I applied to eighteen universities. 6 UCs, UW, BU, NYU, UChicago, USC, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, CMU, and UPenn. I know a lot of these schools take a miracle to get in to, but I was wondering if I have a shot in a few others. I’m applying for a math major by the way.
I am an international student and I don’t know my GPA. My school follows the IB system. My predicted is 39/45. I took the IGCSE in sophomore year and scored 10As out of the 10 subjects I took. First ever in my school, so it was kind of a big deal. I took both mathematics and additional mathematics. My higher level subjects right now are math, chem, and physics. I’m the top of my math class, though I didn’t mention it, hopefully my teacher did in the recommendation letter. My grades aren’t that great, an average of 5 out of 7 with a slight increase every year. In the second term of my junior year my grades slipped. They went up by a lot during midterm. I’m writing an extended essay (for those of you who don’t know, it’s a 4000 word essay on any topic of your choice) in math. I didn’t really participate in many competitions though. My school doesn’t have much extracurriculars and we never participate in competitions. I took the SAT twice. First it was 1950 (740 M, 570 CR, 640 W) and second it was 2010 (770 M, 550 CR, 690 W). I took SAT II for MATH 2 (800), CHEM (770), and PHYS (700). I’m in a dance crew, a writing club, and a few other not so major activities. I’m very active in my math tutoring program though. And I had two summer internships both as accountants. And I went to harvard summer school and scored an A- in calculus where my classmates were university graduates. I wrote my common app essay about math. I feel like I can only rely on my passion and my math grades. How far will it take me though?
Do you have back ups in your country?
What are your SLs? Where are you getting youtr 6s and 7s?
Can your parents pay full costs or did you apply to financial aid (for an international applicant, this is THE most important question).
@MYOS1634 I don’t have back ups. My SLs are biology, mandarin and english. My 7 is in math and biology, 6 in chemistry and english and 5 in physics and mandarin. My parents can pay full costs, but I applied for financial aid. I decided not to apply for the financial aid but I don’t know how to proceed. Should I just miss the deadline? Will it somehow worsen my application?
So what’s your Plan B if you don’t have backups - are you planning to take a gap year (since your odds are quite low for this round due to the selectivity of the schools you applied to)?
If your parents can pay in full why did you apply for financial aid? It puts you at a huge disadvantage. If you don’t need financial aid, just email every admissions office and say you checked the wrong box and weren’t applying for financial aid, only for merit scholarships if there are any.
If you don’t apply for financial aid, you have a shot at NYUand BU, plus (regardless, since there’s no FA) at UCD, UCSB, UCSC, UCI.
if you clicked that you will be applying for financial aid and then dont end up doing it it will in no way worsen your chances. That data is just for the fin aid office to get a ballpark of how many students will be applying for financial aid.
I think your chances are quite low for most of those schools. BU, UW, NYU and some of the lower UCs are matches, but the rest you can consider high reaches.
^dvgbhs: not for international students. International students who need financial aid go into a special category where odds are roughly one third (or worse) that of domestic applicants and internationals who don’t need financial aid.