I am an international student from India, intending to pursue BSc(Physics). I don’t have much knowledge about which colleges to apply and since my exams are starting next week I don’t have enough time to discover the colleges and also submit the application on time, i.e. before 1st Jan.
It’d be really helpful if you can suggest me some colleges, mainly I am looking for these 3 things :
Financial Aid (My family income is $27,000 per annum, so my father won’t be able to afford any college with more than $6,000 p.a. as we are still recovering from the crisis)
A good physics department and research opportunities
I could have really high chances of acceptance there, as I don’t think I will have time to apply to 20 universities now, as application fee is also a factor for me. So I’d like to apply to some 6-8, and desperately want to get selected to study in USA.
Please respond soon with the best options that I have as per your opinion/knowledge.
Thanks in advance.
I would really appreciate if you can read and comment on my application (and may also suggest me somethings that I can do to improve my chances for RD).
So that’s my application :
Not reported SAT/ACT
We have a percentage system, and I got 96% in 9th grade; 97% in 10th grade; 78% in 11th grade (our grade 11 is very holistic especially at my school the exam paper is set extremely difficult with a hard marking, and I had the highest among a class of 62)
Neither much consideration is given to ECs in my area, nor I got the opportunities to do engage in them due to some family problems. Also, I study in a small school, and there is no school in our area where we have anything like "clubs"
So I only got chance in most school-level activities, but I am known to every teacher, Principal, Director and most students in the school as I volunteer in almost every program at school, and also the Head for conducting and arranging for the morning assembly and giving commands.
I won the school debate competition in classes 9-10-11.
Represented my school in debate competition (grade 10th) in Zonal competitions and stood 4th out of 61 schools.
Represented the school in GK Quiz competition (topic : Global Warming) in class 11th and our team stood 4th out of a 70 schools.
For the personal essay, I had a constant love for knowledge and was very curious since childhood. But, we had financial crisis, even lived for months without electricity when I was 10 yo, but I continued to study. Due to the same, I was not able to attend many years of school fully, i.e., I was kicked out due to non-payment of fee in classes 5-6-7, but I studied by myself at home, and also helped in household chores since my mother used to be very ill and father was busy in work and job due to financial crisis. I also tutored my younger brother and sister.
But the conditions started to become good since class 9th, and now last year we bought our own home !
Some other things which I mentioned in the Additional Essay, (since the family conditions became better by the time I reached class 10th, so I’ve did as much as per the available resources, and had no guidance from the teachers (not their fault, since no one in the whole region ever does this here)
(i) I came up with a solution to the Grandfather Paradox in Nov, 2019; but later after investigating I found that exactly a similar solution as mine had been proposed in 2015 by Dr. Greenberger, a PhD Physicist from Germany & his team.
(ii) Tried to answer Dark Matter & Dark Energy by using the concept of “negative mass” (An idea that I think many get, nothing unique but just mentioned ) in August, 2020. But found out from an episode of PBS SpaceTime that a research paper had been published on the same idea in October, 2019
(iii) I was trying to prove/find a way to slow down photons in vacuum (which is considered impossible till date) but instead ended up proving Borsuk-Ulam Theorem of topology.
*I hadn’t published a single paper, although I wanted to do it so badly, but there was no one to guide me and also the people here don’t understand the importance and load you with other sh!tty work so didn’t got enough time to learn it myself through internet.
You can apply for fee waivers to apply to more schools, so don’t let app fees stop you from applying to more schools! This is especially true if you’re applying for financial aid since you’ll want to cast a wider net. When you apply to schools, tuition matters, but also don’t forget about cost of living in your study destination. Big coastal cities and Chicago are quite pricey, whereas costs are much lower in the midwest and in college towns.
Affordable at sticker and worth considering would be Nebraska Kearney and CUNY Hunter College. But again, maybe you’ve got the grades to get a scholarship to a top 25. But you seem to have the grades and background to apply to highly selective schools and to request aid. Just remember that cost of living at say Brown or Penn will be way lower than Columbia or Stanford! You should also look at scholarships for debate since you seem good at that. Here’s a list of scholarships for debate: Scholarships | National Speech & Debate Association
It’s hard to imagine the same person being equally happy at UNC-CH (30,000 students, warm weather, 60,000 residents in town) and Colgate (3,000 students, 86” of snow in a year, 4,000 residents in town). I understand focusing your search on schools with generous financial aid for international students but there is a huge difference between the schools on your list.
A potential concern with a school such as Colgate is that, beyond its highly selective admissions in general, it accepts only ~8.5% of its international applicants. Nonetheless, as an aspirational destination for the study of physics, you still may want to apply.
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