Hey. I’m trying to make my list balanced and would really appreciate if someone recommended good schools that are matches/safeties for me. If you could recommend colleges that give good aid to internationals (I qualify) that would be a mega bonus. I’m applying for economics. These are my stats:
Demographics:
Indian (International) Middle Class (<40K & applying for financial aid wherever applicable)
Gender non-binary + LGBT
Academics:
ACT: 35C (35E, 35M, 34R, 35S)
SAT IIs: 800 Math II; 730 English Litt
CBSE India: 9th - 10.0 CGPA; 10th - 10.0 CGPA
11th GPA: 86.4
12th 1st Quarter GPA: 90.2 (Class 1st)
School doesn’t properly rank but counselor put me as top 10% (Class 12 CBSE Subjects: Accounts, Math, English, Economics, and Business Studies)
Honors:
School level prizes (Allrounder Prize, Top 5% Honor Certificate, Proficiency Awards in Subjects, Honor Award in Econ, English, and Business Studies, etc.) and debate prizes (8th Best ESL and 36th best open category speaker in the world in 2017)
Extracurriculars: Pretty amazing ECs. Tl;dr: represented India in debating for the past three years and highly ranked speaker in the world, a lot of leadership and school reform stuff, and feminist activism along with a couple nerdy things.
Debate: Represented India all three years of high school so far; most notably, captain of the Indian team in 2016; current World Championships quarter-finalist and world's 8th Best ESL and 36th best open category speaker. Huge spike from this. Aside of internationals, I've won a few tournaments for the school, captained the school team, won Best Speaker awards and made finals in intervarsity national level tournaments, etc.
Debate coaching: 2 batches of teams coached; 2 kids made the national team after I coached them; I also founded and currently run the women's debate program in school.
Social Justice: founded and run-edit my Facebook feminist page; it has 2.2k+ followers, a gross post-reach of 1.25 million and 13000 total responses.
Student Government: Elected Cultural Secretary; previously MUN Secretary
Cultural Event: Organized one of the largest interschool cultural festivals. Created the first equity policy for a cultural fest to set standards for speech and redress harassment. Also donated 30k.
School anti-bullying/harassment campaign: organized, received over 100 complaints, redressed them, proposed and founded new permanent committee for this. (Includes complaints of sexual assault)
MUN: 12 MUNs, 5 Best Delegate awards out of total 9 awards; once Secretary-General and once Guest Chairperson
8, 9, 10: Some soccer, Editor of the math magazine, Paper: Wrote a paper on India’s demonetization policy for Harvard US-India Initiative Conference 2017
For international students seeking substantial financial aid, the best admission + financial safeties may be colleges that guarantee large merit scholarships for qualifying stats. The challenge will be to find one that (a) is open to international students (b) hasn’t already stopped taking applications, and (c) offers enough merit aid. Check out some of the following: http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
(note that for Alabama and some of the others, the merit scholarship deadline has passed)
Some private colleges seem to be relatively generous with need-based aid to the international students they admit.
Consider schools on the following list: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-21/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need
The ones that might be high match schools include:
Bates
Bryn Mawr (women only)
College of the Holy Cross
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Grinnell
Kenyon
Macalester
Mount Holyoke (women only)
Oberlin
Occidental
Scripps (women only)
Smith (women only)
Trinity College (Hartford)
U Richmond
Wake Forest
All of these (other than Wake Forest) are small liberal arts colleges. For an international with high need, some of them may actually be reaches. It’s hard to say for sure because good data doesn’t seem to be available that breaks out admission rates for those applicants. You don’t indicate how much you can afford per year. “< 40K” refers to annual family income, not your annual college budget, right? For a US citizen with $40K annual family income, the net price to attend some of those colleges might be around $10K/year. Run the online net price calculators on any that interest you to see for yourself.
Try Middlebury, Colgate, Vassar, Oberlin
The only safety schools are those with automatic merit - look at the Yola site then check each website because it’s not been updated.
As an international who needs money, there aren’t really safety schools in the USA. The schools that fund internationals are all going to be at least somewhat competitive.
There are over 2000 4 year degree granting colleges in the USA.
All but about 80-100 would be admission safeties for your stats.
However, they won’t be safeties if you can’t afford them.
You cannot get a visa to study in the USA if you cannot demonstrate ability to pay.
It’s hard to narrow down so many admission safeties without reference to budget or personal preferences (which you haven’t provided). You might want to consider colleges with USNWR ranks in the ~40-100 range. Many of these would be admission safeties (but won’t all be affordable); they may represent an upper end of academic quality for safety schools. Note however that some state universities do not grant any financial aid to international students.
For schools with large automatic merit scholarships, whose deadlines haven’t passed, and that apparently make them available to internationals, consider:
University of Alabama-Huntsville
University of Alabama-Birmingham
Florida A&M
Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne
Louisiana Tech
University of Mississippi
Temple University
For what it’s worth, Temple University gets a relatively high US News ranking (#115) compared to the others. I’m not aware of any higher-ranking safety school where you’d have better prospects for a large merit scholarship at this point. But be sure to check admission and aid policies (and deadlines) carefully, especially any language relating to international students. You may have better safety options in your home country.
Yes, Hamilton has a great track record of providing financial need to international applicants.
OP, you can read about one such ED1 acceptance on the current Hamilton ED1 thread - that incoming student mentioned that is was either the only one/or one of only a few that provided the amount of financial aid needed. As measured by endowment per student, Hamilton is around 10th in the US of all universities and colleges, so a great choice for international student aid
Hamilton acknowledges that it has limited resources for international aid. Why is that fact so hard to acknowledge? You’re doing international applicants a disservice at the expense of promoting Hamilton and your ego.
@CrewDad, please refrain from choosing parts of one’s postings to suit your needs when responding - bad form.
Based on the June 30, 2017 audit, Hamilton’s endowment totals $954,700,000, so with 1850 students that’s $516,000/student - not 10th, but yes ~20th of all 3,000 universities and colleges in the US, and ~10th of all LAC’s.
And with $40,000,000 allocated to financial, yes they can do more to meet international financial aid needs than most.
Regarding posting #12, that’s another great indicator of Hamilton’s commitment to diversity - ranked #43 of all universities and colleges and above many, many other highly selective schools. Great link!
Hamilton is need aware/full need. It means that the more aid you need, the lower the odds of admission regardless of merit. However if an international student is admitted Hamilton commits to meeting their full need so they can attend (and their calculation is generous).
@MYOS1634, not certain if you re-read your response, but no Hamilton is not need aware expect for international and transfer applicants, which is consistent with every school except;
Amherst College
Harvard College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Minerva Schools at KGI
Princeton University
Yale University
That said there are only ~40 schools in the US, including Hamilton, that are need-blind and meet full demonstrated need for U.S. applicants.
And as @merc81 noted, Hamilton meets the full demonstrated for all accepted students whether US or International.
- that incoming student mentioned that is was either the only one/or one of only a few that provided the amount of financial aid needed. As measured by endowment per student, Hamilton is around 10th in the US of all universities and colleges, so a great choice for international student aid