Hey
So I’m looking at Umich, but I can only find information about loans for international students. Any info on their financial aid? Thanks.
Umich is absolute no-no if you need financial aid.
Why are you looking at state schools that won’t give any federal/institutional aid? If you want to see state schools, you should look into merit scholarships
Okay thanks. I just wanted to take my eyes off the top 20 schools for a second.
Anyone know whkch state schools give the best merit aid to international students? Or which have full ride for internationals?
Google is your friend…but before you get the answer, here is another question:
What is your goal after college?
@paul2752 Military. Why do you ask?
gigichuck, very few schools offer a “full ride,” especially to international students. There ARE schools that give good merit/financial aid to internationals, but it’s very competitive, especially among the better-known, generous schools. Below are a couple of lists to explore. They’re not comprehensive, and may not be accurate since financial aid regulations change year to year, and some are only for domestic applicants. But it’s a start to your search.
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
Military in USA? or your country?
I asked because the quality of education may not be so different wherever you study, but the resouerces to find your intenships and jobs heavily depends on your school. For one, my school has absolutely zero resources for international students regarding seeking jobs, so I had to go to other schools’ websites to find the list of employers that have hired international students.
@paul2752 Lol I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, I guess. Shouldn’t be too hard to find an internship as an engineering major. If I wanted to study medicine or a humanities course, I would stay in my country. I want to study where the tech industry is at.
@gigichuck Actually, a lot of companies that hire international students for H1B or OPT may not hire for internships. I have had that experiences where companies strictly limit the internships/Co-Ops only for US nationals or green card holders.
This is where your school can be helpful. Engineering career center, Co-op office, or international student office may or may not have resources about employers who have hire foreigners, and this will be either tremendously helpful and save your time, or you will have to spend grueling amount of time to do researches all by yourself.
I look forward to it 
Unfortunately, US colleges (understandably) are very stingy with large amounts of aid for internationals, so there are very few safeties for an international student seeking a full ride. For schools which are need-aware and do not guarantee to meet full need for internationals, which are sadly most US colleges, your best bet is to aim for merit aid. This means you will have to apply to lots of schools that would be slightly or significantly below your stats and score range. Look for small, non-tippy top LACs, colleges in rural areas, religiously affiliated universities, and state schools that are not “public ivies.” As I previously recommended, Trinity University and St. Mary’s University, which are both in texas, gave me a near full ride and a full ride, respectively. These schools were definite academic safeties for me and that is the main reason I was able to receive merit-based aid.
Say what, @koreanstudent? Internationals are fortunate to get aid from US schools. Do not look a gift horse in the mouth. You indicate that you were offered some very fine scholarships, yet you think US schools are “stingy”? Good grief!! That’s insulting. Its unlikely that many schools outside the US offer such aid to students from other countries.
The first definition of stingy in the dictionary is “unwilling to give,” which makes sense in the context used by koreanstudent.
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The sense of entitlement some internationals have (no one on particular) is incredibly distasteful. And many schools are willing to give- just not as much as some of the students seem to want or think they are deserving of or entitled to.
^I don’t think you understand though: it’s not entitlement at all.
Please re-read the statement: the student was explaining the difference between merit aid and need-based aid. Those are just basic facts: Colleges that meet full need for internationals make tough choices (imagine if your parents’ monthly income were $200, you may be a genius, it’ll be hard to find a college willing to admit you with the aid you need). Therefore internationals, who may not know about merit aid, would be better served looking for universites that aren’t brand names in their country and where their stats qualify them for academic scholarships.
A college can be stingy on need-based aid (or offer zero need based aid) but be generous for merit aid.
Another issue that I’ve come across which may appear to be entitlement although it’s not, is that for many international students, the amounts are so enormous they’re meaningless. $5,000 is just as gigantic as $50,000 when you make $200 a month or $1,000 a year or $5 is what you’re supposed to use to feed your family for a week. Many students have absolutely no sense of what these numbers mean because they’re used to counting units and dozens, with one hundred an unthinkably high number that already pushes back imagination’s boundaries.
well said, in another thread.
I understand just fine, @MYOS634. Perhaps it is the international student who doesn’t get the difference. Regardless, there is often the implied that the US schools should pay for their education if they can’t. Yes, Agree with you- they may be better served looking at non brand name schools or should pursue those home schools where they qualify for academic scholarships.If they can’t afford to attend school in the US, whether they make $500 or $500000, it is unfortunate, but there are also plenty of domestic students with financial need. I take offense at the crack that the US schools are “stingy” with internationals. Thats not accurate. Schools (mostly private) have to make decisions as to how to dole out their FA (need and merit). And if priority goes in some cases to domestic students, that isnt necessarily a bad thing.
Some schools are stingy with everyone. Some schools allocate resources in such a way that internationals who need funding see their chances halved. That’s the way it is. Recognizing the fact doesn’t make it a criticism of American universities at large. It’s important that international appliants understand all the facts.
However I don’t think the word “stingy” meant “we should have priority over Americans”. I didn’t see anything about that in the messages here. Stingy means “didn’t give enough to attend”. There are plenty of “stingy” universities, from NYU to UIUC to PSU to UMiami. It’s not related to being domestic or international. In the same vein, don’t we say that HYPSM have “generous financial aid”? They’re not caled stingy or generous because of nationality (in fact there are no universities generous for internationals but stingy for Americans, as it should be, but on top of that universities generous to internationals are typically generous for Americans, and stingy universities tend to be for everyone) -
“stingy” is related to what is needed and the gap between what you can afford and what the university thinks you can afford. It’s a pain many Americans feel and it’s not illegitimate when non American teens feel the same pain, sometimes more painfully because they didn’t know better, weren’t raised with the idea education costs money, or sometimes find themselves in terrible situations that going to the US was supposed to help them escape.
Not all countries have good state universities or universities that offer programs in subjects of interest or where technology is relevant to today’s world and in some cases attending a school in the US is a matter of attending school, period, or being safe (ie., imagine being a girl or Jewish in a country where Islam is the university’s religion, living in a war zone, living in a country where coming from the slums automatically bars you from higher education, being gay in a country that persecutes gay men, etc. All these cases have occured in the past couple years.)
While some internationals are wealthy kids, many aren’t and are trying to live the American dream: work hard and try your utmost to succeed and you will be judged on your character, efforts, and intelligence, not on being a girl, gay, brown, born in poverty, a minority religion, an “unclean ethnicity”, etc. Ironically the wealthy kids are more entitled than the kids who know resilience and adversity. For those who wanted a cherry on the cake scholarship and complain, yes we can talk of entitlement. But it’s clearly not the case for @gigichuck here, nor @Paul2752.
Well that is a comprehensive strawman argument. The poster said " Unfortunately, US colleges (understandably) are very stingy with large amounts of aid for internationals, so there are very few safeties for an international student seeking a full ride." As many say, the plural of anecdote is not data. A school not giving limited full ride or near ride scholarships (need or merit) to internationals may be true, but does not make them “stingy”.
Schools are businesses, and they look at many factors when building their classes. A student being unsafe in their home country may be a compelling story to tell in the application process. But again, it may be an individual story, not an explanation for large numbers of applicants. Colleges may have limits on what they can/will offer internationals for a variety of reasons (e.g. retention/graduation rates among many other factors). That doesn’t make them "stingy. That makes them businesses with departments of enrollment management.
@jym626 I think we have a misunderstanding. I was not saying US colleges are stingy. I said specifically that they were “stingy with large amounts of aid for internationals.”
As @CheddarcheeseMN said, the definition of “stingy” is “unwilling to give” or “not generous.” And it is true that US colleges are mostly unwilling to give large amounts of aid to international students, and aid received may not be enough.
Later in my post, I explained that the exception to this genera rule would be if the school guarantees to meet full need for even internationals, or if the school is not a name brand school. These statements are true, as far as I know and as far as most international students will tell you.
I also said "understandably."As @MYOS1634 said, my attitude towards this is definitely not “oh my god it’s so unfair how American schools don’t just hand out money to non-American students 
I deserve just as much as the US kids!!” I know US colleges exist to serve US citizens and that internationals are lucky if they receive admission and aid and should be grateful.
I never said US schools were being unfair by not giving more aid to international students. I just stated a fact. I am not entitled and I believe aid should be reserved for US kids first, and gave the OP my few words of advice on how to work with this in the hopes of getting a full ride somewhere. The OP asked a question and I answered it to the best of my ability.
@koreanstudent, I think you’re missing the connotations that are attached to the word “stingy,” and I suspect it’s those that @jym626 is referring to in her post. I understand what you’re saying – US colleges don’t have much to give to domestic students and they have far less to give to internationals – and that’s a fair point. But “stingy” in the US carries a meaning beyond “unwilling.” It means “cheap” and “Scroogelike.” Anyone who’s read Dickens knows that Scrooge was far from a sympathetic character. Scroogelike suggests they have the money and just refuse to share it, when the reality is the money just isn’t there. Why not just say US colleges don’t have much money to give to any student, so internationals need to choose carefully and try to find the exceptions?