What caliber of colleges should I be looking at?

College Search & Selection
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<p>I'm from New Zealand and have just began junior year. I plan do go to the US to do undergrad but I need some advice on the types of colleges I should apply to.</p>

<p>To make this clear, I need quite a bit of financial aid, like $40,000 or so (which lowers my chances significantly).</p>

<p>My first SAT I got 1980 (CR610 MA740 WR630) - which is appalling and I'm really disappointed; I could do better and will certainly try again as I have two full years to go.</p>

<p>I haven't done SAT IIs but I'm looking at Math2, chem, and physics.</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:
table tennis (6-7 years) - won two major national awards, won a national title for doubles, silver for an oceania teams event representing my country, the youngest in my province to win Open singles (at 13 years old), and runner up to Secondary School (high school) Sportsperson of the Year award.</p>

<p>piano (5-6 years) - house pianist of a local 5 star hotel, pretty much sweeps the local competitions every year, awarded Most Promising Performer at a bigger province close to where I live, played a piano recital consisting of LTCL diploma level repertoire, played a Mozart piano concerto with the local orchestra. In terms of jazz, I'm in all of the school's jazz bands, jazz ensembles. Awarded best jazz pianist locally two years in a row (competing nationally this year), play in a community big band regularly, have countless gigs and concerts. I play the keytar also, I'm in a progressive rock band and won an award for virtuosity.</p>

<p>There are plenty more and it's too hard to list as I'm extremely dedicated to table tennis and music in general.</p>

<p>Other minor stuff:
Social volleyball
Regional soccer rep (play for club)
Regional long distance athletics rep for a year
Take computer programming courses with a local polytech tutor for a long time - so I'm a competent programmer</p>

<p>Clubs and stuff:
LEO club
International Friendship Club (I can't take leadership in these yet, but I hopefully will in senior year)
School Council
Chess club</p>

<p>Academics:
Our grading system is weird.
Excellence, or 'E' is equivalent to an A.
I have all my subjects endorsed with E except physics. I also do accelerated subjects, meaning I do them a year ahead of others; I guess this is as close to AP as we can get.
I get a lot of awards in school, mainly based on my all roundedness and individual subject distinctions - usually in music, maths, and chem.</p>

<p>A top university would be nice but a 1980 SAT is by no means adequate, and I'm sure I can improve. Financial aid is also a big issue. So I've been looking at some LACs and other generous colleges but some help is certainly needed as I live in a small city where nobody pursues USA.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance :)</p>

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<p>Have a look at the following list:
<a href=“http://www.desperateguide.com/us/top-25-financial-aid-colleges-in-us-for-international-students-need-aware”>http://www.desperateguide.com/us/top-25-financial-aid-colleges-in-us-for-international-students-need-aware&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Most of these are small liberal arts colleges. Some would be out of reach for your current scores. Dickinson, Hampshire, Skidmore and Union should be within reach. A few others (Bates, Colby, Colorado College, Macalester, Reed) might be reachable, especially if you can raise your CR ~50 points or more. None of the listed schools are safeties or even low matches, just because they are all need-aware in admissions (as almost all schools are for internationals). However, your ECs are interesting. I bet a few of them would love to have you. </p>

<p>Check out Colorado College, which has a beautiful Rocky Mountain location and probably is eager for more international students (with one of the lowest “% Intl of 1st Yrs” but one of the highest average awards.) You’d have to be comfortable with their unusual one-course-at-a-time “block plan” (which is rather intense, but does create more flexibility for off-campus field work.) </p>

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<p>Thank you! I will certainly look into those</p>

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<p>If you mean you need $40,000 of financial aid off the $60,000 list price of the most expensive schools, then that means you can afford about $20,000 per year, right?</p>

<p>The first few LACs in [this</a> list](<a href=“http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1606422-public-lacs-ranked-by-oos-tuition.html]this”>Public LACs Ranked by OOS Tuition - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums) might (barely) be within range at list price if you live very frugally (don’t forget to add room, board, and misc/travel costs to the tuition numbers).</p>

<p>If your academic tastes are more along the lines of engineering, consider South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and South Dakota State University as schools that might (barely) be within range at list price if you live very frugally.</p>

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<p>What kind of safeties should I consider based on my current appalling scores?</p>

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<p>See the post just above your question for potential safeties.</p>

<p>Also check out the [automatic</a> full tuition and full ride scholarships](<a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums), but check each school carefully to see if international students are eligible.</p>

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<p>Why do you want to study in the US? </p>

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<p>your SAT is not appalling by any measure except yours. There are several thousand schools that would take you right now. Does that help? Your table tennis record as well as your piano and GPA are going to get you lots of attention. Since you do find your SAT score appalling, I expect you’ll have the resources to bring it up 100 or more points. Were it to reach 2300 you could count on two hands the number of schools that wouldn’t give you a sniff. </p>

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<p>Sorry @ucbalumnus I didn’t refresh the page, thanks for the list!</p>

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<p>@whenhen I’m from a small city and nobody down here pursues an American college dream. So I kind of want to be different and achieve a more prestigious education.</p>

<p>@jkeil911 my average SATs are about 2000-2100 ish. In time I’m sure I could improve my SAT to 2200. Thanks for your consoling comment</p>

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<p>You can ask this in a year and still have time to apply, right? So don’t make specific lists now without complete data. Just read and research. Like I said before, you have very interesting EC’s that show talent and accomplishment that will help you stand out. I don’t know why you took the SAT as a sophomore; usually you just take when ready and try not to take it over and over. Frequently M+Cr scores to go up 100 pts naturally year over year. However, I suspect you are ESL, didn’t you say elsewhere you are from China until fairly recently(?) and that rule of thumb may not apply.</p>

<p>Read the SAT Preparation forum for study guide/tips from xiggi and silverturtle. </p>

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<p>Yea I’m just doing some research and narrowing down my options at the moment. I do have a lot of time. Thanks for the advice! I was born in china but am now a new zealander</p>

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<p><a href=“Understanding SAT Scores – SAT Suite | College Board”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
“On average, juniors repeating the SAT as seniors improved their combined critical reading, mathematics, and writing scores by approximately 40 points.”</p>

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<p>I agree with the previous replies. I’d recommend you do some SAT prep before your next testing. The College Board has an online study course that costs about $80 and is pretty great. The various study guides for the SAT IIs (from Princeton Review and others) are also pretty helpful. There are plenty of threads on CC about which study guides people found most helpful for various subjects.</p>

<p>Your SATs as they are right now are in the range for Skidmore College, Hampshire College and Bard College. I don’t know how their fin aid for international students varies from US students, but all three of those would have ~$40,000 fin aid for a domestic student with need…</p>

<p>If you can get your SAT up to >2100, and your GPA is equivalent to an A average, you’d probably have a shot at higher-tier LACs like Wesleyan U. and Bowdoin College, both of which have great fin aid (I think Bowdoin is need blind and meets 100% need, for US students at least. And it’s a great school in a beautiful location.)</p>

<p>Are you male or female? If female, also look into Mount Holyoke and Smith. Mount Holyoke, in particular, accepts a lot of international students.</p>

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<p>I don’t think there’s any such thing as a “safety” for an international student who needs $40,000 of aid per year.</p>

<p>There are only six U.S. colleges that are need-blind to international students AND meet full financial need: Dartmouth, Amherst, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT. Needless to say those schools are all very competitive. Most other schools take financial need of international students into account when they make their admissions decisions, and/or they do not pledge to provide full financial need.</p>

<p>So you’re going to have to not just rely on colleges that give good financial aid based on need, but also find some colleges that offer significant merit aid for someone with your stats (or the stats you’ll have when you’re a senior).</p>

<p>Make sure that you also apply to some NZ schools just in case. NZ has some great universities - the University of Auckland is consistently ranked in the top 100-150 universities in the WORLD, and University of Otago, Victoria University of Wellington, and Massey University are also great places to go to school.</p>