@bfc2017 Thank you really for supporting me. I was seriously doubting my future by this point. I hope my EC’s appear impressive to the adcoms and help me stand out . Thank you very much.
@N’smom If I do take a gap year I will have to study for undergraduate in India because we can only have one gap year before takind admission in good schools in my country . I cannot gamble away another year. But the gap year is a very good option. If nothing works out I will seriously consider it, but I do hope things don’t go out to that extreme circumstances .
I will look into schools in Singapore . Thank you for the suggestion.
@aunt bea Upenn JHU and NYU are need aware while Cornell is need blind and others don’t provide aid at all.
My letters of recommendation - One of them I have met several times personally and I know it Will be a very good letter.
Stanford recommendation I just mentioned to imply that the website is not another attempt to pad up resume but a serious sincere effort .
I will consider gap year if I am not accepted anywhere on my list. Yes they will be 55k but my father really prefers UC’s as he was a Fulbright fellow visiting professor there.
Will banks in your country loan to you with no job and no collateral for the loan? They certainly won’t here. Do you realize that you may have to take out about $150,000 in loans to cover the difference between $20k per year and the cost of many of these schools (in addition to tuition, room, and board, you also have to pay for health insurance, transportation, books, fees, etc)? That isn’t just a risk, it is ridiculous.
@intparent They will provide with collateral of course. It is done here . Several students have done it and are fairing really well. But I get your point and numbers seem scary. I hope I am accepted in any school which provides aid. UTD will probably give me Academic Achievement Scholarship which they usually give with ACT of 32. Maybe I will attend there.
The house I live in cost $158,000 when we bought it in 1991. It came with a THIRTY YEAR mortgage.
Are you really willing to sacrifice your future with that kind of debt?? The fact that others have made that choice isn’t your strongest argument. Lots and lots of people make stupid choices. That’s no reason to join the herd.
Choose a school you can afford. Get the education you want without crippling your future. The reality is that in the “real world”-- outside this forum-- there’s a lot less focus on where you went to college than on what you learned there.
But please, please, please, don’t graduate from college with $150,000 in loans.
What Bjkmom said. I hate to say this but you’ll probably find a fair amount of the reason you are rejected is the fact your a foreign student who needs aid and not your aptitude. Numbers like that will get you into plenty of affordable colleges, go to one of those instead and learn a lot. I’m sure you’ve heard this before but try and reall HEAR IT this time, no one is going to care in ten years where you went to college. ESPECIALLY for CS. It’s what you can do at that point.
Don’t get into a mountain of debt for a branding that won’t benefit you much, if at all.
@bjkmom and @Apollo322 Those are some scary facts. I will rethink my strategy and ultimately give finances a very high if not foremost preference. I now understand the fact that college name is just a tag and really what we do matters out there. But you may realise as an Indian it is inculcated from the childhood that your college is directly related to your success in life. I will reconsider my position.
Good, please do.
When we made up my son’s college list, the first consideration was scores-- no point applying to a school he had no chance of getting into.
The second consideration was finances-- no point applying to a school we couldn’t afford. So he applied to 9 schools that are “reasonably” prices (as if such a thing really exists!!) and has 6 acceptances. One of these days he’ll choose from among those 6.
It’s simply a fact of life. There are lots and lots of things I would love to buy, but can’t afford. An education with a $60,000 per year price tag is one of them.
And it’s the same speech I give the Juniors in my SAT prep classes all the time. I have one kid who is so very focused on schools that are way beyond the price tags of many of his classmates. He has the brains, and I suspect he has the money, so great. But I keep reminding the rest of them that the bottom line matters-- sooooo very much.
The best of luck to you.
I got waitlisted by UIUC with a 35 math and 33 composite in ACT. My grades and ECs were also good (NASA competions etc.). So, 34 Math and 33 ACT are still not good enough 
Apparently someone here was waitlisted by UIUC CS with a 2400. Except for maybe UCLA, USB, Cornell, and U Penn, all of the schools you applied to are WAY less competitive than UIUC CS. Don’t get discouraged by not getting in; you’re definitely qualified enough to get into a good school.
Doesn’t matter if you get in if it is not affordable.
@Nevets04 UIUC S is hovering around a 10% admissions rate this year. Really only Cornell and Penn are more selective.
@tiwari124 Unfortunately this is not quite true. You might have more opportunities at a better college, but you can definitely be successful in life without going to a prestigious college.
@TheDarkKnight19 and @Nevets04 Thank you for your encouraging comments. UIUC CS is very selective is what I have realised now. Thank You.
@Ksty1098 Yes it is true cornell engineering has a rate around 8% while Upenn is at 11.5%
@MITer94 The CC community has made me realise that and I will keep that in mind when choosing the school I want to go to(and I am selected).
@tiwari124
Do you have any backups in India?
I’m applying from India too, so I could try to help.
On a related note, the entire US college admissions process is so different from the ones here. The total 4 year cost at the Indian Institute of Technology (extremely well recognized for undergrad engineering) is only 400,000…rupees, which is 6,000 dollars. I’m not here to complain - I’m just shocked to see that finance plays a massive role in college decisions in the US.
If you end up with a choice of JHU/NYU/Penn/Cornell with aid vs. any UC without any aid there’s literally no discussion to be had. You take one of the 4 offering you aid. I’m glad your father enjoyed being at UC on a stipend, but that won’t be your scenario.
Most of the people here have covered what I would say too, but I’ll add one comment about the peer-reviewed journals. There is a bit of a cottage industry of journals that, while technically “peer-reviewed”, accept a really high percentage of what is submitted to them. They are considered acceptable in some countries, but not by others, including by some of the established professional organizations in CS and EE in the US. If the acceptance rate is high (>30%), if authors pay any money at all for either the submission or the publication, or if even one of the publications is listed on Scholarly Open Access’ “List of Predatory Journals” (the list is available online), that can be a problem. I’m not on an adcom, but I am a reviewer and have served as a chair of a committee for an engineering conference, and not only will citations from such journals not be permitted in accepted papers, even having published a paper in one of those journals can be enough to prevent someone from having a paper accepted later. The paper itself can be quite excellent, but the journals themselves can be a problem.
It’s a bit of “inside baseball” for the engineering field, particularly in North America and Europe, but it’s something worth keeping in mind. NOT saying that the OP published in one of those journals, but if so, it could be a red flag.
Most large, public universities do not accept letters of recommendation from anyone. That is certainly true of the UC system, and I suspect it applies to UT, et al. I agree with all the other comments as re financial aid and the wisdom of incurring a large debt burden as an undergraduate.