Could you please match me, an international applicant, with some lacs and universities according to my profile? [5/5 GPA, 1440 SAT, <$12k, economics, data science, business analytics]

Chance Me / Match Me
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**Demographics

  • International student
  • State/Location of residency: South Asia
  • Type of high school: Private school, uses different curriculum

**Cost Constraints / Budget: 12k

**Intended Major(s)**Economics, Data science, Business Analytics

  • College GPA: 5/5; unweighted
  • Class Rank:Top 1% throughout class 9-12
  • ACT/SAT Scores:1440

**Awards: 2 international writing award, 1 international research award, 2 national level olympiad award, 1 national merit award for my board exam scores

Extracurriculars
Internship, tutor, blog writer, independent researcher, volunteer, student gov, researcher etc.

Essays/LORs/Other
I feel like my essay is unique and tells a lot about a unique moment that happened in my life. Also my lors are strong.

**Schools: smith, bryn mawr, Wellesley, Wesleyan university, scripps, skidmore.

I really need you to tell me if I have a chance at these colleges. At the same time, should I apply to other colleges that might match my profile? If yes then could you please recommend me some?

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I can’t chance you, but why not add Washington and Lee University? It’s need blind for admission and meets full need for internationals.

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Well, I am not confident about my profile, and I was recently rejected from my ED (smith). So I am feeling devastated and questioning myself whether my profile is even suitable for these amazing colleges. But thanks for recommending me.

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I think you have a chance at Skidmore, but I’m not sure it will meet your price point.

Do you have any sure things for admission that are affordable on your list at all
maybe in your home country?

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It’s a tough road in admissions for international students who need a lot of financial aid. Do not take it personally, it’s often just about the money. Smith is need aware so that could be the reason you weren’t accepted (although you will never know of course.) Colleges have to make hard decisions about which students with high need the college is going to ‘invest’ their money in.

Do you have affordable college options in your home country or elsewhere? That is your first task. Then, you can apply to US schools, which will all be reaches for you.

I second Washington and Lee as a possibility. Does your school have a history of students going to top US colleges?

I did want to comment on this
does this essay do a good job of communicating who you are today? Often, things that happened a long time ago don’t make for good essays
I’m not saying that’s the case for your essay, just something to critically evaluate. As an example, essays that start of ‘when I was bullied in second grade’ often miss the mark.

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This site will allow you to compare liberal arts colleges by faculty publishing in economics: Economics rankings: US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges | IDEAS/RePEc. Some LACs with data science programs include Hamilton, Macalester, Davidson and Denison.

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Well I have been admitted to a college which satisfy my financial contribution. However, I wanted to see how far I can go. Because I dream to get admitted into one of these colleges. I hope I am not aiming too high but I can at least dream right? Sorry I am being too emotional because of my rejection today. However, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Appreciate it a lot.

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Then you know you are going to college!

So
apply and see to the others.

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Yeah I have already done that. Now I am just aiming high. Maybe I am aiming too high but it’s been my dream to get admitted into one of these colleges. I know money is the biggest issue however I still want to try. Do you think I even have a slight chance? And my essay has nothing sort of emotional roller coster. It’s a really personal moment for me with metaphors. So I don’t know how to cope up with the rejection but I don’t wanna stop. And yes my school has a good reputation of students going to reputational institutions. So do you think I have a shot in these colleges? Should I apply to other need blind colleges too? But I don’t feel confident with my profile anymore after my rejection at smith.

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I don’t have visibility to your entire app, so can’t assess this.

Since you have an affordable admit, it’s ok to send in some apps to reaches. Need blind colleges for internationals that also meet full need: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown, Bowdoin, Amherst, W&L, Notre Dame.

Again, you should try to not take college decisions personally. I know that is difficult. If you really are having a hard time coping, then I might not advise you to apply to more reaches because no matter how strong your app is, you still may be denied for any number of reasons, for example you don’t fit an institutional priority, or too much FA required. Those are things out of your control, so that’s why I say to not take these decisions personally. Only you know your mindset and ability to cope with denial, but if coping has become an issue please prioritize your mental health.

Good luck.

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Please note that, according to its site, Williams does not claim to be need-blind for international applicants:

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Oops, you’re right. Wishful thinking on my part, will edit my post. Thanks.

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Just to reinforce what you are already hearing:

If you don’t get the offer you need from a US college, it is not so much that you were aiming too high in terms of your academic and other qualifications. It is just that with your level of need, there are so few such offers available at all, anywhere in the country, that the competition for those few offers is brutally intense and necessarily most Internationals seeking them will not get one.

Anyway, in terms of colleges to consider, I would definitely consider adding Mount Holyoke. They have a relatively big budget for International aid (emphasis on relatively). Unfortunately, they also tend to spread it around, but since you can contribute something at least, that might get you where you need to be with them.

I would also add another vote for considering W&L. We don’t know yet exactly how much money they will put behind the new policy and what that will mean for admissions. But even before they were a relatively good choice.

Another I would suggest you consider is Lafayette. Decent budget for International aid, doesn’t spread it around too much, indeed claims to be meets need for Internationals. Their Econ major is pretty quant focused to begin with, and they also offer a Certificate in Financial Policy and Analysis, as well as a combined Math and Econ major:

https://economics.lafayette.edu/program/

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Just adding a few more:

Connecticut College spreads it budget around a bit but could still be a maybe. They have refreshed their curriculum plan into something called Connections:

https://www.conncoll.edu/connections/

You can fulfill that plan through what they call an Integrative Pathway, and one of those is Data, Information, and Society:

https://www.conncoll.edu/academics/degree-requirements/connections/data-information-and-society/

This is something you could combine with an Econ major.

Franklin and Marshall would be a similar sort of suggestion in terms of how they handle International aid. F&M allows you to do Data Science as what they call a joint major, including Data Science and Economics:

Dickinson has a relatively big International aid budget, but I would be concerned how they seem to spread it around. However, they have a Data Analytics major you might find attractive:

They also have a Quantitative Economics major:

You could look into whether those could be combined.

Finally, another like that (relatively big budget, but spread around) would be Gettysburg. They have a Mathematical Economics major you might find interesting:

https://www.gettysburg.edu/academic-programs/economics/programs/mathematical-economics.dot

Gettysburg also has an undergraduate Business program, so you could look into something like a Business Minor:

https://www.gettysburg.edu/academic-programs/management/

There is also a Data Science minor if you would prefer that direction:

Anyway, just some thoughts on applications you could consider. No guarantees on offers, but at least these seemed to me like colleges you could be excited about attending if they were in fact affordable.

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To clarify, we DO know about W&L. They are need blind for admissions, and meet full financial need with no loans both for domestic and international students.

While I do not know the actual FA budget, since they do not consider finances in making admissions decisions, I don’t think we need to know it.

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Well, let me give an example of why I think it still matters.

Both Amherst and Bowdoin are also meets need/need blind for Internationals.

In their 2023-24 CDS submissions, Amherst reported an International aid budget of $16,159,297, and Bowdoin reported much less, $6,403,929. They had similar averages–$81,202 at Amherst, $77,156 at Bowdoin. So, Bowdoin necessarily had fewer Internationals getting aid, 83 to 199 for Amherst.

OK, so if these were need aware for Internationals colleges, one possibility would be that Bowdoin would just be a lot harder for needy Internationals to get admitted. But they are both need blind.

So instead, Bowdoin is just a lot harder for Internationals generally. Specifically, Bowdoin admitted 73/3921 Internationals, 1.86%. Amherst admitted 134/4955, 2.70%.

With numbers this small it can sometimes be hard to really grasp these distinctions, so another way to put it mathematically is Amherst only admitted about 1 out of 37 Internationals who applied. With Bowdoin, it was about 1 out of 54. That is a pretty significant difference.

And Bowdoin in some sense had no choice. If it had stayed need blind and full need, then admitting more Internationals would have meant needing a much larger International aid budget. Which it was apparently unwilling to provide.

OK, so what about W&L? Well, last we knew, W&L had a $9,635,842 budget for International aid. So, more than Bowdoin, less than Amherst. Their average award was $82,358, so actually the highest yet, but still they had 117 Internationals with aid–again more than Bowdoin, less than Amherst. They then admitted 67/2714 Internationals, 2.47%, or about 1 in 41. More than Bowdoin, less than Amherst.

Now I do think there are some other things going on here. Like, W&L was getting the fewest International applicants of these three. Amherst the most. And there are many possible reasons for that, but perhaps having a need blind policy was helping Amherst attract more International applicants. Indeed, since Amherst got more than Bowdoin, perhaps having a relatively generous need aid budget was helping Amherst get more than Bowdoin, if only through the mechanism of a relatively favorable International acceptance rate (emphasis on relative).

OK, so what is going to happen with W&L going forward? Well, I think if W&L kept its International aid budget the same, its International acceptance rate might well drop. This could happen simply because it being need blind now might attract more International applications. How that affected needy Internationals in particular is complicated and hard to predict–on the one hand, they would benefit from W&L being need blind, but on the other it could be harder in general for Internationals. So how would that net out for needy Internationals? Hard to say, but the hypothetical of a fixed budget really limits whether that could really net out much better for needy Internationals.

But if W&L expands its International aid budget, then things might net out clearly better for needy Internationals. But how much better? Better than Bowdoin, probably, but better than Amherst? I think that very well could depend on exactly how much they expanded their budget.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. The more I have looked at this data, the more I have realized how important that budget line ends up in practice.

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Hats off to your thorough analysis!

I know I tend to be a back-of-the envelope type thinker, so I just cut to the bottom line: it’s very difficult to gain admission to these schools if you are an international student.

Another factor, though, is W&L’s institutional need for more diversity, including international diversity. So that’s a featherweight on the scale for international kids.

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We don’t know if it’s a budget thing at all. Need blind is need blind, and if they had a capped budget, it would not be need blind (they would have to guess ahead of time what percent of internationals needed FA).

It may well be each school simply determining how many internationals they are targeting as a percent of the student body.

They admit based on this %, and the expenditure is then determined after the fact.

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And just to be very clear, and to bring this back to the OP–I am by no means suggesting W&L is not a good application choice for an International with her level of need. In fact, I am confident in suggesting it is at least among the better choices.

I just like to be cautious because I do think there is a lot of nuance here, and I think it is a good idea to be clear when we don’t really know something.

Like, just to continue the example a bit, Mount Holyoke had a $13,756,861 budget, better than Bowdoin and W&L, but not quite as good as Amherst. And actually, they had 264 Internationals on aid, which is more than Amherst–but wait, that must mean . . . yep, their average award was only $52,109. That’s much less.

OK, then their International admissions stats were 289/1621, 17.8%. Way, WAY higher. And in fact, I am pretty confident if you could make do with only like $52,000 in aid, it was probably easier to get it that year from Mount Holyoke than Amherst or Bowdoin, even though Mount Holyoke was need aware and not need blind. Lot more offers like that to give, lot fewer Internationals applying, it is just set up to work that way.

But what if you needed more like $80K? Now I don’t know any more. Because I know Amherst and Bowdoin at least did give out such offers. I don’t know if Mount Holyoke did, and if they did, I don’t know how many. And nothing is stopping Mount Holyoke from giving almost none, as they are need aware.

OK, so now that W&L is joining Amherst and Bowdoin . . . well, that is still the same issue. It is very hard to know for sure whether getting such an offer from them will be harder or easier than at Mount Holyoke, both because there are a lot of unknowns about the details of what W&L is going to do, and also because we really don’t know exactly what Mount Holyoke is doing either.

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I agree we don’t know any of this with perfect certainty.

That said, I would be very cautious about interpreting phrases like “need blind”. There is actually an active lawsuit about this, and some prominent colleges have been settling for significant sums.

And I think one thing that is fairly clear is the only thing need blind necessarily means is that Admissions is not given an individual aid estimate by the Financial Aid office when considering an individual applicant.

Outside of that, though, it is entirely possible a “need blind” college is making all sorts of decisions on broader levels to manage their budget. So, maybe they admit more legacies because they know that helps their budget. Maybe they consider the budget impacts of FGLI admissions policies. And so on. None of that requires Financial Aid to give Admissions individual aid estimates, so in their eyes it is not technically violating a need blind policy.

And given that context, certainly evaluating their International admissions policies at a group level for budgetary impact would not count as violating a need blind policy either.

By the way, you are right to really make this work, they need to have reasonable projections about how different policies would affect actual enrollment. That is a function not just of acceptances but also yields. And one of the things the lawsuit goes into is these colleges typically have sophisticated yield models that are actually tracking various projected targets, and they can use these to modify admissions policies during that cycle to make sure they are staying on target.

The most obvious way they really NEED to do this is with enrollment targets. If you have 500 spots to fill, you need to try to admit a class that will end up yielding around 500 students. They can use the waitlist to help manage this a bit, but those may not be optimal admits in other ways.

OK, but again part of the allegations in the lawsuit is even nominally need blind colleges were using their yield models to track not just enrollment targets but budget targets. And without this ever involving individual files, they could modify their admissions policies on the fly to correct back to their budget targets if they were getting off track. This could work because they could use all sorts of statistical modeling to estimate net tuition (tuition net of aid) collectively, without doing it on the individual level.

And there is no particular reason to believe Internationals as a group could not be a part of that sort of process. And again, I think these colleges, if forced to answer such questions, would say that is not violating their need blind promises as long as they were doing that at the group/statistical level, and not the individual level.