Another option is to apply to universities in other countries, such as Canada. One daughter for example applied to McGill and I do not think that they even asked about ECs. The applications for the top schools in Canada are also quite easy. I have joked that they only want to see a high school transcript and contact information so they can get back to you. This is a slight exaggeration, but admissions in Canada is relatively straightforward and is very stats-based.
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The US in fact is a real outlier in terms of weight put on non-academic factors, a byproduct of the robust (and expensive) residential college experience.
And even then, that really only applies to a relatively small fraction of US colleges, even selective US colleges. Most admit primarily “on the numbers”, and that will often include Internationals . . . if they can pay what these colleges want to charge them.
But if you need a lot of aid even to afford those colleges, well, that’s very, very competitive for Internationals. And they can basically afford to demand things most Internationals find it very difficult to do, because they are already planning not to make those offers to most Internationals who need them.
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Often overlooked because everyone wants to talk about a small subset and it seems most internationals want a freebie from one in this subset. Just not how it works with few exceptions.
Yeah, with somewhere around $25K in annual budget (including everything, like travel and mandatory insurance), a high numbers International with good English scores is probably going to be able to go to a US college.
But if they either have a much lower budget than that, and/or will only consider US colleges that are famous internationally, then they pretty much automatically need a good Plan B for outside the US. Because US offers meeting such criteria are incredibly scarce for Internationals.
Do they offer full rides to internationals?
So apparently some do - a few highly competitive ones - but it seems to get them you need the kind of profile that would also make you attractive to top US colleges. Example:
Mostly no.
There is one exception that I know of, and it is very, very, very competitive. That is the Lester B. Pearson scholarship at the University of Toronto. You need to get your high school to nominate you even just to apply for this scholarship. If any particular international student is very close to being the top student in their high school, and if they want to go do the U. of Toronto, it might be worth getting their high school to nominate them, but it is a long shot.
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Be sure to also focus on seeking out affordable options in your home country.
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