Hello
This may belong on the admission sub forum.If so, please forgive my ignorance as this is my very first post on this website.
I am an Iranian student who is ambitious enough to aspire to go to top US schools. now my question is obvious. will other schools see it as somehow beneath themselves to accept a Harvard reject? Will this even be considered?
I know that I should not ask this, But I’ll go ahead and ask:
If so, should I even SCEA Harvard with this stats? If not, should I apply to another ivy? ( I would have liked to put the rest in a spoiler , but couldn’t do It.)
Nationality : Iranian ( though I am a mix of all major middle eastern ethnicities)
Intended Major : premed/Biology/Biomed/Biochem
GPA: 19.2/20
SAT : I have not taken the real one yet, but I scored 2210 on a blue book practice without studying. I plan on getting a 2300+.
EC: Will graduate when I am 16.
English Teacher at a prestigious language college. ( I have passed the TKT)
No AP or IB classes, as we all have the same curriculum in Iran. however, I studied at a NODET (national organization for development of extraordinary talents) school, which means that our curriculum was tough as hell. however, I did have some advanced extra curricular classes in Math, Physics and Astronomy.
Arts and humanities club member.
Fluent in English and persian, good at Arabic, Intermediate in French
c++, HTML, CSS, JS, PHP coder.
Web designer.
Swimmer, no awards though.
English and Geometry tutor.
do thing like being an avid reader and stuff count?
That is all I can remember right now.
Thank you for sparing the time to read my question, and I am totally sorry for posting this last part.
Lots of schools accept Harvard rejects and they are happy to have them.
really? maybe that is my Iranian mind frame, But is not even considered a disadvantage?
How would they even know? And why would they care who else you’ve been rejected by? Who Harvard wants is irrelevant when considering who Yale or Penn or Dartmouth or Duke or Bama etc. wants.
No colleges don’t know where you get rejected from unless you tell them in an interview. I’m also pretty sure they don’t know where else you apply on the CommonApp but then again they have their ways I guess lol.
I see. I did not know that they won’t know where you have applied in the common app. Next time, I’ll do more research before posting, sorry.
and thanks again for answering.
If it is at all possible, please give your opinion on the second question as well.
First off, in the US, it is against the law for one college to share applicant information with another college. YPSM et al will never know you’ve been rejected by Harvard, unless you or your guidance counselor tells them.
Secondly, your question has two answers, one for US students and one for International students from Iran.
Many US residents, including my own two kids, have been rejected by one top school, but accepted by another. For example, my son was rejected at Harvard, but accepted to Princeton and Yale. My daughter was rejected at Yale, waitlisted at Princeton, and accepted to Harvard. So, it does happen for US students.
For international students, it’s an entirely different story.
If you’re an international student, you need to realize that your odds are terrible, no matter what your stats. That’s because most US colleges, including HYP, restrict international students to about 10% to 11% of their incoming freshman class.
That means that Harvard, which has room for about 1660 incoming freshman, admits about 160 to 190 international students per year. Yale, which has room for about 1300 incoming freshman, admits about 130 to 150 international students per year. Princeton and Yale are not as forthcoming about their international student stats, but at Harvard most international students are from seven countries: Canada, The United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, China, Japan and Korea.
Please look at this link from Harvard: http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics. From the drop-down menu select STUDENTS, HARVARD COLLEGE (the undergraduate school) and IRAN and you will see that Harvard has one student enrolled at Harvard College. That’s one student over the span of freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors. Which means that, on average, Harvard admits about 1 student every 4 years from your country. Those are awful odds no matter how talented you are.
The statistics are probably much the same at YPSM et al. So, given the extremely unlikely odds of acceptance at Harvard for a student from your country, I imagine your chancers of being admitted to a peer school after being rejected from Harvard are highly unlikely. And it’s not because colleges share information with one another, but US schools don’t accept many students from Iran. By all means apply, but know that if you are successful at any top US college, you will be very lucky.
95% of people who apply to Harvard are rejected. Many of them end up getting an undergraduate education at another university. You have nothing to worry about.
Thanks for the answer Gibby, I do know that my chances are pretty slim. yet I am still gonna go forward and dream. ( no rhyme intended). and if I get rejected, I’ll go to a college in my home country.
I should also say that the main factor that limits our H-population is that there are very very few applicants from Iran. in fact, I do not know anybody who applied to a us university. and the fact that SAT is not offered in Iran does not help. another matter is that the Iranian English Teaching system just sucks, and very very few school age children can score a Harvard level score on the SAT. Would this not be a pro for my case? a kid with a good score , very middle class, from a severely under-represented country. I mean, come on, Gaza is besieged and has 1/40 of our population with the same number of attending. :-/
I guess what I am asking is, wouldn’t my country’s under-representation work in my favor if combined with a good SAT and essay?
on a less related side note, is there a particular reason for the fact that most students come from those aforementioned countries?
^^ To that point, you might want to look over this list of colleges that have better acceptance rates for international students than HYPSM: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/most-international.
My family cannot afford US tuition, thus it is nothing or the best for me! the highest on that list that I can afford is south California. In other words, I need to be admitted to a Need-blind college that meets my financial needs. Thus, I am stuck with University of Tehran at best unless the unthinkable happens and I am admitted to a top ivy.
I believe Canada has the largest number of international students enrolled at Harvard College (147). Maybe Canada is given preferential treatment because they are our good neighbor to the north. With regards to Iran, you may be correct – not many students apply from Iran to Harvard or US colleges, It could also be the political situation between our countries. Heck, it wasn’t until recently that a US Citizen could purchase a hand-made Iranian rug. So, given the volatile politics, I can imagine a scenario where the cry of “Death to America” does not widely open the Admissions door for a student from Iran, unless that student is a political refugee.
That narrows your list down to 6 colleges: http://www.internationalstudent.com/schools_awarding_aid/
Or maybe it is just the fact that 3 of them are Anglophone, affluent countries where students learn about Us colleges from early on.
A question. will I be competing against others from my area of the world , or against the whole international applicant pool for the coveted 10% ?
Do you think that there is a chance that politics will be held against me? (well, you basically said so, but I had to ask) If so, I have got to hope that the currently ongoing talks end in a miraculous outcome where Iran regains its Gendarme of the Middle East job.
Also, will I actually have a chance (assuming I have one for HYPMD ) for gaining entry into a need aware one like Columbia, Upenn, Michigan or Stanford?
You will be competing against all other international applicants.
I do think politics might play some part in all this, as I imagine the US State Department needs to approve an Iranian student’s visa for that student to study in this country. And I’m not sure how friendly the US State Department is these days to Iranian citizens. That’s something you might want to investigate by looking through sites like these:
http://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/index.htm
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarnings/iran-travel-warning.html
If the US does not have diplomatic or consular relations with Iran, then Iran does not have diplomatic or consular relations with the US. How then is a student supposed to get a visa to study at a US college? You need to further investigate this issue and save your application fees until you know the answer. Best of luck to you.
I’m not sure how the above would effect an Iranian student’s visa to study in the US.
not at all. Iranians frequently get visas for US, they just do so via the embassy at Turkey.
Thank you for all the trouble you are going through to get me data for this, gibby, I really appreciate it.
Also, Iranians frequently study at US, specially for Engineering masters. look at this article from some years ago:
http://www.newsweek.com/surprising-success-irans-universities-87853
You don’t need to limit yourself to need-blind institutions that meet full need for all accepted students, and in fact it’s probably not a good idea to do that. As Gibby points out, there are only six such colleges, and as a practical matter – they all limit the number of international students overall, and they all accept quite a number of full-pay or near-full pay internationals through whatever need-blind process they have – the number of international students with modest means those colleges will accept is finite and low – a few hundred at most.
Meanwhile, there are dozens of colleges that do not purport to be need-blind in admissions, and do not guarantee that they will meet every student’s need, but which nevertheless do both admit and fund a handful (or less) of highly qualified international applicants every year. They do it because they want some non-rich internationals for diversity purposes, and because they get some very strong students with unique skills and backgrounds that way. These colleges include many that are effectively peers of Harvard – Stanford, Columbia, Brown, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Swarthmore, Williams, etc. – as well as any number of very fine colleges that are slightly to a lot less competitive in admissions. In the aggregate, these other colleges probably enroll and educate considerably more non-rich internationals as the six need blind/full need colleges do, but they do it two or three (or ten) students per college per year.
You can’t apply to 100 colleges, but you may pick out 15 or 20 that might find you attractive, and apply to them and see what happens. They won’t all be as prestigious as Harvard (if you’re smart about how you do this). You will probably be accepted to a number of them, but with inadequate aid, and that will be very frustrating. But all it takes is one of them to decide that you are one of their top international candidates, and you will have a real shot at a high-quality US college.
Thanks for the advice JHS. I see… So I am thinking SCEA Harvard and Michigan (one public school in addition to Harvard) , then RD Yale, Darthmouth ,Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Upenn, Cornell and Chicago and CALTECH. and possibly Stanford and Johns Hopkins (I am really hoping that I get accepted to others, I would rather not live in Baltimore or Palo alto for my undergrad years. ) .
Does this look like a good plan of action? Any recommendations? I am also thinking of taking the ACT instead of the SAT, as it is offered in Summer too (September is summer for me).
Gigantic thanks to all who helped me with their answers.
P.S: I do understand that this thread has digressed from it’s main objective, but I am trying to use this window to get as much info as possible. sorry.
Second post note: I do understand that all these colleges are extremely hard to get into. so , will my app be considered sufficient If I score a 2350+ on SAT or 35-36 on the ACT, plus two 780+ on SAT II Bio m and Chem??
Another question : Will the scarce presence of my compatriots in us universities (in undergrad level) work in my favor in any way? for example, Imagine a hypothetical scenario were they are going to choose between Me, and Mr Korean. Assuming that we are on the same level essay wise and stat wise, Would diversity come to my aid?
Korea is not the best example since they are over-represented.
Hypothetically, diversity may help you, but the reality is that the admissions office is looking to structure the best class possible (and what that means, only they know); they are not looking to see how many flags they can stick on the map of the world hanging in their office.