need help: colleges recommendations

<p>I'm an international student, and i'm on the process of selecting colleges that are suitable for me.</p>

<p>My SAT score: 2050 CR 600 M 760
My GPA: 8.9/10 </p>

<p>I'm planning to take SAT II on physics and Math</p>

<p>My awards & activities:
+ 4 consecutive semesters of receiving the honor-scholarship for best-GPA students in Foreign Languages Specialzing School (FLSS)
+ Member of Media Team hosting CNN Idol and Prom Come What May (at FLSS)
+ Event Organizer and Creative Director of my school's English Club (CEC), hosting monthly Meetings for about 100 members including: Meeting1 (Welcome to CEC), meeting 2 (Halloween), Field trip 1 (Pottery Village), Meeting3 (Christmas Party), Field Trip 2 (Ancient Roads), Meeting 4 (New Management Board Recruitment), Project 1 Deliver Love for Valentine, Project 2 Birthday Celebrations for Members, Project 3 Acting Month - All of these activities are offered for free and include attendance of all our members. To operate these monthly meetings, we, managers of English Club, have to find funding sources by cooperating with our donors (mostly English Academics centers)
+ Event Organizer of my class
+ Official Co-manager of A Meal A Smile Project (delivering free food for poor patients)
+ Orientation Group Leader of 10+ 2012 (an orientation program welcoming new students in my school)
+ Participant of FLSS Galax (Cultural night)
+ Scriptwriter and Director of Acting Project 'illustrating literature by Drama', hosted by FLSS</p>

<p>Contribution: max 20k
preferable 10k</p>

<p>Can anyone please recommend me some colleges that might be eligible for me ? T T</p>

<p>You’ve skipped some crucial information, like what major you want to study in college. You also didn’t mention if you would qualify for need-based financial aid.</p>

<p>Major: Business/Accounting/Social Services
i did mention contribution @@</p>

<p>You did not mention if you’d qualify for need-based aid. Your family might be rich and simply not wanting to pay more than 10K-20K per year. Not that it matters: most need-based aid is awarded by liberal arts colleges that don’t have business programs.</p>

<p>Given your financial limitations, you’d need at least a full tuition scholarship to attend. Check these: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/211927-institutional-merit-based-scholarships-full-tuition.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/211927-institutional-merit-based-scholarships-full-tuition.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A few colleges off the top of my head that I didn’t see on that list: St Peter’s College, Columbia College (in Columbia, SC), Park University, and the University of New Orleans.</p>

<p>Thank you for your link <33333333333333333333333 but may i ask a question :-s as i read around, only 1% of students applying will receive merit-based and those either have outstanding study report or are highly idiosyncratic @@ is that right ? </p>

<p>moreover, I researched about liberal arts colleges and they all have accounting major, my bias :-? and business, as far as i know, is like the most popular major ? :|:|:| also, those offer hundreds of majors and 70% of students change their major after their first years @@ so i think that it does not matter much :|</p>

<p>and how could i know if i’m qualified for financial aid if i haven’t done choosing colleges ?</p>

<p>

I am not sure where you got that 1% figure from. That sounds a bit off to me, but it is true that only the top applicants at every college will receive significant scholarship money. You’ll have to be quite “overqualified” for a particular school to receive a full-tuition scholarship there.</p>

<p>For example, Saint Peter’s College offers full-tuition scholarships to students with an SAT score of at least 1350 (verbal+math). Their mid-50% range is 830-1050. You can see that you’d have to be quite a bit better than most of their students to attend for free, and in fact you may feel quite out of place academically. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, that’s hard to avoid. Except at Harvard and the like, international students only receive financial aid if they are significantly more qualified than their American peers. There are several reasons for this. One is that it costs more to fund a needy international student than a needy American student: international students have higher expenses (e.g. travel costs and health insurance) and they don’t qualify for external aid. American students might qualify for up to $20,000 in federal and state financial aid in addition to their family contribution, while international students usually have to be funded completely from institutional resources. That means that international students have to bring something “extra” to the table to be worth the expense. Another reason is the law of supply and demand. There are many international financial aid applicants competing for relatively little funding, which makes international funding very hard to get.</p>

<p>

Less selective liberal arts colleges are more likely to offer business programs, but they also don’t give much need-based financial aid to international students. Most of the need-based financial aid for international students comes from the top 50 or so liberal arts colleges, and almost none of them have business programs. </p>

<p>

Aehm… no. The average liberal arts college might have a total of 2,000 students. They might offer 20 or 30 or maybe 40 majors, not “hundreds.” The average liberal arts college student is also quite more likely to change their major than the average college student in general. That’s because liberal arts colleges tend to attract students who are quite undecided about their major to begin with. Students who are confident about their major going into college tend to choose a bigger university with a stronger program in their particular major. </p>

<p>For example, business or computer science programs at a liberal arts college might have a total of 4 professors. At a bigger university or smaller very specialized colleges, they might have 40 professors. Bigger programs mean more courses, more opportunities, and more connections to the corporate world.</p>

<p>

When I asked, “would you qualify for need-based aid?”, I meant, “is your family income so low that $10K to $20K is the most you could afford if you used every resource available to you?” If you know that your family could technically afford to pay $50K, then they would not receive need-based aid from anywhere at all. If 10K - 20K is your limit, then it might be worth to apply to a few colleges with need-based aid and see how much aid they are willing to offer you. Of course, you’d first have to find a college that offers your major, is within your selectivity range and offers need-based aid to internationals.</p>

<p>the contribution i mentioned above is the maximum amount that my family can afford for my studying, not the amount my family want to pay T T (if i can get a full ride, i will not bother my parents anymore, and they could live comfortably. that’s what i really desire) that’s why I’m starting this thread. I already know that most need-based are top 50 but i dont know if i can get accepted and get their aid. A lot more colleges/universities are less selective but they dont give significant aid.
about that 1% thing, i’m sorry if it’s not true. But i did read it somewhere. i’ve been reading so much and sometimes i just lost. different people say different things and there are way too much that i dont know whom to trust any more :(</p>

<p>about major, i’m good at maths and i like it, so i would like to learn smt involving maths. that could be economics, right ?</p>

<p>i’m planning to apply for Trinity for ED. and one or two more in the top 50 LAC, and some more. Now i would like to find some colleges/universities in top 100 that can offer me enough aid/scholarship because my family is not rich and i dont want my parents to suffer from my studying. please tell me if it’s possible </p>

<p>btw, thank you about all the helpful information. Thank you for putting aside your time to help me.</p>

<p>ah one thing more, are LAC better than regional colleges? I mean their academics and opportunities to get a job when i graduate ?</p>

<p>Depends what LAC and what regional college!</p>

<p>Are you aware that it’s extremely hard to stay in the US for work after your graduation?</p>

<p>LACs are among the worst colleges to attend if you care about your job prospects. If an employer has an entry-level position that requires no particular vocational training and pays above-average wage (required for a work visa), there’d be a huge line of American students happy to take that job. No need to jump through a gazillion hoops to sponsor a foreign student. </p>

<p>If you do attend a LAC with the intention of staying in the US, be prepared to go to graduate school. I went to a LAC and that seemed like the only option for most of my international friends. (Plenty tried to get a job. The only ones who succeeded were the computer science majors.)</p>

<p>i already know that it’s extremely hard to get a job, especially in this difficult period … just in case, i just plan for everything that might happen.
so about the college/uni recommendation I mentioned above, could you please suggest some ?</p>

<p>I did make suggestions when I referred you to a list of colleges with full-tuition scholarships. You’ll have to decide for yourself which (if any) of them you could see yourself attending.</p>