The best thing you can do for yourself is apply with your green card: as a permanent resident, you’ll be in the domestic pool and yes you’ll be competitive for all of these universities. (Doesn’t mean shoo-in but you’d have a decent shot).
Without it… your odds are very low because some are need aware and may not admit you if your parents can’t pay a certain amount, and some are need blind/don’t meet need, meaning they’ll be unaffordable without access to FA.
You won’t qualify for financial aid at RPI so even if they admit you, you won’t be able to attend.
(The best you can get is the “Medal”, if your HS designated you as their candidate for 2020.)
A university where you would be considered a domestic applicant despite not having your green card yet is Pomona College. However not only is it highly selective, but it doesn’t offer Engineering (which is offered at HarveyMudd, the Engineering College of the Claremonts).
Check (today for reply before Break) with each PA public university’s admissions office, explaining that you’ll graduate from Z or X high school in PA, your family has lived in PA for … years, but you are not a US citizen; will you be considered a PA resident if you graduate from a PA HS or an international?
At a minimum that would include asking Pitt, Temple, PSU, and West Chester. My guess is that if only WCU were affordable you’d rather take a gap year.
(It’s really too bad you didn’t apply to Schreyer at Penn State but I suppose there’s nothing you can do about it now, keep it in mind next year.)
Apparently you’d be considered a PA resident for tuition purpose at Pitt, which is good: https://payments.pitt.edu/pa-tuition-rate-eligibility/
You can only borrow 5.5K for freshman year. Therefore, costs are a very important matter. Talk with your parents. My guess is that they haven’t been able to save since it’s not a common endeavor in Israel and they may not have had the means.
MYO, so kindly said. Israelis in general tend not to save, tend to spend everything they earn, and much, much more. Heavy credit card debt is very common, probably because when you live in a country surrounded by enemies, with the constant threat that entails, you tend to live more for today than to plan for the future. Plus college in Israel is very inexpensive, and since most people do army service or national service, I believe that it’s essentially covered as an after-service benefit. I just don’t see how ANY middle class family can plan to pay 75K/yr for college.
Chanceme, are you SURE you will have a green card before the next round of applications? If so, and if you can think of something that you could do for a gap year that would greatly enhance your applications, like getting a job in bioengineering, or working in bioengineering research, then I think it would be a very good idea to do so, and apply for next year with that green card.
Again, assuming this is in the US, it very much depends on OP’s visa type; it is more likely than not that s/he will not be allowed to work on the current dependent visa. (Assuming Israel isn’t an option for this without first doing National Service? I am not fully aware of what the obligations for Israelis living abroad are)
The instant he/she sets foot in Israel, he/she will be drafted, until they get past a certain age. Many Israeli teens who are brought here for school go back to serve. They want to. They view it as their inherited responsibility towards their and their parents’ country. But the issue is that leaving the US now would most definitely mess up their immigration status here. So it’s a no go, be it to serve or to go to college there. Meanwhile, if they cannot legally work, they can volunteer to do biomed research. It would be a very good idea to do something that would improve their application during their gap year.
Going back before they are due to get their green card would not be a problem immigration-wise (it won’t affect derivative status on whatever parent’s petition is in progress), and if they have a green card then working here is not a problem. So the problem is conscription. (I wasn’t suggesting going to college there, I was wondering if getting a relevant job was a possibility.)
They’re about to get green cards. Everyone I’ve known who has been notified that they are soon to be called for interview for green cards has been advised NOT to leave the country until they have the green card in hand.
The green card clearly is not that imminent if OP is talking about a gap year. And whether or not they can leave entirely depends on the type of visa they are on now. If they have existing H or L visas or already have advance parole on another type of adjustment application it is not a problem to leave. Anyway it’s a moot point if going back to Israel means OP has to join the army, that’s what makes it a non-starter. But by the same token being the derivative of most of those visas means OP is not going to be able work in the US on a gap year. So a plan B for taking a gap year means finding another way to strengthen the application.
I’m sure he knows that he can go back, do the army, and probably serve in some capacity that would highly strengthen his US applications. There is tremendous opportunity for young people to do high-level work in the Israeli army, get fantastic training, quickly become officers. Israel also has several excellent institutions for what he wants to study. But he doesn’t want to do the army, and once he’s 18, if he goes back, they’ll grab him for the military, and it won’t be for doing anything high-level. You are right that he cannot work legally here until he gets his green card - but doing a voluntary research-internship is a time-honored tradition to establish credentials for college applications! If his green card comes through before next December, which it sounds as if it surely will, he can apply RD as a US resident, as opposed to as an international student, and qualify for financial aid, and for acceptance as a US resident. So in my mind, doing a gap year to do an unpaid research internship, which might be able to be converted to a paid job as soon as the green card comes through, and apply next year with an application strengthened by both the research internship and his new status as a US resident, seems to make the most sense.
You seem to keep missing my point, so I’ll drop the exchange. Bottom line if he takes a gap year he needs to figure out something useful he can do for his application that falls within the terms of his current visa status. Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because an internship is unpaid it is allowed on all visa statuses. That is an incorrect assumption. (More specifically, an unpaid internship that can convert to a paid one definitely violates the rules of what is permissible without work authorization.)
Yes, you are absolutely, one thousand percent right. Of course he must not do anything that violates the terms of his visa. However, I am sure that there are volunteer research opportunities for high school level students (which usually are not paid, anyway) that he could participate in, and use to improve his application credentials, during the time while he is waiting for his imminent green card.
This is interesting. My American niece has been in Israel for about 10 years. After graduating college with a degree in media journalism she got her Aliyah and wanted to serve. They told her she didn’t have to but she forced her way in. She worked in the IDF for media and did their social network. Things in the US that you read about came from her division per se…
Like someone said it’s amazing training… Many startups came out of people in the military in Israel (start up nation).
I would wonder if he could get training without serving if he lives in the US.
Technion also has programs and he might be able to do a year there? There are scholarships for Technion and others but as said not sure if he would have to do service first?
but you’d have a decent shot).