Is it absolutely necessary to have earned an Olympiad medal or few national competitions or awards to be considered for admission at MIT or other top-tier colleges such as Princeton or Yale or Harvard as an international student?
No, it is not.
Okay, thank you @Groundwork2022 . Could you tell me the odds of admission without those honors?
I recently started learning full-stack web development and made a site https://storydip.com/ , which was also covered by sociostory.org in their online blog
( https://sociostory.org/impact-stories/meet-the-mother-daughter-duo-who-aim-to-make-an-impact-by-curating-stories ).
I worked on blockchains and educated myself in other fields via internships such as HR and financial training. My predicted grades are 97-98%. I got 33 on ACT. I volunteered at an NGO as a tutor and raised funds for migrants in the pandemic. I have decent Extra-Curriculars.
What do you think are my chances of admission? (I know it’s an estimate.)
All three schools have acceptance rates under 7%. If you are an international student, it’s half that.
These are reach schools for even the most perfect students.
The chances of admissions for international students are lower than their US counterparts. Currently there are 21 students in Harvard College from India (if that is not your home country, you can find the relevant statistic through this link https://hio.harvard.edu/statistics). This means on avg 4-5 students per class or 5-6 admitted per class. Are you one of the top X students in your country? Further I suspect that among the admitted students, there are likely students with major hooks (donor, child of someone famous or powerful) as well as legacy.
Give it a shot, but be realistic in your expectations and planning. If studying in the US is your goal, and especially if you are full pay, there are many great institutions in the US where you will be able to land a spot. If financial aid is a must, it will be a much harder road as most schools will be need aware for internationals in the admissions process and many do not guarantee 100% need met even if you are accepted. If that is the case, maybe studying undergrad in your home country and shooting for grad school in the US is a better path as more grad programs will be fully funded.
@BKSquared , Thank you for our input
@BKSquared , what do you think for Stanford or NUS?
Same level of difficulty for Stanford. Stanford is also need aware for internationals. NUS? National University of Singapore? Wouldn’t be able to hazard a guess.