprised when I saw the aid package. I honestly don’t know what went wrong. If it matters, they also offered me a $3,000 work study, and a $3,500 loans.</p>
<p>I was admitted to Colgate as an Alumni Memorial Scholar, so that means they eliminated loans from my package and turned them into grants. Maybe their methods for computing need-based aid are simply different from Vanderbilt’s. </p>
<p>I think it will be more helpful to compare how far off they were to how much I declared my family could pay. Lafayette was around $10,000 off (I don’t consider loans because my family would not be taking out loans), Colgate was $5,000 more, and Vanderbilt was $7,500 LESS than what I offered to pay. </p>
<p>As they say, your milage may vary. Apply and hope for the best :)</p>
<p>Haha I know that Vanderbilt is extremely generous - they gave me a whooping 60k grants.</p>
<p>So I take it that you declared the same amount of family contribution to all schools? 'Cause the only reason I can think of why the aid awards differ so much is different financial aid declarations.</p>
<p>And are you heading to Vanderbilt this fall?</p>
It doesn’t matter what you offer for your contribution. The financial aid offices will just take your income numbers and run them through their financial aid calculator and make you an offer. The PROFILE form, which is now preferred by most colleges over the International Student Financial Aid Application, does not even ask how much you want to contribute. </p>
<p>If some financial aid offers seem to be completely off, it’s worth to follow up on them! For example, there’s a chance of typos when they enter your numbers into their system. A friend of mine got a crappy initial offer because the college accidentally appended an extra zero to the property value of her home. One of my offers was off because there was a misunderstanding about the term ‘retirement contribution’. I reported a 10% retirement tax that’s used to fund the retirement of current senior citizens (with the understanding that the next generation will fund our retirement); the college assumed that it was voluntary retirement savings that we could pause for a few years to pay college tuition instead. </p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt to go over the financial aid application with college staff to make sure that everyone is on the same page!</p>
<p>Yep i declared the same thing for all of them. Nah I turned it down though it was really really hard to do so. Are you heading to Vandy then? I won’t follow up anymore since I’m happy with my other schools and their FA offers :)</p>
<p>I know that i have a really small change of getting into MIT, Caltech , etc.
Well my situation is that my family contribution is going to be around ZERO </p>
<p>So should i even bother applying to these top notch schools?
Or apply to more lesser known schools to see how much aid/ scholarships i can get???</p>
<p>What’s discouraging me from applying to top engineering schools is that school like Cornell can accept an international student without providing any aid.</p>
<p>I’m from South Korea. I’ve been in U.S since 7th grade.
The reason why I want to go to a college that can provide me with almost full ride is that if I don’t get accepted to the universities that i’m applying to with significant aid, I have no choice but to work full time at the grocery store to attend a community college. </p>
<p>I’ve worked before during the school year, and it is really pain in the butt to accomplish so many things while working full time.</p>
<p>I really want to not stress about anything and just focus on studying.
But sometimes, that does not become a reality for average international students.</p>
<p>Any tips for international students applying to American universities??</p>
<p>I dont quite understand - you’re an international student in the States for 7 years without a change in your resident status and the ability to pay (partly) for college?</p>
</p>