Chance Me - International student for 2025 Fall Intake to Undergrad; Majors - Economics with Finance or Eco with Data Sc; 3.9 GPA (UW), 1520 SAT (superscore), ~$75k

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics
International student
Indian
Private High School (currently 12th grade)

Cost Constraints / Budget
I’ll want to avoid the uber expensive ones (including cost of living beyond tuitions and boarding/lodging which is listed). Kindly flag.
keen to understand Merit-based scholarship likelihood at my colleges of interest

Intended Major(s)
Pref 1: Economics Major with Data science or Finance
Pref 2: Mechanical Engineering
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 39-41 likelihood (yet to get the Predictives)
Class Rank: Top 15% of the class (Private IB school)
SAT Scores: 1520 (super score) - English: 740, Math: 780

List your HS coursework
Pursing IBDP
HL subjects: Economics, Math AA, Physics
SL subjects: Biology, English language and literature, Hindi B
AP Psychology - score 5

  • Major preparation course work:
    Done Internship last summer and Economics research this Summer. Besides participated in few competitions and I’ve done some online courses. (few listed below)
    ●Harvard Business Case Competition Business Pioneer Award, recognizing top 30% of participants - 2024
    ●Secured A* in regional round of the Global Economics Olympiad (90th percentile)-2023
    ●Semi-finalist, Melbourne Case Competition (50 teams out of 500)-2023
    ●Selected for the innovation stage of the Conrad Challenge-2023

●Completed Financial markets course from Yale University-2023
●Professional certificate in applied AI from IBM-2022

Extracurriculars
Leadership:
Elected School Vice-Captain
Captain of School and Club Football Teams (several years)

Summer activities:
Interned at fitness/sports company specializing in connected cognitive pods (CPODs) for athlete recovery, performance, and agility, over 8 weeks - 2023
Macroeconomics Research Paper on Inflation and Growth-2024

Community Initiatives:
●Teaching government school kids how to play football.
●Uploaded 25 stories for underprivileged children on online platform
●Completed a two-month internship with Hamari Pahchan, concentrating on promoting menstrual hygiene awareness.

Schools
Initial List of colleges. Need inputs on:

  • Fitment
  • Additions/deletions to narrow it down to about 12 to 15 (max).
    -likelihood of acceptance - need help to categorize as Dream, Reach, Target
    -college culture and suitability for international student
  • Preference for proximity to economics Hubs (for research and internship opportunities and ease of travel), weather conditions (if possible avoid long cold winters - not a deal breaker)
    -are there colleges that admit by Major alone (since I am undecided between two - Economics and Engr)
    -inputs on ED/EA/RD strategy for the list
    -I’ll not qualify for Need based scholarship but keen to understand probability of Merit-based scholarship as International student

**** MY COLLEGE INITIAL LIST****
Carnegie Mellon University
University of California, Berkeley
Northwestern University
University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA)
Duke University
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
Rice University
Emory University
University of California–San Diego
Boston University
Northeastern University
Georgetown University
University of Virginia
University of Maryland–College Park
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Indiana University–Bloomington
University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
University of Massachusetts–Amherst

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So right from the start, it is easy to observe you have chosen a lot of colleges that will not offer merit, or are very unlikely to.

So I think to really help you, it would be helpful if you could explain more precisely what sort of budget you would have, like what is the most you could comfortably pay a year for all costs in total?

My guess we may end up recommending a pretty different list of colleges to consider, but first it would help to have that sort of information.

Edit: By the way, this is a sort of handy starting point if you are chasing merit:

This is not necessarily accurate for Internationals, you have to check if in fact they offer merit to Internationals. But if you are looking at a college where a decent percentage of undergrads without need receive merit, and the average award subtracted from the OOS COA would be on budget, and you are plausibly more qualified than most Internationals who would consider enrolling at that college, that would be a promising lead to check out.

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What is uber expensive? $70K or higher?

UCLA, UCB and UCSD for example are $75K/year with no need based aid for International students and very little highly competitive merit aid which does not make much impact in the overall costs.

They are test blind so test scores are not considered for admissions or scholarship consideration.

Neither UCLA or UCSD school has an actual Finance major nor a dedicated Business school.

All 3 schools are in high cost of living areas.

UCB Haas School of Business had an overall admit rate of 4%. If you are interested in MET with Business and ME, you are looking at an admit rate of less than 3%. Economics is in the College of Letters and Sciences which does not admit by major with a 12.9% admit rate. Data Science is in CDSS with around a 10% admit rate. Mechanical Engineering (ME) admit rate was 4.9%.

UCLA’s Econ/Business Econ/ Data Science majors are admitted into the College of Letters and Sciences with an admit rate of 11%. Admit rate for ME was 4.2%

UCSD’s Data science and ME majors are selective majors with admit rates estimated below 10%. Business Econ/Econ have slightly higher admit rates which are estimated in the 20-30% admit range.

All three UC’s are Reach schools as an International applicant. UCSD might be a more Reachable school than UCLA and Berkeley.

You are a competitive applicant so make sure you can pay full costs if you apply.

Best of luck to you.

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Yeah, if you search for “California” in that database I linked, you will quickly see the UCs and CSUs are basically an arid desert zone for merit. Very low percentages get merit at all, and very low average awards if you do get merit.

The CSUs, however, at least have a sort of industry-standard OOS cost of attendance. The UCs, on the other hand, are among the most expensive few OOS public colleges.

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If you don’t qualify for need-based aid you need to remove schools that do not offer merit scholarships (at all or to international students). The more selective schools on your list do not offer merit aid, but they are generous with need-aid. If your family earns less than $250k USD per year, I suggest running the net price calculator for a few schools because you may be pleasantly surprised.

Please double-check my information below. :smiley:

No merit offered to international students (Cost will be $75k-$90k per year):

  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • Northwestern University (offers a few in the Arts)
  • University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
  • Rice University
  • University of California–San Diego
  • University of Maryland–College Park
  • University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
  • University of Massachusetts–Amherst (a few get $5k scholarships)

Offers extremely competitive and limited merit scholarships (double-check international students are eligible):

Schools on your current list where an international student has a good chance of merit:

  • None.

But there are many schools we can suggest that can potentially meet your budget (once you define it) as you do have a strong application.

Presumably you plan to return to India after graduation? If so, is university prestige important for the careers you’re considering? You should have a backup plan outside the U.S. as the “prestigious” US schools may exceed your budget.

The helpful people here will be happy to help you develop a realistic application list. :smiley:

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Yeah, I think sometimes it is worth taking a step back and thinking about this in market terms.

US colleges typically offer merit in order to enroll students they really want, and who would otherwise have options they would prefer. Unfortunately, pretty much any internationally-famous US college would have little or no such incentive when it comes to International applicants, because being internationally-famous, likely it can enroll as many highly qualified Internationals as it would like. MAYBE a few Internationals are so special it would want to compete for those with merit, but there would be no reason for it to have a robust merit program where a decent percentage of Internationals got merit.

The good news is there are a lot of other US colleges which are interested in increasing their enrollment of International students going forward, indeed interested in expanding their International alum networks, improving their International brand, and so on. They are not necessarily internationally-famous yet, but they are working on it.

So US colleges like that may be more inclined to have a robust merit program for highly-qualified Internationals.

But if a given International does not want to consider such colleges because they are not yet internationally famous, well, they can take their shots at the most internationally-famous US colleges with any merit at all, but they will need to be realistic about backup plans.

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Have you run the Net Price calculators?
Although not totally accurate for internationals, you should get some idea if you’re aid-eligible. But of course, the schools that meet need for internationals are very few and extremely competitive.

As asked up thread by others: what is your budget?

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I’d echo the suggestion to at least run the NPC at, say, Princeton, if you haven’t already done the equivalent. You don’t have to plan to apply to Princeton, but basically if they don’t estimate they will give you any aid, that is usually evidence enough that your assumptions are correct.

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I agree. Princeton is arguably the most generous university in the US for need-based aid. If Princeton isn’t affordable I doubt any school will be, on need-aid alone.

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Some of the schools on your list do not, I believe, offer engineering programs.

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I’d think 70 -75K would be range. Ok, to stretch if it is a Dream college that we land with.
Thank yor also for the link to ‘Average Merit Aid’ - atleast a good indicative start point for Internationals

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Thankyou for the response and the data points on UCs. Indeed was looking at something between 70K - 75K. Primarily looking for Economics Major with Finance as double Major or as Minor (not decided). So, thought that’d be more in the LACs instead of the Business Schools. UCB is on the list as it has high ranking even for Economics. Also, with no Early admission understand UCs would be very competitive to get into.

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OK, so at that budget, you should have a lot of options, between public colleges that are just less than that to begin with, and then privates where enough merit is a realistic possibility.

Edit: Hold on, you answered my next question in another post, so I will update this.

It is complicated because it all depends on how their college structures the intersection between those areas. It could all be a major with concentration in one subdivision (liberal arts and sciences or business), or could be a major and minor that crosses subdivisions, and so on.

One thing you might want to do is check out some Jesuit colleges, which tend to be really good for this sort of thing.

Like you seem interested in California schools. Santa Clara is a great Jesuit college in California’s Silicon Valley, with a variety of scholarships available for Internationals:

https://www.scu.edu/globalengagement/about/policies-and-procedures/scholarships--financial-support-for-international-students/

Santa Clara has a lot of Econ major options, in both the business school and Arts and Sciences. In the business school version, you can concentrate in Data Analysis or Mathematical Economics:

Or you could major in Finance and do a minor in Econ, and so on.

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Indeed, I realize that. Also considering the cost of living would be higher in Cal. Should I still keep the UCs own - the one motivation was since it is a single application. Are there changes you’d recommend I make to the list, even the UCs…or drop them completely.

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Thank you and appreciate the detailed response. Indeed I didn’t have a specific number in mind that we can pay comfortably year on. However on thinking about it, and as I posted earlier, probably 75K range. The reason I have some of these elite “prestigious” schools on the list is because for something like Economics major I think it matters where you’ve done it. That is true even here in my home country. The top names will pickup grads from probably just these top few colleges in the country. Happy to be corrected if you think otherwise. Yes, the plan is to come back to India either after the UnderGrad or post Grad.

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Below are some schools that you may want to investigate. Either their list price (Georgia Tech) are within the $70-75k budget, or I think that chances are good that you would receive sufficient merit aid to bring the price within that budget. With the exception of Georgia Tech (which I think has allows one change of major pretty readily, and then others might be more challenging), I think that it’s possible to change majors pretty easily within the colleges in terms of not being capacity-constrained. With that said, engineering coursework tends to follow a very strict progression. If that is one of the majors you are seriously considering, I would start with that major and then switch out of it if you decide it is not for you. It is easier to switch OUT of engineering than to switch INTO engineering.

  • Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ)
  • George Washington (D.C.)
  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Southern Methodist University (TX)
  • U. of Miami (FL)
  • Villanova (PA )
  • Santa Clara (CA)
  • Loyola Marymount (CA)
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What are you wanting to do with an economics major? Depending on what you’re wanting to do will impact whether a “prestigious” name is helpful in getting you there. Additionally, “prestigious” names for a particular field are not always the same as the “prestigious” names of schools generally. (For example, U. of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and U. of Washington are incredibly prestigious for computer science, but they aren’t considered “prestigious” generally speaking in comparison with a school like Duke or Georgetown.)

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For international students, the net price calculators are often not accurate.

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Hmm… I understand and that is probably where I need help with the list. I will look up what you’ve shared this far. Thank you!

  1. Indeed I need to be able to land. So, want to ensure the list is balanced in that sense. 2) Also, probably Economics with “something” that is where my mind is. However, would want to take advantage of the 1st year flexibility and see if core Engineering interests me. Not big fan of Compute Science.
  2. and yes, I didn’t include that before, since I’d not used that as criteria so far - however, there’d be more preference for the East coast.
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Again this is pretty tricky if you want to do a degree in four years.

But one idea is Rochester. They have a Financial Economics Major that might be suitable for you:

And the way they set things up, it might be more feasible to (quickly) explore and switch to Engineering if that becomes your preference.

Rochester is also one of the US colleges most aggressively pursuing Internationals as a core enrollment strategy. With a merit scholarship, they could get on budget.

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