<p>Ashkay, even with perfect stats, few school offer a full tuition waiver for anyone. You have to get in line for the financial aid and merit scholarships just like everyone else. That you are international, complicates things as there are only a few schools that are need blind for internationals, and you have to check if there are any funds available for internationals whereever you apply. Though your family has made a determination on what they feel they can pay, things are not determined that way. You will have to fill out a number of forms and verify the items on it for the colleges to come up with what they feel your family can pay. There is usually a large discrepancy between those two numbers. The ivies and a number of other very selective school only give need based aid, so whatever they come up with for need is what you will get, if you get in. There is no merit aid at those schools. There are a number of schools that do offer merit packages for their most outstanding candidated, schools such as University of Chicago, CIT, Duke. Those scholarships are most prized and the competition is steep to get one. A 1600 SAT1 does not in anyway ensure one, though it pretty much guarantees you won't be eliminated on the basis of a low SAT1. I do not know if internationals are eligible for those awards.</p>
<p>My suggestion to you is to research the best match in schools for you in terms of possiblility of getting aid since that is the most pressing problem. Once you have such a list, you can then see which colleges have the type of courses that give you he highest probability of getting into the banking field. My husband is an IB who worked with a top firm, and is now working independently. From his employee lists, I can see all sorts of colleges represented. To be an actual trader or to get a seat, is one thing, but there are many back office jobs where strong technical knowledge is sought and they really do not give a fig if you come from a tech school or Yale. For certain structured products and analyses, specific math skills are essential. My husband is very strongly math based and it takes him all of 10 minutes if that to assess whether a candidate can handle the math needed to the type of work he does/did. Certain other positions can be achieved once you get a toe hold into a company. But I don't think any particular major is valued over another. I was just at a number of holiday dinners with NY investment bankers many of whom are going through the college process with their kids, and when the subject came up, they were all over the place in what they studied. Many of them did come from the "name" school, but they also came for "name" families. Hobart was a school that came up several times, hardly a most selective school but they are well represented at a very heavy hitters function My husband is as "pedigreed" as any of them with a top name undergrad school and a Uof Ch MBA but what got him into the field is many years of poorly paid work with some of the best minds in the world/country in financial products modeling, and most of those contacts came when he was working in postgrad positions for a pittance at a number of schools. That is really the surest way for anyone who wants to get into the field to find a place. Spend the time researching what the field needs, and work on some solutions. If you have what they need, there is enough of a shortage of that, so you will get a job in the field with no problem. My H can basically name his terms at this point because there is little competition in what he does. But he has spent over 30 years building expertise to this point and some of those years were very bleak financially, and since he did not have this as a goal when he was doing the work, it was not a direct path. But I also believe what makes him so good is that he throroughly enjoyed the work he did, what most people would regard as terrible, unrewarding, poorly paid grunt work that was very difficult and time consuming. I don't know too many people who put in this kind of time. But what he gained is apparently worth money to those in IB field, and H will tell anyone that where you went to school as an undergrad is insignificant in the type of work he does. After several years in NYC and Stamford, he decided that he did not need the hours and demands of a job in such a firm as he did not like the moment to moment work, the atmosphere, nothing. He did not have that much time to spend with our very large and hopping family, he could not do many of the things that he truly enjoyed, so when he realized he could make as much or more on his own time by sticking to a niche and joing a small firm that offered much flexibility, he did so. The men in his firm range from multi millionaires with many deals going at a time, to those who prefer to spend some of the time enjoying the money they earn and work accordingly. He is in the latter category. Without being tied to a company, his earning were not affected in the least by market performance as his expertise is needed regardless of what is happening and probably more urgently wanted when things are not going well. For him, it is a happy medium, and I am very thankful that he found this place in the workworld after many years of trying different things.</p>