<p>First some info:
SAT I: 2230
SAT II: 800, 800.
GPA: International student, so no GPA.
Class 9: Mostly As, some Bs, one C
Class 10: All As in midterms, all A*s in O Levels, including one country highest
Class 11: All As in midterms, all extremely high As in AS results.
As you can understand, school has grade deflation. But my counselor is saying that I have always been in the top 3 percentile, and have been in the top 1 percentile for the past 2 years.</p>
<p>ECA: High/Top positions in Science Club, Debate, community service club.
Adviser to the president at a newly registered company. (head of one ongoing project)
Founder and president of a youth movement, working with the UN. 3 years. Lots of long term projects.
Month long internship at auditing firm.
Month long internship at engineering firm.
2 years as head of a my own tutoring center, taught physics. Paid.
Several volunteering work.</p>
<p>Awards: Nothing big....one national highest in o levels. several "special achievements" from school for scoring the highest in that subject from our school.</p>
<p>Weakness: Lazy essay writing approach, weak SAT I, and most importantly no awards.</p>
<p>2230 on the SAT is weak? LOL! I know students who got into Columbia, MIT, Princeton and Stanford with 2150-2220 on the SAT. And awards mean very little. Universities want to see passion and conviction. Whether that leads to awards or not is not important. </p>
<p>Your list is not bad, but it is not consistant. Reed and Lehigh are polar opposites, as are Brown and Duke. What is it you seek? Answering the following questions will help:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What kind of college environment do you want (intense or laid back, intellectual or not, conservative or liberal etc…)? </p></li>
<li><p>What is your ideal setting (urban, suburban or rural)? </p></li>
<li><p>What do you like to do in your free time? </p></li>
<li><p>What is your intended major? </p></li>
<li><p>What do you want to do after college (medical or law school, PhD in a traditional field such as Chemistry or Economics, work for a Fortune 500 company such as BP or J&J, work on Wall Street for an Investment Bank or Consulting firm)?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Don’t listen to Waverly, who doesn’t know as much about international admissions as he/she thinks. Your chances at Brown, Penn and Stanford aren’t lower than your chances at some of the other schools you’re considering, so if you want to cut out some super reaches from your list, you might as well go with Northwestern, Duke, Yale and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Do you need financial aid, though? That’s what it will ultimately come down to. Also, answering Alexandre’s questions would help.</p>
<p>While ghost may well know much more than the rest of us, I wouldn’t recommend taking 2 of the highly selective schools that are eed blind to intnls off of your list. I’ve been sending international to ivies or a very long time. If you need aid Pnn and Brown are poor choices by comparison. Stanford is not much better. The vast majority of intnls at these schools are full pay. If you don’t need aid it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Yes, I need aid. Colleges like Yale or Hahvad would probably award me 80-90% aid, but my parents can manage around 20k for me. That’s what they said anyways.
I think I want to major in economics. At least that’s the plan now.</p>
<p>Being an international student on financial aid who went to a fairly prestigious international high school, I probably do know more than most about international college admissions.</p>
<p>Stanford, Brown and UPenn are not harder to get into for internationals requesting aid than Yale and Dartmouth; the level of selectivity at all of these schools is extremely high, and it is entirely possible that a qualified international student will get into some schools that are not need-blind, but get rejected from some that are–or vice versa. I can give numerous examples from my circle of friends alone: I know a girl who got into UPenn, but was rejected from Princeton and Yale, a boy got into Columbia, but not Harvard, another who got into Stanford and Princeton, but not Yale, a girl who got into Cornell ED, but not Princeton, etc. They all requested (and received) financial aid.</p>
<p>The majority of the international students at Brown, UPenn and Stanford may be full-pay, but these schools do award aid to substantial numbers of internationals as well: 50-60 per year for UPenn, around 50 for Brown, 50-60 for Stanford. These numbers are not significantly lower than the same numbers for Harvard (~150), Yale (~60), and Princeton (~100). The difference may easily be offset by the fact that UPenn and Brown, at least, accept a higher number of international applicants seeking aid because of their lower yields (while Harvard, for instance, rarely loses international students to other universities); and by the higher number of applications Harvard, Yale and Princeton receive. In fact, all evidence points to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Yale being the hardest schools for internationals to get into, regardless of financial status.</p>
<p>Your authoritative statements are often incorrect, and I find that potentially damaging to the people who believe them.</p>
<p>Brown, Stanford and Penn simply have not made it an institutional priority to fund many internationals. Dartmouth and Yale have. Certainly the former group support some, but as a college advisor at a very top prep school with lots of internationals applying to ivies for the past 11 years, and having been a senior admissions committee member for almost 10 years before that at 2 of the colleges on the OPs wish list, I’d place my bet on Dartmouth and Yale.</p>
<p>If Penn, Stanford and Brown are your top three choices, the main common denominators I see are prestigious, research-oriented schools located in urban or suburban environments. Given the difficulty of getting into these three (although you are a good candidate at all of them), I would add Tufts and Northwestern to your list and then perhaps go with a good, research-oriented safety school in an urban environment like Clark.</p>
<ol>
<li>What kind of college environment do you want (intense or laid back, intellectual or not, conservative or liberal etc…)? </li>
</ol>
<p>Laid back. I don’t want to go to a college where grades are the priority. Yes, I want an intellectual college environment. That is one of the most important reasons for me to apply to the US, and not to the colleges in my own country. I am very liberal, but I do not really have a problem with a conservative environment. I have lived in an extremely conservative one for the past 18 years, and I think I would most colleges to be relatively liberal.</p>
<ol>
<li>What is your ideal setting (urban, suburban or rural)? </li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t really have an ideal setting. Being an international student, the locations exist only on paper for me. I don’t think any comment I make would be well thought out…Although i am concerned about cost of living, in terms of the cost of buying everyday items from the neighborhood.</p>
<ol>
<li>What do you like to do in your free time? </li>
</ol>
<p>This is a weird one to answer. I usually read. Work on social issues, through the social movement or any group of people. Blog about current events, esp those in my country that ticks me off. Hang out with friends to have intellectually stimulating discussions on anything. Or I could just stay in my living room for hours watching House. I have a tendency to start things up, or join sth that has recently started as I want to have some good experiences.</p>
<p>I have no idea how this would help you advice me on my college list.</p>
<p>I do think you should add some less competitive schools if you really want to be in the US. I’d look at Colgate, Bates, Whitman, Bowdoin, Carleton, Macalester.</p>
<p>Again, I’d start with Penn and Brown. All of the ivies are big reaches for you and I think you’d have a very hard time getting in with money at either.</p>