Help to build a reasonable college list

momrath
Sat, 02 Mar 2019 03:35:19 +0000

@sunquebec,Financial aid for international students is a complicated situation.

NPCs are notoriously unreliable for international families as each school has its own policies and objectives. You have research each individually.

Aside from a handful of very selective schools, most colleges are need aware for internationals; however, if a student is admitted then many will meet full demonstrated need. A few colleges offer merit aid to internationals, but it is rare and and usually unpredictable.

Few public schools offer financial aid to internationals. Some privates will extend their US need blind policies to students who graduate from US high schools. For example, this from Pomona:

Undocumented, DACAmented, and students that graduate from a US high school are considered domestic applicants and are not evaluated under the need aware policy.

Finding others like Pomona should be a priority.

Also, I believe that Canadian applicants are given special status at some schools, but I haven’t researched that area.

It’s misleading for internationals to use US admit rates to determine reach/match/safety. Admit rates for internationals are generally considerably lower than US rates. Admit rates for internationals requesting substantial aid are even lower. All selective colleges admit internationals and all offer need-based aid; BUT (and this is a huge but) schools vary widely in the percentage of internationals they seek to enroll and the total amount of aid offered each year to internationals.

It’s difficult to get clear statistics because few publish complete admissions information; however, by looking at the college’s common data set you can get an idea of which are comparatively more generous with financial aid. I’ve only researched small liberal arts colleges. You can find comparative figures for medium and large universities by combing through their CDSs.

Among LACs, these are some with the highest budgets for international financial aid.
Total Financial Aid / % Enrolled / % Given aid
Macalester USD11.3 M / 11% / 54%
St Olaf 11.0 / 12% / 86%
Trinity (CT) 10.6 / 13% / 65%
Mt. Holyoke 10.5 / 28% / 53%
Amherst 9.1 / 8% / 87%
Smith 8.6 / 15% / 44%
Grinnell 8.1 / 23% / 78%
Middlebury 8.0 / 11% / 55%
Dickinson 7.7 / 16% / 71%
Colgate 7.1 / 11% / 57%