<p>I think that for a certain caliber of international applicant, at the most selective schools, financial need is not the detriment people make it out to be. For example, there’s a student at my school who got into Stanford, which is not need-blind for internationals, but was waitlisted at MIT and Yale, which are both need-blind. In other words, the one strike against him, his financial need, did not preclude him from getting into one of the most selective schools in the US, while some other random factor did preclude him from gaining admission to two need-blind schools of comparable selectivity.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to say is that if you’re an exceptional candidate, your financial situation won’t sink your application to the very best schools, regardless of their admission policy for internationals. (And therein lies the paradox of international admissions–schools with lesser endowments do care about financial need quite a lot, and may choose to reject even their most impressive international applicants for financial reasons.)</p>