Chance me/match me- someone stupid enough to not apply to safties [international, GPA-5/5 , SAT-expected 1500+, <$4k]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Hello, I’m a student from Bangladesh, mostly interested in stem. I’ve been thinking about applying to the us but i will be needing a university which provides financial aid that includes housing. So far I’ve only come across some top universities that provide this. So I’ve been thinking if i should only apply to some of the top universities while skipping any targets/safties.

I understand that this is rather foolish since I don’t have anything outstanding so idk if it’s worth a shot. Suggestions for other universities that’s pretty decent for stem and provides 100% financial aid is appreciated.

I haven’t applied yet, will be applying next year.

Demographics

  • international student
  • State/Location of residency: Bangladesh
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Public

Cost Constraints / Budget
4k per year at most

Intended Major(s)

GPA, Rank, and Test Score:

  • GPA: 5/5 (not sure how i get weighted or Unweighted format for this)
  • Class Rank: top 10
  • ACT/SAT Scores: Haven’t taken yet expecting 1500+

Awards

Nasa space apps challenge global nominee (top 5-6% with about 110000 registers, including university students)

National earth science olympiad

Iranian combinatorics olympiad (3rd in my country)

International astronomy and astrophysics competition- silver honor

International youth mathematical challenge-gold honor

(Also I have 4 more national level awards in math olympiads, physics olympiad, national level programing contest , but those were in middle school, so idk if I should mention them)

Extracurriculars
Astronomy club founder: Established an astronomy club for my district, where people didn’t have much prior knowledge on astronomy and helped them get interest and passion on it.

Core member of a math club: One of the current core members of a district level math club, helping organize classes, hosting exams. We have had hundreds of people over the years as general members and helped them with advanced topics for their age. Sometimes even hosting camps.

Free tuition: Taking free math classes once a week. For the last 3 years

Book publication: plan to self publish a book inspired by osamu dazai by the end of the year.

Part of a Build team: (idk if this counts or not, but i used to build a lot in Minecraft . Applied for a build team in a server and got in xd ). Also made my school in Minecraft once. Probably shouldn’t add this but i feel like Minecraft was a big part of me growing up, so…

volunteer work: helped teachers outside of my school take interviews of younger students so they ease up and don’t freeze up on interviews.

Passion project: I like drawing with equations on desmos, so im working on building a system to gamify the experience of drawing with desmos to get other people interested as well. Also made like a visual novel type informative game about space weather for children.

Family: Helped my mother sell clothes (idk if this counts :/)

Essays/LORs/Other

Haven’t started on the essay yet. LORs should be pretty positive.

Schools
Like I said, I’ve only found reach schools that provide a 100%scholarship so far.

  1. MIT
  2. Harvard
  3. Princeton
  4. Vanderbilt
  5. Brown
  6. Yale
  7. Cornell
  8. Stanford
  9. John hopkins

Are the odds of me getting into one of these schools near 0 or is it plausible? Again, some target school suggestions would be great too.

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You are a strong student. You have a chance of being accepted someplace…but there is no way to predict really when you have listed schools with single digit acceptance rates. So just wait and see.

The other issue…some of the colleges on your list are need aware for admissions for international students. This means your level of financial need can be considered when your application for admission is reviewed. You are basically hoping one of these colleges will just about fully fund a $90,000 a year cost for you to attend. Some might…but some might not.

If you really want to attend college in the U.S. you probably should be looking for colleges that are more affordable, where your acceptance is more likely…in addition to this list of high reaches.

$4000 a year doesn’t go very far for college costs here.

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I’m not sure it’s dumb. You might find some that have full rides that include internationals.

Most safeties won’t come close to $4k so they are not really safe. They’re just schools you get into that you can’t attend.

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Even if you get a full ride, this will not come close to covering extras like mandatory health insurance, travel expenses, etc.

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One of my kid went to a meets-full-need school and they provided a grant for the mandatory health insurance for students who were required to purchase it. 4k could conceivably cover flights back home and some modest incidentals (my kid each spent about $300 or so a year on incidentals each, since they almost exclusively ate via meal plan, which was covered with their financial aid packages).

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Yeah, I was considering not applying to need aware ones at first. But one of my seniors got into brown back when it wasn’t need blind. She had a SAT score of around 1450. So I thought maybe it’s worth a shot

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You might also want to consider lower ranked schools that provide merit scholarships for international students (although, I don’t know if any would provide a full ride). @tsbna44 might know.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Do You Use Your China?

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The list of schools that are need-blind and provide 100 percent demonstrated need to accepted international applicants:

Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Notre Dame, Princeton, Yale, Washington and Lee… with Georgetown as a somewhat more generous school, but may not meet all demonstrated need.

Of these, the one I know best is Princeton. They provide financial aid above the cost of tuition/room/board to cover living expenses and some travel costs for students who need full rides.

I suppose the only caveat is to mention that “demonstrated need” varies depending on the college and may not match what international (or even domestic) applicants feel they can pay.

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I believe you might be able to get a full ride to Tuskegee University and maybe Howard University. You should also be eligible for a full ride to MVSU.

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Scholarships | Tuskegee University says that the application deadline for the full ride was December 1, and FAFSA is required (which effectively limits it to US domestic students).

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There are need aware schools that meet 100%for all kids.

Will they fund you. Unlikely but not sure where else to go for a full ride. Schools like F&M, Denison and more.

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I will be applying next year , so thats not a problem

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If Tuskegee’s full ride is of interest, you may want to ask directly whether the scholarship is available to international students and that the FAFSA requirement is waived for international students.