<p>hi, i’ve posted at the international students forum, didn’t get a lot of good posts…(except for nomadmom!)</p>
<p>so, here goes…use your logic (and if you’re an international student’s parent this question is definitely for you)</p>
<p>I have personally heard from an admissions officer at Harvey Mudd, encouraging me to apply to a great deal of schools, since the application pool for international will be more competitive than that of the U.S application pool</p>
<p>do you suppose this to be true, logical?</p>
<p>and how many colleges are your sons/daughters applying to (or have applied)?</p>
<p>It is indeed true that the competition for internationals is tougher. There are some schools that do welcome internationals. Will you be needing financial aid? That will be a big factor in deciding where to apply. If you are thinking of HM, I’m assuming that you are interested in math/science, right? Focus your search on schools with good math/science programs then look up their websites for information on internationals. One school with a good math department that you could consider is St. Olaf. I don’t know about its financial aid, however; but it is a bit off the beaten track for internationals, and for this reason, you could do well there. </p>
<p>If you tell us more about yourself, we could be a bit more specific in our advice.</p>
<p>:] you have guessed well, with the given parental intuition.</p>
<p>you are correct, I am an asian girl living in US (no green card) who will apply as an international. I am looking for a college with a great biology program.</p>
<p>Fortunately, I assume that I will be receiving my green card about a year or two after the start of my college education, by then I can apply for FAFSA assistance and hopefully a great more range of scholarships/grants/etc available to me.</p>
<p>here’s my list so far-- this is also parent (ahem, Asian parents) influenced list, so you see a lot of highly selective colleges…</p>
<p>Reaches:
Caltech
MIT
Cornell U
UPenn
Johns Hopkins</p>
<p>matches?
Carnegie mellon
Harvey Mudd
UC San Diego</p>
<p>Safeties
U Wisconsin Madison
SUNY Stonybrook
Rutgers-- New Brunswick Campus–Cook College.</p>
<p>I desparately hope I don’t have to take the TOEFL-- if you noticed, I can speak/read/write/understand english like any other “native speaker”. My grades are straight A’s, save 2-3 B’s in english, etc. I have a decent EC, but not so, compared to many thinking of applying to ivy leagues…</p>
<p>I’ll stop here. I believe I’ll bore you too much with my “what are my chances” look alike thread.</p>
<p>Other parents can comment more knowledgeably than I on the subject of financial aid, but I am under the impression that once you are admitted into a college, it is harder to obtain financial aid from that college unless your financial situation changes. So I would strongly urge you to consider colleges where you can get good financial aid or merit aid right now and not depend on your getting a green card. The one difference it would make would be to enable you to be considered as an in-state student; that would of course depend on whether you would be attending your own state university.</p>
<p>I encourage you to apply to Brandeis. It has a good biology program and welcomes internationals. It may also give you good financial aid.</p>
<p>I do not believe HMC is a match if Cornell and JHU are reaches. Don’t let the relatively high acceptance percentage fool you - we’re talking about a self-selective pool, so it is harder to get into than it seems.</p>