<p>I'm an A-Level student (about to start year 12/junior year equivalent) from England looking to apply to some colleges in the US.</p>
<p>My stats:
- White female.
- State comprehensive school.
- Half first gen college student - dad has a bachelor's degree, mum didn't finish high school.
- Income under $60,000/family of four.
- SAT I: 2290; 780 CR, 760 M, 750 W.
- SAT II: not yet taken, but consistently scoring above 700 in French, Literature and Math 2 practice tests.
- A-Levels: predicted 2 A*s and 3 As in English Language, English Literature, History, Media Studies and Critical Thinking (intending to continue with 5 subjects instead of the standard 3).
- Working on completing the Extended Project.
- Extracurriculars: paid work as a sales assistant for a UK chain, 250+ hours of volunteering time at a local charity shop, 50 hours of volunteer reading to local primary (elementary equivalent) school students, future school library support assistant, member of the student Marketing/Communications Committee, peer mentor for year 10/11 students (freshman/sophomore equivalents), department task force member (responsible for managing classroom resources) and photography club member.</p>
<p>Possible colleges (not a solid list - I still have a while to decide!):
- Amherst
- Barnard
- Bowdoin
- Brown
- Columbia
- ConnColl
- Elizabethtown
- Franklin & Marshall
- Ithaca
- Princeton
- Yale (planning to apply SCEA)
- If you can suggest some more, that would be great.</p>
<p>If you have As and A*s on GCSEs as well then I will consider the entire thing as a 4.0 for American colleges. I understand the motivation for Yale SCEA: you would get a full-ride if admitted. </p>
<p>OP: You seem intelligent enough but I don’t understand how you came up with your list other than picking the northeast section of the United States. You do understand that the United States is a large country and has great schools located in each region with different climates and temperaments…If I were you, I would eliminate HALF of the schools from your list that are centered on the East coast…</p>
<p>…instead, be STRATEGIC in your application process since you are applying from Great Britain. You will be not only competing against the Americans and other internationals from highly competitive countries like China, Korea, and India but your fellow Brits…</p>
<p>…so, add Duke and Davidson from the South, Chicago and Carleton from the Midwest, and Stanford and Pomona from the West to complete your list.</p>
<p>…you have to understand each top tier school have what they call “soft quotas” to accept a certain limited number of internationals from each country…whether they like to admit it or not. So, if a certain school has accepted a certain number of top students from a certain country that certain school may reject the rest of the top candidates…even if they have the credentials…</p>
<p>…each top tier school also likes to have diversity of students from different countries represented in its “profile” of accepted students…so one can be the student left “out” from one school but accepted by another depending on the circumstances of who applied where…hope this makes more sense. Good luck and best wishes.</p>
<p>Actually, being international isn’t much of a leg up unless you’re full-pay. If you’re not, it makes your chances lower (unless it’s a needblind school), but not impossible. Internationals asking for aid are typically one of the most competitive pools at the top schools. Looking at your family’s income, which is around the cost of attendance per year at most of those schools, you will need FA. This might make things harder for you, although hopefully not as hard as if you needed a full-ride. It depends on the school, though. Colgate University, for example, does factor in whether you need FA in the decision, but not the actual amount you need. In this case, it makes no difference if you need, say, 10k in aid than if you needed full FA.</p>
<p>Anyway, since your stats are great, I would focus on writing great essays.</p>
<p>As for suggestions, what about all the other Seven Sisters? They offer great FA for internationals and acceptance rate is generally higher than that of competing colleges. This doesn’t mean they’re not as good, only that the pool is self-selecting and very few students are willing to go to women’s colleges. Since you have Barnard on your list, I see this isn’t the case with you, so I suggest you check out the rest.</p>
<p>I second the suggestion of looking at schools outside the east coast, although I admit to not being too familiar with them. I think the only schools outside the east coast I applied to were Macalester and Grinnell. I didn’t apply to these, but Reed College and Whitman College are also great options.</p>
<p>Also, F&M offers to meet 100% of need for internationals, and this leads me to think it is not a safety at all. In fact, their website states that the more aid you need, the more competitive the process becomes. I think you’re still a competitive applicant, though. I’d call it a match.</p>
<p>Thank you for all of the advice! I’m sorry about the late reply - I completely forgot about this thread. I’ll definitely be taking the suggestion to expand my search regionally and look into the Seven Sisters.</p>