Chance Me for EA Rutgers, Fordham and RD Princeton: International Pre-Med, 3.75 GPA 1460 SAT

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • International (West Africa), High Income

  • I have a unique situation academics wise where I was originally at a British patterned school where I wrote IGCSEs but because I desperately want to go to school in America I’ve moved to a school where I’m writing AP exams instead so my transcripts are a little bit weird looking on my common app.

Cost Constraints / Budget : 100k~ per year for total cost of living. Most of my target schools have some sort of automatic merit based scholarships you qualify for upon applying or a subsaharan africa tuition reduction so it probably won’t get that high. Even so 100k isn’t a hard limit.

Intended Major(s) Biochemistry. I’m applying as pure chemistry to the schools without a Biochemistry major.

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

3.75 GPA not too sure on the rank but i was between 15-20/109 students in the equivalent of my junior year. Top 15 on external exam results before i left. Because I’m in a specialized program now my class size is less than 30 students but I’m top 3 as far as grade averages go to my knowledge.

ACT/SAT Scores: 1460 (730rw 730math). originally got that in september, retook in october and got the exact same score and i’m super disappointed in it so i’m hoping to retake again in december and get a 1500. a 1550 is my ultimate goal for december though. I initially wanted to take both november and december but taking december is compulsory in my school for all AP students.

List your HS coursework

9 IGCSEs (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, English, English Literature, Accounting, French (2nd Language).

Senior Year: My school allows students to pick 3 APs but I asked to do four so I’m doing AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Physics 1 and AP Statistics. School also has 3 compulsory prep classes that will go on my transcript: SAT math, SAT english and College Prep where my college essay and other stuff are graded.

Awards

Gold Medalist 2024 National STEM Olympiad, International Finalist

Bronze Medalist 2022 National STEM Olympiad, International Finalist

Silver Medalist 2023 National STEM Olympiad

School’s Accounting Prize 2024

School’s Silver Honour Roll 2023

School’s Bronze Honour Roll 2024, 2025

ICE Certificate

CIE Distinction (2A* 6A 1B for IGCSE)

only put the STEM olympiads on my common app though because nothing else was really relevant

Extracurriculars
my ecs are very much mediocre because my old school didn’t really focus on that sort of thing because they’re not really emphasized for students trying to go to the uk but they’re as follows:

Student Led Charity 2025 : Student led program that stands raises awarenesss on Fertility and other issues surrounding that. Students help raise money for couples struggling to conceive and raise awareness on medical developments in the field. We’ve partnered with a foundation so we donate the money and then go through a selection process for the couples who get the help. As a new member of this organization I’m striving to raise awareness on this topic and I am currently raising funds for our next event which will be on October 16th.

Secretary of Kindness Club 2025: The term just started but as secretary of the kindness club so far I have raised funds totaling around 500,000 Naira/340 dollars (it sounds way less impressive in dollars but its a lot of money here) and aided in organizing an outreach trip to local grocery stores where we measured the blood pressure of the locals. I’m also helping organise a cancer awareness gala at my school. I intend to organize a program similar to Lab work club and a trash clean-up at the beach also. The club has about 90 members and at each meeting I take attendance and I make announcements at the end of the meeting

Tutoring 7th grade biology students for 3 years after school. 2023-2025
My 9th grade Biology teacher (the one writing my LOR) and I organised a program where struggling 7th graders could come every Thursday After school and revise for tests and be re-taught topics which they didn’t understand in class. Students who had been gravely ill were also allowed to come there and catch up with work.

Community Service and Lab work Club Head Tutor 2023-24, 24-25
Public school students would come to our school to use our lab. As the head tutor I supervised and carried out experiments in the field of Biology, Chemistry and Physics and prepared teaching material to teach these students grade 7-9 science appropriate for their grade. Consistently organised end of year parties at their school and designed engaging games and class activities for the students.

ORA Explore Medicine 2025: Wrote research papers on Visual Disability and received an A* grade (99%). Did Art and Writing Clubs where I interacted with my peers on Yale’s campus.

Writing and Media Club 2025: School writing club where I am an active participant. It also functions as the schools media club and as a participant in that I make announcements at assembly to the schools 250 student population and make speeches on the school’s core values. I will also write a short story which falls inline with the school’s theme for the year will be published in the school’s end of term book publication this year.

Debate 2024: Researched for an inter-school debate on AI and I was one of selected three debaters on stage out of a pool of 15 students. I received an award certificate for it.

French Immersion Program 2024: Spent 4 weeks in St. Malo where I studied B2 Level French. Organized an end of program party, cohabited with a French family.

Chess Club Co-President for one Trimester 2024: Helped teach people basic chess tactics and played games with fellow students. Helped maintain order amongst younger students.

and various charity work and work shadowing here and there amounting to about 50 hours of volunteer work and 20 hours of shadowing. I didn’t think it was significant enough so its not on my common app.

Essays and LORS
I’m getting three LORS from my Biology Chemistry and Math teachers who’ve known me since I was 12 or so. They have experience in writing recommendation letters (albeit for British schools) so I should be fine. I’ve gotten positive feedback on my essay which is about how my parents took my bedroom door off and social accessibility.

Schools
I’d appreciate being chanced for my early schools but I also want opinions on my RD schools too.

I’m applying to the following schools Early Action
Case Western (Received a Fee Waiver, applying for pre-professional I have no expectations for that)
Rutgers (Received a Fee Waiver, applying for honours, very much my top target school I love rutgers and I love the area. I’m thinking of pushing it back to RD though so I have more time to work on my honours essay)
Fordham (Second favourite target)
Long Island University (they emailed me, I don’t have a huge interest in the school but I got a fee waiver so my counsellor says i should apply. I like the area though).
Loyola Chicago
RIT (received a fee waiver)
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Villanova

and I’m applying to these schools RD
Yale
UTD
UTSA
Princeton (dream school but if my SAT stays this low I don’t think I have a chance of getting in)
JHU

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$100,000 per YEAR? That would cover the full cost of attendance at most U.S. colleges.

You mention premed in your subject title. Where do you plan to apply to medical school? Those who are not U.S. citizens have a very very very small chance of being accepted to medical schools in the U.S.

Will you have four years each of Math, Sciences, Social Studies, and English. And some foreign language to level 3? I realized you are from another country, and these might not exactly apply. @MYOS1634 can you help here?

I think you have a good chance of acceptance at many of your colleges, especially if you really can pay the full cost of attendance. Please clarify that.

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What type of fee waivers are you getting if your family is high income??

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I think the Case Western one was SAT related? They just emailed me. Rutgers I got at a college fair and RIT and Long Island were via email also.

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Yes 100k USD per year. My father says household income is above 200k USD a year so I should be fine on that.

I’m aware of the U.S Medical school being very difficult to get but I’m looking at America, the carribean, Canada (I know they’re also super selective with internationals but might as well) and Francophone Europe. I should have four years of maths sciences and english but I think I only have three of social studies since I became a dedicated science student this year. I have a foreign language to level 3 (french) and will get my B2 certificate next year.

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I think you’re in at Rutgers, your gpa/sat seem low for honors, but I don’t know if being international gives you a boost.

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Have you visited the campus?

Keep in mind that you have to apply by Dec 1 to be considered for honors.

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Yes I visited it this summer right before my Yale visit

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Other than Princeton and Yale (need blind for international students, so your full pay status won’t help) I think your list is very reasonable

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You will not be eligible for Canadian medical school residency unless you become a permanent resident. Furthermore, there is approximately a single-digit amount (amount, not percentage - less than 10 across the whole country) of seats for international students at Canadian medical school. Applying on a “might as well” basis will be a waste of your time, unfortunately.

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Where do you plan to practice medicine? Really, that is where you should be looking at potential medical school paths.

With the new potential $100,000 for visas, there are really no residency programs where you will be able to work in the U.S. That price is simply something residency programs cannot absorb.

It’s highly unlikely you will be able to attend medical school in the U.S. or in Canada.

So…you need a better plan, or a different career path.

Remember, when your student visa ends, you will be expected to return to your home country.

I think you have the potential to be accepted at some of the colleges on your list, but I really think you need to reconsider medical school here or in Canada if you attend a U.S. college.

What other career paths interest you? You need a Plan B.

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Because I won’t be able to practice in North America for the forseeable future I’d want to practice in the UK and France. Sorry if my plans don’t seem very coherent; they aren’t because I planned to reassess once I got my college offers.

I’m also interested in pharmacy, nutrition and just general academia. I’m working on getting a B2 french certificate so I can study in Europe (which is my own personal main plan, my parents are still stuck on the med school in america thing). I’m also open to the UK which is more likely because I have relatives doing private practice there where.

I plan on looking for work/applying to school in Europe (preferably France or Switzerland) when I get rejected by all the medschools that my dad is going to make me apply to.

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Maybe there are three issues here. One is what you are asking: Will you get accepted to these schools as an undergraduate student? Another is whether attending these schools will allow you to get into medical school in the US. A third is which of these schools are actually a good fit for you.

I think that you will get some acceptances and some rejections. Rutgers seems likely. Fordham seems likely. U of Minnesota and Loyola Chicago seem likely.

Yale and Princeton and JHU are high reaches. In general your GPA and SAT scores are very good. However, your GPA is low for these three schools. Your SAT score is low for these three schools.

Premed classes are in general very tough at any university in the US. Imagine that you get into Princeton and are sitting in a freshman year premed class. You look to the right of you, you look to the left of you. You are surrounded by students pretty nearly all of whom had SAT scores well over 1460 and a GPA over 3.75. It is not obvious to me that you should want to attend Princeton, Yale, or Johns Hopkins. You might be able to pull this off, but these three schools will be academically very tough in premed classes.

The universities on this list that I expect you to get into will cost less than $100,000 per year, and are very good universities, and are in general very good for premed students.

However, getting to attend medical school in the US as an international student is relatively unlikely even for a very strong student.

To me the most likely scenario, almost certain, is that you will get multiple acceptances from your various EA applications. Since you have said good things about Rutgers I will add that I also have a very good impression of Rutgers. Mostly I know it almost entirely from various people I know who are Rutgers graduates, but they have all made the school look good. I expect you to get in, and expect you to do well there.

However, after studying for four years and getting a bachelor’s degree in the US, whether you can then get accepted to any medical school in the US is a much, much tougher thing to guess at. It will be a HUGE challenge unless you are able to somehow get permanent residence status in the US, in which case it will be a less difficult but still large challenge, and I have pretty much no idea how you could do that.

Carribean medical schools do seem more likely to me, but I do not know much about them.

Your French would need to be very, very strong to study medicine at a French language university. If your French is that strong, you also could look at Francophone Canada. There are three French language medical schools in Quebec (U. Laval, U. de Sherbrooke, and U. de Montreal). I have no idea whether or not they accept international students who are fluent in French.

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Thank you for your thorough reply!

I was asking about undergraduate chances, I know the medical school dream is very very far away. I believe my french is strong and I’m applying to 3 canadian universities for undergrad UOFT, UCalgary and British Columbia because of this. I should be C1 (by the DELF fluency exams) or completely fluent by the end of my undergraduate studies.

My father is very focused on rankings and such so even though I wanted to apply to UOttowa because they provide scholarships for students who do a certain number of their courses in french, it doesn’t seem likely. Thank you for the recommendations.

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U. of Ottawa would also give you an opportunity to see how you do when taking classes that are taught entirely in French, and would give you a chance to improve your French. If you found that you could not handle classes in French, then you could switch to take all of your classes in English, or only take a few classes in French while working on improving fluency.

Another thing to think about: There are some very good French immersion courses in Canada, including some that run over the summer. As one example, one daughter took a 5 week course at U. de Moncton (in New Brunswick, which is an officially bilingual province). This was approximately from late July through most of August, and thus ended in time to get back to university in September. The program that my daughter took first gave the rules in English, then tested your French. Then each day in the morning you took French classes with classes being split by ability. The highest ability level was for people who were essentially bilingual but who needed or wanted to maintain their French fluency. In the afternoon they had various activities that were conducted in French. If you were to study at a French language university, you might want to start with something like this in the prior summer just to make sure that your French is strong. There are similar programs in Montreal and Quebec City, and I would expect there are probably similar programs in France.

In North America (both the US and Canada) the ranking of your undergraduate university really does not matter much when applying to medical or other graduate programs. There are a LOT of very good universities in the US and Canada (hundreds of them in the US).

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You need to check the other countries for when medical school students start. In some places, this is a course of study right out of high school. I don’t know whether they accept foreign students with bachelors degrees from elsewhere to their medical schools…or not.

@WayOutWestMom might know.

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As far as my research for France there is IBDP or A-levels for right before a-levels I think and I don’t think AP transfers like that. In the UK its the same as France but I’m aware of some people getting a bachelors degree and then transferring. I’m yet to research the other european countries like switzerland. If I don’t go to the carribean for medschool unfortunately it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to go to traditional medschool at all. But I need to do more reading into this. I wanted to apply to british schools for medicine this cycle but the UCAS portal closed before I got my parents to agree with the idea.

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In the UK and most of the former British colonial countries medical school is a direct admission after high school, although there are some GEM (Graduate Entry Medicine) programs.

Medical school in France is a direct admission after high school programs. Admission is highly, highly competitive. There are no graduate entry medical school programs in France.

Swiss med schools will not consider international students for admissions. Seats are reserved for Swiss citizens only. Direct entry from high school.

Caribbean med schools are typically graduate entry programs, though there are some that accept students straight out of high school. In general, Caribbean med schools do not have a very good reputation in the US. They have high acceptance rates and high fail out rates. (As many as 40-60% of those who start at a Caribbean med school fail to graduate.)

Canadian medical schools accept fewer than 10 international students/year in total at all their med schools combined.

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Places for international students at UK universities are also extremely limited, including for graduate entry (which I assume is what you would be looking at if you are looking at undergrad in the US). I don’t know about Europe.

Same issue -extremely limited places for internationals.

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I’m not familiar with medical school admissions in African countries, but perhaps you should be looking at opportunities closer to home.

I want to add…there are countries on your continent where doctors are very needed…and the training is fine.

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