<p>many people have always told me how its a lot easier to be an intl. applicant and gain admission to US colleges (if you DO NOT require financial aid).</p>
<p>however, i recently found some VERY SCARY numbers that say the contrary.</p>
<p>so which is it??? higher acceptance rates or lower? thanks!</p>
<p>The people that told you that it's easier are on crack.
i.e: Definetly lower - even if you dont require aid.</p>
<p>Lower. Unquestionably.</p>
<p>For example, one of my top choice schools, Caltech, has about ten international freshmen at the moment (with similar numbers in each year). That probably isn't because ten applied.</p>
<p>It would seem that internationals not applying for aid should have the same chances as US citizens but thats not true because colleges place quotas on the number of international students.</p>
<p>Lower if you need fin aid OR apply to top schools.
Higher if you apply to schools that are not considered tier one schools and do not give fin aid to intls.</p>
<p>Hmm I wouldn't put all internationals in one pot, since there are countries with lots of applicants (India e.g.) and countries with few applicants (western europe e.g.).</p>
<p>I could imagine that the chances for applicants from smaller countries with very few applicants are higher than the chances for students from countries with tons of applicants. Colleges want a student body representing as many countries as possible, so if there aren't any students (or only very few) from your country already enrolled, this could increase your chance.
Am I totally wrong?</p>
<p>Well, I would say you are not totally right, but ones nationality certainly plays an important role in admission. I could also imagine that being a native speaker of a language that is taught at a certain school and that is rather rare and perceived as especially difficult by Americans, like Hungarian or Russian, might help.
About the "only very few": There are schools with 200-300 intls representing 80+ nationalities...</p>
<p>But apply to any average second or third tier university with the same stats as the average student there and you are almost an auto-admit (let's exclude Indians and Chinese people here).</p>
<p>Top colleges (read: HYPMS) would definitely have a lower chance of admissions for internationals, especialy like Rister_Chutophs mentioned, internationals coming from countries with lots of people applying to it.</p>
<p>Here's a typical admissions rate chart for top US universities from a top JC (schools for Grade 11-12ers) in my country (Singapore): <a href="http://www.rjc.edu.sg/USapps/colleges/rjc.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.rjc.edu.sg/USapps/colleges/rjc.htm</a></p>
<p>Note: 1000-1100 people per cohort.</p>
<p>Seems to be a pretty good school...</p>
<p>I would like to add another factor: how much your school is familliar with admission to US schools and how much it supports you.</p>
<p>My own experiences: My school is heavily grade deflated (according to my counsellor I am number one or two and I have only a B average). That same GPA would put me in the lower 50% of the class at a nearby school, but we do not have class rankings or even a school profile to make that point. My counsellor also had to sneak into the principals office to put a school seal on my translated transcript (by law, my school is not allowed to certify such a document), and my teachers refused to write anything else than "she's a smart student and does all her homework" in their recs because that is what a typical academic rec looks like in Germany.</p>
<p>barium, i attended the "pretty good school" in your above post. i believe we are supported to a certain extent, surely the school provides a couple of prospectus-es and have on hand a couple of teachers who were educated in top US colleges, but overall the support is very, very low. that is exceptionally so when compared to famous prep HS and the american school in singapore.... </p>
<p>to my knowledge, the american school is singapore has a very strong, concise and knowledgable support system. a case in point would be that SAS packs and sends off a number of college applications for each student... for free! our "pretty good school" provides you some knowledge, but you are basically left to fend for yourself if you choose to apply overseas. of course, it is also disadvantegeous when you are pitched against the creme de la creme of each cohort. a last quartile rank in our school would probably put you at a top 5% in any other school.</p>
<p>...you don't like the term "pretty good school"?</p>
<p>'a last quartile rank in our school would probably put you at a top 5% in any other school.'</p>
<p>Not exactly;).</p>
<p>hmm blur, considering how only the top 5% of singapore's cohort gets accepted into that certain school.. </p>
<p>barium, nopes. totally fine with it :)</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that the last quartile rank at RJC would put you in the top 5% in any school - but being in the top 60% (4As) would suffice to put you in the top 5% in another school, no disrespect of course to the other schools.</p>
<p>I personally felt that it was in fact a disadvantage sometimes; you're competing against outstanding people - even in terms of the opportunities available. Not that it was a bad thing - I wouldn't be half as ambitious if not of the school environment, nor would I have opened my eyes to the world beyond Singapore.</p>
<p>Int'l requiring no aid would have a pretty much great chance out of top 25 USNews schools. Purdue for example is a brothel - You pay, you are in.</p>
<p>yea. I will probably agree more with jeremymjr but do not forget schools like VJC, HCJC. Sorry, scandal-less , I cannot agree with you because not everyone who can get into RJ choose to go there, I was one who choosed not to. I am not trying to discredit RJ, it is a great school but certainly not as great as what you said scandal-less.</p>
<p>proud ACSian</p>
<p>that's fine... exaggeration works in a marvellous way to prove my point. i concur and appreciate that there are some that choose other schools. that said, i must note that hc and ac are both very good schools, and definitely are on par with rj...</p>
<p>let's focus on what the op is asking... my point in that post was that despite being from a top local school, the support given was extremely minimal as compared to american schools.</p>
<p>But I am sure that you got waaay more support from your school than student from average school XYZ that sends one student per decade to US universities. At least your teachers know how to write a rec, your school knows how to write a transcript in English (sorry, no clue what the official language is in Singapore) and all those little things that can pose HUGE problems for students like me. Just consider this: colleges want OFFICIAL transcripts in English in sealed envelopes, but by law my school is not even allowed to put a school stamp on a sinlge translated report card, not to mention putting a seal on the envelope that contains that transcript.</p>
<p>that is a weird law.</p>
<p>You know, I'm not so sure RJC gives that much support. </p>
<p>Strange, considering that all the US counsellors taught me and knew me personally. They tried to help but there was a limit to how much they could do. The bottom-line really is that you have to learn the admissions game. My so-called counsellor (the one who writes the main recommendation) was in effect my civics tutor who had unfortunately never been a civics tutor ever in her eight years and was especially bitter - I reckon - about having to take my class. She was an excellent teacher but she just didn't know what the US/UK system needed. She asked me if Dartmouth was in the UK, thanks to the vague similarity with Dartmoor (tors). She requested for a step by step checklist of what she needed to do and what I wanted her to say about me. It's still a hit and miss no matter what. You may get a good support system but your teachers don't know what is needed.</p>