<p>First off, top schools means different things to different people. I am sure this isn’t happening at Harvard-MIT-Stanford league schools, these schools have no need to settle for anyone. </p>
<p>I go to UMich and I don’t know everyone’s high school stats, but I can see a lot of international students come in who seem clearly very unprepared compared to American students. This is my nice way of saying most international students here who I’ve met (excluding those who are ethnically Chinese, whom are largely competitive students) are lazy. They are not getting free tuition here though, I am sure the reason they are here is to help fill the University’s coffers. I don’t know what sort of high school stats they had (IE their GPA, test scores, etc) but if they aren’t relatively lower than I’ll be quite surprised.</p>