Rising senior looking for target/safety recommendations [international, 3.97]

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • international student
  • 3rd year living in China
  • international school with IB curriculum
  • Asian/female

Intended Major(s)

  • International relations/affairs
  • political science
  • Economics

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.97
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): not sure
  • Class rank: not sure, but within Top 3 out of +60 students.

Coursework

  • full IB DP course
  • HL: Eng A LL, History, Economics
  • SL: Korean A Lit, Bio, Math AA

Awards
from G9 to G11:

  • 3 Honour award ( for students with 3.6-3.9 GPA)
  • 3 Principal award (4.0 GPA per semester)

Extracurriculars

  • School MUN team leader for 2 years, hosted a regional conference twice as deputy SG and Secretary General
  • leadership position of Student Ambassadors
  • leadership position (events coordinator) of a service club based on Shanghai, raised donations to fund heart surgeries for Chinese children with CHD (over 60k)
  • performance team member of Dawn project (service club)
  • varsity soccer and basketball for a year respectively
  • Production team cast for 3 years
  • School dance team member for 3 years

Essays/LORs/Other

  • 3 LORs, 2 from my subject teachers (IB history/econ) and 1 from the MUN club supervisor

Cost Constraints / Budget

Schools

  • just a bunch of super-reach in mind (Georgetown, UChicago, Stanford, Duke etc.). likely to apply for EA to Yale
  • also applying to Columbia dual degree program
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Paging @AustenNut because they’re the only person I know who’s good at recommending schools. I’ll throw in my own bits later on. /warmly

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These sites may offer you further ideas:

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.usecondept.html

If you would like a program that might combine your interests, this site may be worth a view:

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What is your budget? How much can you comfortably afford to pay each year?

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The budget is a big question. Also, are you only willing to go to school in the U.S. if you attend a super reach school, or are you really wanting to attend school in the U.S., regardless of the prestige of the school, so long as you get a quality education?

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You left this blank…and this is an important metric for international students wanting to attend college in the U.S.

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almost certainly fully funded/ no cost constraint because OP attended private international school in Shanghai, which carries annual tuition 40k+, which should help. Awaiting OP confirmation

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Since you didn’t mention any need for financial aid and have Columbia University on your list, as a female and based on your list of majors you could additionally apply to their Barnard College, which will be reviewed separately and by their own admissions team using distinct criteria!

They offer a 4+1 Masters in International and Public Affairs:
https://barnard.edu/beyond-barnard/4plus1-pathways/4plus1-SIPA
and Political Science and Economics are among the larger majors there.

This way you improve your odds of being accepted by one of the undergraduate colleges at Columbia.

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that is true, i have no cost constraints since I’m attending a private international school in Suzhou (not Shanghai, but still around 38k).

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Your parents pay $38,000 for private high school. The schools you have listed in your OP cost $80,000 a year…or more. Where is the other $42,000 a year coming from?

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Is that really OUR business?
We don’t need to speculate/out which specific private high school in which city she is attending; and once the student shares that they can afford full-pay, then that should be sufficient to answer their ACTUAL question!

Rising senior looking for target/safety recommendations

I keep seeing young people closing down threads because some regulars here care more about their agenda of minutely dissecting someone’s desire to also try for an elite school, every. single. time., than to focus on answering what’s being asked!

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Student ability to pay has been asked and answered at this point. Please move on.

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These are all reaches as you know…are you looking for additional college recommendations?

I suggest you find some closer to sure things for admission as well.

If you apply EA to Yale, keep in mind this is SCEA, and has restrictions on apply early to any other schools at the same time (except places where you would miss the deadline for merit scholarship consideration, I think).

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There are a lot of potentially great options for you, but here are a few that stand out to me:

William & Mary (very good school to begin with and excellent for IR) has a joint degree program with St. Andrews (also excellent and particularly excellent in IR). You can also do Economics instead, and you could do a minor at William & Mary but cannot double major (so, like, you could do an IR joint major and Economics minor at W&M, or vice-versa):

Maybe this is not what you are looking for, but you spend two years at each college, and get a joint degree from both. You can apply through William & Mary–which again, would be worth considering even without this–and then there is a supplemental application to get into this specific program. You can also try to transfer in early spring of your first year.

Some other really good private colleges for IR in the United States which are not on the usual list of super-reaches include George Washington, American, and Tufts.

But I would definitely not overlook some of the really good public universities. I know UC-San Diego has a well-known program, Michigan and Cal as well, but those are again tough admits. However, there are many more public universities, like Ohio State, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Penn State, and so on. I forget exactly why so many “Big Ten” universities are good at IR (I think there is some sort of coordination), but anyway these are all global research universities, and will be good in other departments as well.

I think in most if not all of these cases, IR is just general admissions (or general admissions to the Arts & Sciences college), meaning there is no particularly harder admissions for people who intend to do IR. But you should obviously check that.

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Quick note on this. Here are the Yale exceptions:

  • You may apply to any college’s non-binding rolling admission program.
  • You may apply to any public institution at any time, provided that admission is non-binding.
  • You may apply to another college’s Early Decision II program, but only if the notification of admission occurs after January 1. If you are admitted through another college’s Early Decision II binding program, you must withdraw your application from Yale.
  • You may apply to another college’s Early Action II program.
  • You may apply to any institution outside of the United States at any time.

https://admissions.yale.edu/single-choice-early-action

I know at least some of the public universities I mentioned have rolling admissions–I think Penn State, Indiana, and Minnesota, for example. Others have a non-binding Early Action–I think Ohio State and Wisconsin.

So those sort of universities would be options for adding earlier, and more likely, applications that are not precluded by a Yale EA application.

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One last resource–to me this looked like a reasonably specific source for possible programs in IR:

It is basically a peer-reputation survey, and it is a little funny because they asked for Top 5, and so there are a few that get a bunch of Top 5 mentions and then it quickly tails off. On the plus side, undergrad is broken out separately from masters and PhD, which is really helpful since a lot of more general rankings you might see are really about graduate or specifically PhD rankings.

Anyway, not surprisingly a lot of really tough admits are high on this list, but some of the schools I mentioned start appearing in the Top 10 for undergraduates, more in the top 11-25, more in 26-50.

This list also reflects that a lot of Liberal Arts Colleges are apparently being recognized for IR programs. The top few LACs on the list are again really tough admits–although if you are interested in LACs you should check them out–but one that stood out to me is Macalester. Really cool LAC in general, great location in Minneapolis/St. Paul, but maybe a little easier for admissions than the most selective LACs (they also offer quite a bit of merit aid). Oberlin is another interesting one.

A last school that stood out to me is the University of Denver. Quite high on this list relative to its general selectivity, and Denver is another great city. I know nothing more than that but I would think it might be worth checking out.

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