Should I apply to more colleges? If yes, which are worth looking into?

Student Lounge International Students
1

Hi all,

I am a girl from Germany who’s in her senior year. These are the colleges I will be applying to next year:

  • Manhattanville College
  • Creighton University
  • Washington and Lee University (reach)
  • Monmouth College
  • St John's University

Perhaps I will also apply to Quinnipiac University. It is a college that meets most of my requirements and I would attend if I were to be accepted, but it is definitely not one of my top choices.

My ideal college would have active Greek Life/Clubs to join, a major in Media Communication or Journalism, a fairly renowned reputation and options of international students receiving financial aid. Manhattanville College is an example of a college which has awarded substantial amounts of financial aid to international students in the past.

Some of my extracurriculars include:

  • IB English Lang & Lit;
  • participating in debating;
  • having a leadership position in three debating conferences;
  • three foreign exchanges;
  • volunteering for +160 hours;
  • having a part in multiple tv shows;
  • starting my own company and winning a national award for best company whilst donating all the profits to a local charity;
  • being a member of the committee which organizes parties/events in our school like prom;
  • being a mentor and helping freshman students find their way through high school;
  • being a member of the Photography Team;
  • two certificates from the University of Cambridge which prove proficiency of the English language on a C2 level.

Should I apply to more colleges to be ‘‘certain’’ (as certain as can be) of ending up at a college? If yes, which colleges would meet a few of my requirements and preferably have no application fee for international students and do not require a letter of recommendation? I already have teachers write recommendations for all colleges mentioned before and I do not want to burden them with writing those for even more colleges which are not my top choice colleges.

Also: I have my own blog and its Instagram account has over 60k followers. Is this an ‘‘EC’’ worth mentioning?

I hope some of you can offer advice - thank you in advance!

2

If you can swing the finances, the University of Georgia might be a really good fit. Its journalism reputation is definitely renowned. It has an active Greek community. And the town (Athens) is wonderful.

3

Have you looked into fee waivers that some colleges may offer for international students? Have you contacted admissions offices to ask? As for the letter or recommendation, it doesn’t have to be from a teacher, it could be from a counselor, extracurricular advisor, local charity director, etc.

What do you promote on the Insta account? Is it something that you think the AdComm would look to as a benefit or something interesting?

4

Your teachers write ONE letter, which they then upload on CommonApp, or photocopy and sign/seal and send in a sealed envelope (that you gave them, with the stamp on it). Through CommonApp, they only upload their letter ONCE - they can’t refer to any specific college but address your qualities.
An obvious choice would be Mizzou, if you qualify for merit aid there - top undergraduate journalism school in the US.

5

W&L is a real outlier in this group- how much do you know much about them? I find it hard to imagine that if you would be happy at the others you would be happy at W&L.

There are a lot of colleges that will offer aid to international students, but w/out your stats we don’t know where to start. Have you looked at [url=<a href=“http://www.internationalstudent.com/schools_awarding_aid/%5Dthis%5B/url”>http://www.internationalstudent.com/schools_awarding_aid/]this[/url] site? it lists colleges (by state) and how many international students get financial aid.

6

Thank you so much MYOS1634! I did not know this in advance. This definitely allows me to apply to more colleges.