@unixfy I’m curious to know where the figure of 15% international acceptance rate at Macalester came from? It doesn’t sound out of line to me, but I’d be interested to know how it was calculated as LACs don’t often publish international admission statistics.
My general advice to internationals who need substantial aid and are interested in small LACs is to spend some time looking at the colleges’ Common Data Sets. As noted, very few LACs release full data on international admissions, e.g., how many applied, how many were admitted, how many requested aid.
However, by extrapolating the information on the CDS we can identify those schools that are more (or less) international friendly. The key data points are the percentage of enrolled nonresident aliens, the total dollars spent on international aid and the percentage of internationals that receive aid. These are budgetary figures that don’t change much year to year (unless the school deliberately revises its strategy).
LACs admit both rich full-pay internationals and aid-needing internationals. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the need-blind, guaranteed full need list. Even those that are need-blind have a pretty good idea from the applicant’s background of the degree of aid required and the net price calculators are for the most part not reliable for internationals.
The LACs that score highest on percentage enrolled, total aid spend and percentage receiving aid:
Macalester, St Olaf, Trinity (CT), Amherst, Grinnell, Middlebury, Dickinson, Colgate, Williams
Mt Holyoke and Smith for females.
Those that are among the lowest in total aid spend are:
Hamilton, Kenyon, Carleton, Davidson, Bowdoin, Reed, Haverford
These schools do admit internationals even those needing aid, but fewer and less than the first list.
The others fall in the middle. As always with LACs fit is an important element both for the school and the applicant. For example, you should submit a piano supplement and indicate that you will continue to pursue musical performance even though you will not major in music.