You need A LOT of money to attend a university in the US, and you don’t have it.
How will you get it?
You have to rely on an admissions team to decide if they, firstly, want to grant you admission to their school. Secondly, if they can afford you. This is out of your control.
You’ve selected Aero Engineering, which is typically taught within the mechanical engineering department of a lot of schools. I have three family members employed in this field, none of whom received a degree in Aerospace engineering. Engineering EE, CSE, yes.
Where will you use this degree? You are not a US citizen, so you don’t have permission to enter the US, nor stay in the US after graduation. That’s an immigration issue. The US Immigration service conducts and grants that permission. In this political climate, international students are not being prioritized nor processed in a timely manner. If they don’t like your interviews, they can and will reject your entry into the US. You have no control over that. It won’t matter that a school is waiting for you.
My husband (Stanford)conducts interviews for his firm for multiple engineering programs. He does not specifically look to hire Aerospace, because it’s limiting in scope. He has peers at JPL with similar views. Additionally, they are not hiring, nor sponsoring non-citizens, because, as he puts it, they don’t want the hassle and fees. They have citizen candidates from the top 10s, and don’t want to add additional hassle to their timelines. Every project is contractual and on a timeline. At our daughter’s firm, she is on the hiring team. They also are rejecting non citizen applicants, for the same reasons as other firms, in addition to lack of aerospace contracts. This too is out of your control.
You can have a list of accomplishments down, but if your attitude doesn’t mesh with others’ who are in control, you won’t get a second look.
You’re saying this (and targeting Putnam 100 as a high schooler) based on coming in the top 500 in a country with one fifth of the US population whose IMO team hasn’t made podium since 1981?
Most US highly rejective schools don’t engage in yield protection, certainly not HYPSM, nor CalTech either. Most have holistic admission, which is out of your control…and subject to the details in your LoRs, tone of essays, impact of activities, service to others, and the like.
Your family makes $40K per year. Not all the HYPSM are need blind. If you need a full ride, while they’ll have the ability to cover, doesn’t mean they’ll want to cover you. Stanford is need aware for international, as an example - as are many of the other Ivies.
Sometimes there are things beyond your personal accomplishments that matter. They are building a class (varied).
Yield protection certainly appears to be a thing at schools below the topmost year.
Anecdotally, I had a kid admitted at MIT and Caltech (both EA) waitlisted at Rice and another admitted to MIT (after Caltech EA went restrictive, so no datapoint there) deferred at Georgia Tech.
