Skidmore College, Vassar College, Dickinson College (I do not know about Dickinson’s financial aid policies regarding international applicants), Occidental College, Agnes Scott College, all women’s schools, and colleges with strong arts programs should be your target schools.
Consider starting a thread inquiring about colleges and universities to which you have a reasonable possibility of being admitted as an international applicant in need of full financial aid with your specific qualifications.
I suspect that your best odds will be all female colleges.
P.S. I cannot address financial aid issues as you can research that as easily as I, but consider the College of Charleston Honors College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Pitzer College, Scripps College, Dickinson College, and be open to suggestions from other posters.
OP solid advice above but I would not consider Vassar a target as a female applicant with your stats. The acceptance rate for women at Vassar tends to be significantly lower then for male applicants and the avg stats required slightly higher. This year the female acceptance rate is sub 20%.
The quoted stats can be a bit misleading when aggregated and is largely a function of the female applicant pool being larger given the schools history and traditions.
Hi sarangua. First, let me congratulate you regarding your academic record. A lot of work goes into earning almost all A’s. In the context of a selective holistic-admissions school like Brown, that neither gives you any advantage nor disqualifies you because you don’t have a perfect record. What (Brown) Admissions will want to see is that the courses you took in the major academic areas (vs say a “fun” elective here and there) were the hardest ones offered at your school. That is typically spelled out by a form the guidance counselor submits.
EC’s and and in particular things related to leadership (whether school/academic-related or otherwise) are often where the sorting gets done. Having scrutinized the EC’s of the hundreds of Brown applicants I’ve interviewed, I can say that yours do not stand out. You’ve accomplished many good things, but it’s simply a very competitive school. Note that EC’s are “weighted” to some extent in terms of relevance to the intended concentration, so an award in Bio might be helpful to the chances of a prospective Bio concentrator, but less so or maybe not at all for Art.
What the above amounts to is that I concur with others that you shouldn’t use Brown for your ED. It’s somewhere between unlikely and very unlikely to work out. Admit rates usually do run higher for ED, but that’s because the applicant pool is that much more distinguished relative to RD.
In my opinion, the strongest aspect of your EC’s is a number of things showing leadership or leadership potential. I would recommend using that as a theme in your applications. Don’t exaggerate (ever), but make a case for how your academic and EC accomplishments speak to someone who is prepared to make good use of their educational opportunities.
FWIW, I gave similar “emphasize leadership” advice to a (white US) student attending a HS so bad it was facing disaccreditation. They ended up turning down Harvard in favor of Brown (though as they say in investment ads, “past performance does not indicate future results”).
FYI, at least when I attended Brown travel costs were part of the financial aid calculation. My family didn’t have any money beyond meeting basic living expenses, so each year ahead of Christmas and Summer the Bursar’s Office cut me a check for the approximate cost of a round-trip plane ticket.
School searching process has been overwhelming to me. Thus i thought i should search schools that i already know at first. Now I will update my school list as you guys said. Also do not worry about application fee, those will be waived.
After seeing these replies, i have came to realization that my list was purely unrealistic. Thank you for your recommendations. The list will be changed, and i will start a thread with new school list as soon as possible.
Why do you think my best odds will be all female colleges?
[Sorry, I didn’t see your post until today – slipped past me for some reason.]
An award from 9th grade wouldn’t normally have the weight of one from closer to graduation, but it’s still something worth listing.
How can leadership potential be a theme in the application? Would you like to give more explanation? < You can write for example about what you’ve done in the past, and how it ties in to your plans for the future. I just wanted to alert you as to how that would make sense for a potential topic/theme, but I don’t want to give you any guidance beyond that. Brown already heard from me 45 years ago as to what was in my head. Now it’s time for them (or whoever) to hear what’s in yours. If “leadership” doesn’t resonate, then by all means pick something else.
One thing which probably gets too much emphasis in the college advice business is “where to go to college”, at least in terms of how that relates to employment afterwards. As others here have indicated, and you really need to take to heart, where to go starts with “someplace which will take me for sure and that I can come up with the money for somehow”. That’s pretty straightforward in populated areas of the US, since we have good 2-year (or “community”) colleges which can serve as a bridge to a 4-year. I took all the Calculus I needed for an Engineering degree at Brown at a CC, before I got to Providence. Same math either way.
After you graduate from college and start working, it probably won’t matter a whole lot where you went to college anyway. My boss didn’t care about Ivy League or State U. Just that I would put in the work to learn the job and become a productive employee. You can position yourself for that at an Ivy, or just about anywhere.