A steady job is a good EC too.
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I would definitely apply to NYU based on my understanding of your grades as discussed above. They are need aware for internationals so that reduces your chances of admission, but they will meet 100% of demonstrated need if they do admit you. I think Morocco is probably a pretty under-represented country of origin at NYU and they like diversity so that will help. One caveat: New York is an expensive city to live in so even if they meet need it will probably restrict some of your ability to enjoy the city. Most museums are free for NYU students and there is a lot you can do for free in terms of sights etc, but as far as going out outside of dorm cafeterias, food can be pretty pricey for someone converting spending money from a $20k annual income. NYU is test optional at the moment so you can apply without a SAT. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see them going back to requiring tests at some stage though so this statement may not still be true after a gap year)
If your quest for undergrad in the US doesn’t work, remember that you can get always get a second opportunity for grad school - I come from another African country and most of the people I know who went to college in the US (and got it funded) did so as graduate students after doing well at the local undergraduate universities.
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Doesnt NYU also care for ECs a lot? that’s kind of my weak spot Im kind of concerned
its illegal to have a job as a teen here, even if its part time
Judging from my daughter’s experience (who did not have very much at all in the way of ECs), they do look at applications in a balanced way. I think your ECs are fine. In any case there’s not really anything you can do to change your ECs at this stage so if I were you I’d still take the chance to apply.
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im top of my class so im not concerned about that, and im currently working on getting into the IOI, for chess my PE teacher included me in the interschool chess olympiad and i have decent chances to get to national
I meant, once you graduate – during your gap year. If you manage to find a job, even a menial one, and keep it - it’s valuable. Obviously winning a national or regional competition is important too but not everything has to be prestigious to be valuable.
NYU considers that if you’re presenting a national exam (such as a the baccalauréat) you don’t need standardized tests - in part because external exams from within a specific system give them a better idea of the student’s relative competitive academic level than a test which may not reflect much in their context.
When the time comes to actually pick schools for your application list, I would recommend carefully studying their data on International aid and International admissions.
Like, based on their 2023-24 Common Data Set, WashU has a VERY small budget for International aid given their size and wealth generally, and so a very low percentage of their Internationals are getting aid–30/648 in this set, or 4.6%. At need blind colleges, this is much higher. Like Dartmouth, say, was 418/603, 69.3%. So even though WashU says it is meets need for Internationals, it is using being need aware to simply reject most needy Internationals, and mostly accepting and enrolling full pay Internationals instead.
NYU has a much bigger budget for International aid, but it comes with a big red flag–it has a very low average award of $36706. Dartmouth, say, was $81378. The only way NYU could be achieving such a low average award is by favoring low-to-medium need Internationals over high need Internationals.
And then even so, NYU has a huge International presence generally. So, it had 406 Internationals getting aid–less than Dartmouth actually–out of 7710 Internationals total, so 5.3%. Barely better than WashU, and it again indicates that first NYU is mostly favoring full pay Internationals, and then even when it does admit needy Internationals, it is mostly favoring low-to-medium need Internationals.
Long story short, WashU and NYU specifically are not looking like very promising colleges if you are a very needy International.
OK, so there are now 10 colleges that like Dartmouth are both need blind and meets need for Internationals, and those are definitely among the better bets. Of those, four are not currently on your list, Notre Dame, Amherst, Bowdoin, and Washington and Lee. ND has ABET-accredited CS and CE, so that seems like a school you should obviously consider. The other three do not have CE (although W&L has an integrated Engineering major), but they would all be good for CS, so I would suggest considering those too.
And then besides those ten, there are other colleges which I believe would at least look more promising than WashU and NYU.
Like Lafayette, say, has ABET-certified programs in both CS and ECE. They are smaller than WashU, much smaller than NYU, but proportionately have a decent International aid budget, and they say they are meets need for Internationals. In terms of data, 99/187 Internationals got aid, 52.9%. As good as Dartmouth? No, implying they likely also are more selective for needy Internationals. But that is a lot better than WashU or NYU, so I would personally like your chances much better at Lafayette.
The bottom line is if you want to maximize your chances of actually getting the offer you need, you would be well-advised to think outside the box a bit. Meaning the 10 meets need/need blind colleges are all obvious, but then you really have to hunt around for the ones that might actually have relatively favorable numbers of high need offers available (emphasis on relative).
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So far so good.
National context for your bac results will also matter (though if you get a mention très bien or félicitations du jury they’ll also understand what it means in terms of top 1-2-5% nationally). In other words, establishing your rank both within your school and compared to the national pool is important to establish the baseline, then only will they look at your ECs.
If you manage to go to the national chess competition that’s good, Olympiads also, etc.
After that, it’s really a matter of luck 
If your application meets all criteria for academics and ECs, it’ll come down to essays, specific anecdotes in your recommendations, institutional priorities, and just… Sheer luck.
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For scholarships there is this opportunity which is extremely hard to get to, special for moroccans which would require me to get a 20/20 on either maths, physiques or engineering sciences, if I manage to have sucha grade and do a concours and get top 4 in the country, i might get a scholarship that’ll cover all of my tuiton from undergrad/prépa till PhD, but that’s super hard to get into. Still a possibility
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All I gotta do now is lock in in school competitive programming and chess, thanks for your input
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Two schools which take a relatively high percent of international students are University of Rochester (New York) and Rice University (Texas). Both are excellent universities and are worth considering. Rice in particular is very good for financial aid.
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First out of a class of how many? How do you compare to the rest of the students in Morocco?
You will need a stellar SAT or ACT. Prep insanely hard for it.
Your strength is math and prob comp sci. Is there anything you can do over the next year to set yourself apart from the probably hundreds of other students in morocco who are also the best at math in their high schools?
Just continuing my dive into CDS info:
At Rice they reported 135/569 Internationals getting aid, 23.7%. That’s much better than WashU or NYU, but much worse than Lafayette, and way worse still than need blind colleges like Dartmouth. On the plus side, their average award of $70,452 was decent. Still, for a wealthy college that does have a decent percentage of Internationals, they just don’t have that big of an International aid budget, and so they are obviously being way more selective for needy Internationals.
Rochester actually has a pretty big International aid budget for a need aware college, but again they have a lot of Internationals to spread it around to. They ended up with 468/1514 Internationals getting aid, 30.9%, not nearly as low as NYU or WashU, but not much more than Rice. So again they are obviously favoring full pay Internationals over needy Internationals generally. Then their average award was only $40,994, much less than Rice $70,452, or indeed Lafayette $69,729.
I’m not trying to be overly negative, but I just think it is important to understand that colleges like these can have a lot of Internationals, but once you dig into the numbers it is clear that they are mostly favoring full pay Internationals. Rice at least has a decent average, which means they are not necessarily a lot harder on high need Internationals versus low-medium-need Internationals. But Rochester–it is looking very rough for high need Internationals.
Like without showing all my work unless you really want to see it–I would estimate Rochester’s admit rate for needy International applicants is under 3% to begin with, compared to something like 24% for full pay Internationals. Then for high need Internationals–it could be as low as functionally zero, and I would estimate probably less than 0.5%.
Again, I don’t love being this grim, but I think high need Internationals need to know what they are likely facing.
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Just going to point out that the NYU policy changed in the last couple of years so if the data are for the full undergraduate student body or total student body, it may not fully represent the current approach.
Certainly, even under the old approach my daughter knew a couple of internationals who were there on a full ride. I certainly wouldn’t discourage someone from applying now.
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@MyNameIs2 , I just wanted to highlight that @MYOS1634 probably has the best understanding here of how your grades will be assessed so I would weight their posts in that regard quite heavily vs others. Including the point they make about how well universities can assess your relative academic standing because you are doing a national standardized exam.
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to be honest my biggest concern when it comes to US applications is ECs , that’s why I originally posted this publication, just to try to have an idea how weak my profile is and whether I have a shot at this or not
I originally wanted to get in the IMO course, however my school didn’t allow me to do so, I do however have a last chance at making myself stand out which is through the national standardized test which includes maths and physics and engineeering sciences. For comp sci the most I have is getting into the IOI
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You don’t need tons of things - however what you do must be stellar. It seems the IOI is the best way for you so do whatever it takes (your grades can go to 17 without a problem since it’s essentially the same wrt their evaluation + you’ll apply with bac results&‘mention’ and those will be very high - they better be at least 
).
It will be to your advantage if your recommenders detail a bit what you were doing : Calc based Physics? Proof based calc? Discrete math? Linear algebra? (= Evidence of the curriculum’s hardest chapters) And how you handled it in class, group projects, etc. Did you ask questions? Help others? …
You should ask one of your 1e or Term math teacher, your French or Arabic teacher, and for added flexibility your Term Physics teacher in case he has better things to say.
If you complete some sort of research project see if that can be presented somewhere.
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How can I start a research paper, I always found those in student profiles but never knew what they essentially were.
For maths, unlike the US we don’t have things separated, maths include function analysis geometry calculus algebra altogether. Whilst physics include nuclear and waves and electricity and mechanics,