Chance a Canadian International Student for US Schools~

With your grades, to me the Canadian universities that you are applying to look to be close to safeties. They are also very, very good universities. Correction: As I was reminded by a comment below, top universities in Canada do admit based on major, and CS and engineering are particularly competitive. My experience involves other majors, so I am not as sure.

I expect you to get some acceptances to US schools at prices that are not even remotely close to $25,000 per year. Given the excellent quality of universities in Canada, and given parents who are comfortable spending $25,000 per year, I do not understand why you would spend US$80,000 per year, or even US$65,000 per year, to attend university in the US. Note the exchange rate.

US$60,000 total in debt might be just barely manageable if you have a very marketable major (such as computer science or engineering). However, it is still a lot of debt. Also, without US citizenship or permanent residence staying in the US after graduation could be very difficult, and at least in my experience Canadian employers seem to prefer to hire from the very good Canadian universities. This could make the debt awkward to deal with.

Are you applying for financial aid at the US schools? If so, have you run the Net Price Calculator for these schools?

I think that you are not all that far from the average international applicant (ie an exceptional student) for Cornell, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton. I think that you know what the international acceptance rate is. I do not know Duke as well. NYU, Michigan, Georgia Tech, CMU and UW Seattle might be low reaches. UC Berkeley and UCLA are also reaches (whether low or otherwise). The other UCs mostly seem likely to me, but I do not know why I would attend any of them over Toronto or Queens.

My parents, siblings and one daughter attended university in Canada. My wife, other daughter, and I attended university in the US. I noticed one difference that you should be aware of: In the US there are significantly more required classes that are outside of your major. In Canada, if you want to, you get to take more classes that are relevant to your major. You should look at the general education requirements for MIT and for other US schools, and decide if you want to take that many classes outside of your intended major.

One small nit: When my daughters applied to universities in Canada from a high school in the US, a few missed the fact that they were Canadian citizens and along with the acceptances sent us information on how to apply for a student visa and what the costs would be for an international student. I called admissions and they had me fax a copy of either their Canadian passport or Certificate of Canadian Citizenship and they fixed this very quickly and easily. If you run into the same problem then do not panic, this is easy to fix.

Edit: What is your status in the USA? If you are a permanent resident, then some of these comments are less relevant. If you are a permanent resident in the US and also a resident of California, that would both reduce the cost and improve your chances at the various UC’s.