Undegraduate Business Universities/Colleges suggestions for Intl. Student?

College Search & Selection
1

Hello!
I’m currently a Junior at my school, a private, methodist, high school with a certain rank in my country. In my country, from 7-9th grade you do high school and from 10-12, you do “bachiller” which is what prepares you for college. So I’m on 11th grade and my bachiller is “Bilingual Commerce with emphasis on Marketing and Advertising” which specializes on business.

I have a 4.4. GPA on a scale of 5.0 which is my country’s grading scale, I take 14 classes. I haven’t converted my GPA because of the fact that I take 14 classes and most conversions I’ve seen are for students who take 6-8 and I take almost the double of that. I’ve been in the same school for my entire life and have been in the honor roll since 3rd grade elementary. I’m hoping to have a 4.7 GPA this year.

and I’m in the debate club(I have attended over 6 inter school debates and visited the house of representatives in my country as a debater), theather/acting lessons at a local theater, Recycling and enviroment club and was in The English speaking club at my school.

I speak 3 languages(spanish, english, hakka chinese and am learning my fourth(portuguese).

I want to study business in college(Either managementand finance, marketing or International business) I would prefer a degree that combined some of the options above and maybe, international affairs.

I will be taking the NEW SAT this year, I’m confident in myself that I will achieve a nice score. I will also be taking the TOEFL and the SAT World History subjet test

My school year starts on february and ends on december, so I will prefer a semester that starts on spring. I have friends who study in the United States currently and they’ve told me the fall season is better, I would like to know why and also your opinion on this?

So basically, I’m looking for schools that offer scholarships/financial aid. My family can make and effort and try to pay a certain amount for me to go(20k a year), but I would prefer to have some aid since we can’t fully pay all the tuition for some schools.
I’m of chinese descent, born in latin america from immigrant parents. I will be the first in my family to attend college. I don’t know if this information will help with my search, but I thought it’d be useful to put it here.

Some schools I will be applying for are:
UPenn
University of Notre Dame
Bentley University
Amherst College
UC- Berkeley
Cornell
Brown
University of Southern Carolina

Some schools I’ve been considering about applying for are:
University of Southern California
Georgetown University
NYU

I would really like to add more schools to my list, schools with nice undergraduate business programs and opportunities for internships and also financial aid or scholarships. I would prefer maybe city schools/college towns and I think my list gives away that I prefer the west and east coast a little bit better.

Some other questions I have asides from college suggestions are:

Is the CommonApp.org website realiable to use for applications?
What other activities can I do to appeal more to colleges?
What’s the regular and above regular score for The NEW SAT test?

Thank you so much for reading! and also for your help!

2

I’m not sure what Amherst would offer in your areas of interest.

3

They have an Economics Major and I checked out the courses they listed on their website and was interested on many of them!

4

Many students interested in the study of business with a possible emphasis in marketing are often not particularly interested in the study of economics. As long as this is not the case for you, then you are fine.

5

While it’s true that I would prefer a college with a degree focused on business/Intl business, I like some courses at Amherst(Intl Business is one of the courses, and also something with law), and also their aid program for international students. I also like the location/state where it’s located. However, I would definitely prefer a degree with a closer relation to what I study.

6

bump

7

Amherst and some other top LAC’s have a very “academic” focus and do not like applicants who view college as professional preparation.

8

Does anyone have any school suggestions?

9

You probably need four things:

  1. Some type of standardized scoring results.
  2. An review of how well your high school curriculum comports with the expectations of some of your schools of interest. For example, will you have taken chemistry, physics, calculus?
  3. An understanding that most schools are need-aware for internationals.
  4. An understanding of which public universities are inclined to heavily favor their own state's residents.
10

1- I mentioned that I will be taking the test later this year since my school year just started and I would like to focus on that first before taking the test, however I expect to receive decent results due to the fact that I will be taking a SAT prep course at a local college.
2- From 7th to 9th grade which is High School in my country, I took, chemistry, biology, physics, Reading, Literature, Writing, Religion, Grammar, Spanish Literature, Geography, History, Math, Algebra, Geometry, Civics, P.E., Art, Computer Science.
This year and the past year in Bachiller, I took: Math(Business focused, along with Algebra), Marketing, Accounting, Media and Communications, Religion, Spanish Literature, Business English, Computer Science, Economy, History, Geography, P.E, Business Management, Marketing & Sales, Calculus.

I am aware that some universities might not offer me aid due to being an international student (I think Bentley doesn’t), I’m trying to search for colleges that meet most of the things I’m looking for and either offer aid or are close to what my family is willing to pay, along with that I will also be applying for aid and scholarships in my country. I’m trying to find more schools and have a bigger list of where to apply for since I feel like my list is too small and I want to have more options.

Thank you so much!

11

Agree that you 1) need standardized testing results and 2) you need to research what schools give merit aid to internationals before starting to come up with your list of potential colleges.

If you want to start considering schools before those two important steps (which I don’t recommend) just look at one of the many rankings of undergraduate b-schools like the one below for ideas.
http://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2014/07/01/2014-pq-ranking-of-the-best-undergraduate-business-programs/2/

12

Thank you for the list!

I think I’d like to make a small list before because I feel like having something to look up to motivates me to do better in a way? Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like If I had a small list it’d motivate me a bit to do better, etc and get better scores to get into the schools I have? Instead of just doing the test and seeing where I fit in? I’m not sure if this makes sense but yeah!
lso, in my bachiller, I’m ranked 2 out of 80. The whole 11th grade is a total of 400 people and My school does not post the whole rank, only the ones of each “Bachiller”

and again, Thank you so much for the list!

13

Yes, we need standardized test scores.

NYU gives little aid to US students, so I doubt they give much international aid. If your family can only afford $20,000, I would take NYU off of your list.

14

Yeah, I was just thinking about that actually. I have it on my “maybe” list because of the cost of tuition and over all because New York is a a bit expensive.
I feel like I’m leaning more towards University of South Carolina, since they have a degree I like and The tuition is a bit lower than the other options I’ve seen, but I’d prefer a school in a big city or close to everything cause it’s what I’m used to since I live in a big city in my country and I like to be close to malls, supermarkets and I like to have an active lifestyle and such. And I’d like a school with a lot of diversity also.

Thank you!

15

bump