<p>*Citizenship: Mainland China
*Gender: F
*Born in 1992
I am going to be the first college student in my family.</p>
<p>*Financial Aid: Yes</p>
<p>*Class Size: 600 (Science Class)
*Rank: 39
*Class Size: 125 (Arts Class)
*Rank: 7
I transfered from science to arts class in my senior year. I will finish secondary school within 5 years. Do they all count as special backgrounds? </p>
<p>SAT
*Critical Reading: 650
*Math: 800
*Writing: 600 (Essay: 3+3=6)
SAT II
*Math Level 2: 800
*Chemistry: 750
*Physics: 760</p>
<p>I assume that my personal essay and recommendation are great.</p>
<p>Activities
*School anniversary in charge
*Reception student of foreign delegation
*Chinese painting
*Violin
*Make sushi
*Third place in Speech Contest
*All-round student titles
*Community service in summer (15 hours per week)</p>
<p>Other universities/colleges: Grinnell, University of Richmond, Duke, Upenn</p>
<p>Please be aware that Brown is NOT need blind for international students. The fact that you need financial aid, particularly in a recession which has hit college endowments very hard, may hurt your chances at Brown and other schools which are need aware. This means that no matter how stellar your application, you may be rejected simply because you need financial aid.</p>
<p>Every school you've applied to is need aware for international students. You did not apply to the schools that are need blind. So there is a good chance you might get denied admission on that basis alone.</p>
<p>Sorry to give you such depressing news. You might want to consider applying to other schools that give merit scholarships, where your stats put you in the 80-90 percentile of applicants.</p>
<p>Especially fireandrain.Applying for financial aid does put me at a disadvantage. You said universities having merit-based scholarships. Can you name a few? Thank you very much.</p>
<p>winseeker, look in both the parents forum and the financial aid forum here on CC. There are permanent threads with extensive conversations about merit aid in both places. Parents here give great advice, so starting a thread in the parents forum asking for suggestions is another approach.</p>