Hi, I am a student from Ontario, Canada that is planning to apply internationally in the US. I have a SAT score of 1560 and a GPA of 3.84 (93% average over High School). Although my GPA is low, my class rank is approximately top five in a class with 322 students. How are my chances of applying to the Ivy League in the US? - Notably - Havard, Stanford, Columbia and Yale(I know Stanford isn’t Ivy). I have strong extracurriculars with one of them being placed internationally. Furthermore, do you have any tips for items that I should put in my application to increase my chance?
Your chances aren’t good… no international student’s chances are good unless their parents are presidents, royalty or billionaires. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try – just have a back up plan you love in Canada.
Top schools in the US will understand that high school grades in Canada tend to be a little bit lower than in the US. As such you will be compared with students from a comparable grading system. Your SAT is great.
Acceptance rates at top ranked US schools are very low (around about 1%). Acceptance is also very hard to predict. Most applicants to the top 8 or 10 schools down here are very strong.
Have you run the NPC on schools in the US? This will give you a sense of how much they are likely to cost.
Canadian employers seem to prefer to hire graduates from Canadian universities. US employers hire graduates who have the right to work in the US. This can make it hard for a Canadian graduating from a top ranked US school to find a job anywhere. This hit me big time a few decades ago and was quite unpleasant. If I were to do it again, I would have stayed in Canada for undergrad and still considered US schools for graduate school.
@DadTwoGirls, I hear of Waterloo engineering students getting co-op placements in Silicon Valley quite frequently. Is it different to be able to do an internship vs being hired full time post-graduation?
@gwnorth Engineers are eligible for TN visas which are quite easy to get. It is very difficult for those who don’t qualify for a TN visa to get permission to work in the US.