Picking colleges to apply to!!!

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey guys,
I'm an Indian living in India and I'm really not sure how to go about selecting the colleges I should apply to. So here's my profile:
SAT Math:800 Critical reading:800 Writing:740
I'm in the 12th grade but my school hasn't started testing me for the year but in the 10th grade I got 10 CGPA (equivalent to 95%). in 11th grade I slipped a bit though and scored 85%. However I'm doing economics self-taught at school and I score the highest in my class in that(commerce students take economics but I'm not allowed to study with them). Also I score the pretty well(90-95 %) in math</p>

<p>Last year,in 11th grade, I was amongst the top 4 in my class probably.</p>

<p>I was prefect last year. Now though this means just about nothing for most schools, its different in my case. My school hosts a lot of charity projects and the prefects head that. So last year I headed a charity for the school along with managing the inter-house sports competitions for my house. My house also won the house cup last year.</p>

<p>I am also an international karate player. I've also won quite a few of them. I'll be getting my international black belt this year.</p>

<p>I'm also involved with AFS as a volunteer and counselor and was also sent to Japan on a scholarship program by AFS,</p>

<p>Also I'm interested in engineering so I'm doing a project with my father in his factory on solar pumps (i'll be helping to test and build one)</p>

<p>I plan on scoring pretty well in my 12th grade exams( even the tests in school) and I'm sure I'll get something around 780-800 on my SAT subject tests for maths and chemistry.</p>

<p>And lastly, Up until a couple of years ago I used to learn Kathak (Indian classical dance) though nothing came of it. I still passed a couple of exams though.</p>

<p>The colleges I'm thinking about are Cornell and Stanford. What other colleges could I apply to? </p>

<p>P.S. i understand that there are colleges except for the Ivies and UCs which maybe amazing for engineering but I'm inclined to picking only one of these.</p>

<p>thanks anyway!! :)</p>

2

<p>IIT is a great choice</p>

3

<p>Any Ivy is hard to get into but your grades seem very solid. I’m not really too keen on the Indian grading scale but your SAT scores speak for themselves. For top tier schools that aren’t Ivies I’d recommend Tufts, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, and Michigan.</p>

<p>If you’re interested in Engineering you can just google: “Best undergrad engineering colleges” and you’ll find tons of really good schools that aren’t just Ivys.</p>

4

<p>What do you plan on majoring in? Some schools (like Carnegie Mellon) tend to have larger international student populations, and I suggest looking at them first.</p>

<p>Beyond that, Cornell and Stanford are obviously good choices but be prepared for disappointment (goes for any applicant). For UC’s, I think you have a good shot at Berkeley and UCLA- especially if you’re not going to apply for need-based financial aid. If you’re heavily interested in science, Caltech and MIT are the obvious choices. For Ivies, check the college’s “personality”- the Ivies come with their individual flavors in terms of what approach they take to academics.</p>

<p>How many applications are you planning on doing? And why are you applying for college in the US? It’s tough to figure out what colleges “fit” you until you know what you’re looking for.</p>

<p>But here’s certain things I’d recommend looking at:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Cost: US colleges are incredibly expensive, as you probably realize. If you’re looking at a college, Google the college name and “return on investment”- and you should find it ranked by some organization like payScale. Check the ROI for your specific major and see how it pays off in 30 years.</p></li>
<li><p>Faculty: See if there’s anyone doing research you can get excited about- I’m pretty sure there’s something relevant to solar pumps going on at most colleges. Better yet, e-mail them and ask around. Professors can be blunt sometimes- for example, at UT-Austin Electrical Engineering they admitted that, for the first year, the students are “just numbers” due to the low first-year retention rate for that major. </p></li>
<li><p>Facilities and money. This is the main advantage American colleges have over schools like the IITs.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Names you might wanna look into if you haven’t heard of them already:</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins, Washington University in St. Louis, Carnegie Mellon (especially strong at computational fields), Georgia Tech, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, MIT, Caltech, UT-Austin, Texas A&M, University of Michigan, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, University of Virginia, the College of William & Mary, Northwestern</p>

<p>Avoid colleges you haven’t heard of already if you’re planning on working in India or in most places outside the United States.</p>

<p>AND AVOID OVERALL RANKINGS! Some schools are solid at pure sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) and liberal arts but relatively mediocre at engineering and computer science; other schools have it the other way around. Look at data specifically for your major if possible.</p>

5

<p>What’s your budget?
Will you be applying for financial aid?
These are the two most important questions for international students.
In addition, if you’re really interested in studying in the US, you should prepare a list that includes schools with admission rates above 30% (at the very least). You can also look at universities in Asia and in Europe, of course, if you’re interested in studying abroad and want better odds than at top 20 universities.</p>