<p>Are international students eligible for merit-based aid? If so, how generous is UIUC, esp college of engineering?</p>
<p>I am international and I will say that you are technically eligible for a very limited amount of merit-based aid(I mean the aid bound up with your admission). I was the lucky dog,but remember, I am comming with an 2200+SAT and I heard that it’s even not safe for the scholarship even with that score,for the too limited opportunities.
If you have an SAT of over 2150, probably you’ll have the chance to go to some liberal art colleges or private universities,which are more generous. Look, if you do want to do some solid work in engineering, just come here(and that’s why I finally rejected some more famous ones and came here).I think you have been aware of that nowadays probably you can be admitted by UIUC,with an SAT of 1950 and Toefl(if you need to take that) of 90,because the school have been running into finance problems, so that they will enroll more Internationals to make up for that. So dont expect to get anything from the school. As a public U, their aim is to provide decent and affordable education for the Illinois students, which is very understandable,not to assist u. So you’re deemed as sort of a donator.
Feel free to private message me if you have further questions.best wishes</p>
<p>“the school has been running into finance problems”…where are you getting that information? I don’t think they have been letting in any more out of state students than in the past. In fact I think it is a state mandate how many out of state students they can let in. You make it sound like Illinois is in financial trouble and is admitting any student with a SAT score of 1950 or above to fund their school…I don’t think you have your facts straight…</p>
<p>Okay,thanks collegechristine, I should make it clear that I love the school so much, it’s a world-class school.But what I was saying was unfortunately true for the internationals. Look,no more than 5% of the undergrads are international, and in the view of the in-state students, it does not make any difference if it is 2% or 5%. But considering the large population of the school, it could be a difference of more than 1000 students,So for us internationals, we can apparently notice the difference. And for what i’m talking about SAT, I should be honest, I know a lot of UIUC International applicants same year with me with an SAT of some 1950-2000,90% of whom have been admitted. Sincerely speaking I shouldnt’ve made UIUC seem like a money-oriented school,(and that is absolutely not what i wanted to express), just really sorry about that!However,Though not confirmed by the official, the money-problem assumption is believed by quite a few students, and some in-state students believe it’s getting harder to get into the school because the school feels it hard to offer the decent education at such a cheap cost.you can even find some threads in this forum discussing this issue.</p>