Have you taken what used to be called the IIT-JEE exam? If so, are you accepted to one of the premier IITs? Ideally, you make it to MIT with significant financial aid to realize your dream, but if you couldn’t, getting into IIT–Bombay, or Madras, or Kanpur, is still incredible. If you hit it out of the park there, you would have an excellent chance to go to a top CS/engineering graduate school such as MIT, still fulfilling your dream (albeit 4–5 years later) but at essentially zero cost (because most CS/engineering graduate students get paid as research/teaching assistants while having their tuition waived).
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No, you sit for the IIT-JEE exam in your senior year(grade 12). For my batch, it will be in Jan 2025. I do not plan to sit for it, since I do not want to pursue my undergrad in India. And I do not plan to go for a postgraduate course, since I want to get into entrepreneurship(engineering+entrepreneurship).
So if you are not accepted to any US universities that you can afford, what is your backup plan?
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I have some backup plans.
- If I am able to get in without aid, I will arrange the resources somehow
- Take a gap year and try another year for US universities
- Take a gap year and make it to IIT, I have given some mocks, i do decently well
- I might as well just skip college if my startup project goes well and my passive income can support me(it should be able to as per predictions)
Thanks for running the NPC. It shows that your estimation of ability to pay and MITs estimation are similar enough - and therefore that these colleges are even a possibility. It also helps in determining which colleges must be crossed out (ie., a half tuition scholarship won’t be of any use.)
“if I’m admitted, we’ll figure it out somehow” isn’t a plan - not when we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars ×4 years.
So, your budget is roughly 10-15k max. It’s both an enormous amount of money and insufficient at most colleges.
To get your visa, you’ll need to include your admission and financial aid letter (need based aid or merit scholarships). Unless that letter mentions work study, ie., that you’re allowed to find a job on-campus, working (off campus) is illegal and thus isn’t factored into it. Your primary purpose has to be your studies and if there’s a question about jobs, which would another type of visa, it’s an automatic denial. Future earnings aren’t counted.
You can borrow against estimated future earnings but it’s very risky (a loan that has been secured can also be used as part of the financial documents you need.)
So, you will have your savings and what your parents can afford for your first year, alongside a bank statement indicating the salary or investment returns have been steady and will cover the subsequent 3 years in the same manner.
If you get into MIT or another university that meets need, you don’t have to worry about it.
However it means crossing out UCs, Purdue, most large flagships.
You must concentrate on universities that meet need for internationals (whether they’re need blind or need aware) and universities that give $ for your stats. You also need to wonder whether you’d prefer attending, say, University of Alabama, just because it’s in the US, or University of Toronto.
If I were you, I would complete the UofT and Waterloo applications as soon as they open, as well as scholarship applications. (McGill offers scholarships but you apply AFTER admission only. Admission date depends on how high they rank you compared to other applicants so it’s to your advantage to apply early but it doesn’t mean you’ll hear early.)
Taking a gap year to reapply, in the US, means applying to a different list. You can’t get into a college that denied you the 1st time, by reapplying the following year. (Legally, you can apply, but AFAIK colleges don’t go “oops” the 2nd time you apply, especially with internationals who need aid.)
I understand that you’re really motivated to attend MIT and you’re clearly qualified. You’ve done everything you could -keep being yourself and doing what you do. Your profile makes you a contender for MIT.
Nothing can “guarantee” anything, alas.
Btw, do you have an email address to be used for college communications? Sth like hamiecod.USCollege@… ? Use it to sign up for information (“join our mailing list”) and systematically open the emails, clicking on what looks interesting. You can also review the different majors and email the International Admissions rep to see whether they could put you in touch with a current student pursuing that major. When colleges come to your school (I assume that since it’s a top school, international universities recruit there, or through a consortium have a common college fair in town targeting schools such as yours) make sure to visit 3 or 4 tables that your classmates don’t visit in order to create a first contact with the adcom for your area. Talking with the person representing MIT is a given but universities that offer financial aid to internationals, even if they aren’t very famous in India, matter a lot to your list.
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Need aware colleges can consider your level of financial need when considering your application for admission. Why are you adding more of these?
You need to be considering your total costs to attend college here. Total.
How? Give us an example of how you will get tens of thousands of dollars if your family really doesn’t have that money.
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Just so OP understands what we’re talking about…
Taking CMU as an example:
They do not provide financial aid to international students, and annual cost of attendance is currently $87k per year.
@hamiecod - if the amount you can comfortably afford is $15k/year, you will need an additional $72k/year, or over $288k over 4 years (not accounting for increases in cost and your travel cost back and forth from India). Where are you going to get this additional $288k from?
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You need to look for colleges that meet full need for internationals. That’s what is important.
The few that are both need-blind and meet-need for internationals have been mentioned upthread and are extremely difficult admits. So it makes sense to research and add some that meet-need for internationals and are need-aware. Your level of need will be a consideration for admissions, but it expands your list to schools that may have a better chance of admission.
There was an international student this year who received a full ride at the University of Southern Mississippi. He required a full ride and applied to the famous schools as well as a wide-range of others you’ve never heard of. That is the school that accepted him and made it affordable to attend.
Are you willing to consider schools with no name recognition in your country if that’s what it takes to study in the US?
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OP- here’s the problem- will you not get a student visa unless you ALREADY have those resources and can show (bank statements, etc.) where the money is coming from. The Department of Homeland Security won’t grant the visa on a “pay as you go” or “I’ll figure it out” basis.
I know it sounds mean and unfair. But the alternative from their perspective is you showing up, doing a fantastic job freshman year, and then running out of money. Then what? You can’t legally work a full time job in the US. So you get deported…
We are all encouraging you to “arrange the resources” at a college which IS affordable. From the get-go. Either one which will give you enough aid upfront to attend (which is why folks have suggested Canada, in case the money works out for you) or alternatives in your own country.
You are a fantastic student. Don’t let a “dream” from when you were a child prevent you from pursuing your education. So many people allow their judgement to be clouded- musicians who say “all my life I’ve wanted to attend Julliard” (a famous conservatory in the US, VERY hard to be admitted to) and therefore they refuse to apply to programs one or two notches below that.
So-- they don’t get admitted to Julliard and then what? Instead of pursuing their studies at a high caliber but “not quite as famous” institution, they give up?
No. That’s not you. Come up with Plan B now. A solid list of affordable options.
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OP, here is a list of US colleges that meet full need – as they define it – for international students. They aren’t all as selective as Harvard/Princeton/Yale/MIT, so take a look at each of these schools, make sure their course selection in CS could work for you, and apply accordingly. None of these is a safety, but like I said – Trinity U, for example, is probably far more likely to admit you than MIT is. But Trinity is a fine school nonetheless.
ETA - not a comprehensive list (see the next post for a better list)
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That list is incomplete (which they note ‘below is a handful of the 75 colleges that meet need’, and inaccurate (for example Columbia is need aware for internationals). Best for OP to go to each school’s website to understand their policies.
This is a decent resource for international students seeking FA, see link below. Lastly, as we know, some schools that don’t meet full need for all will meet full need for some students, internationals included.
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It’s confusing, but “need aware” works against you. It means the college will look at how much financial need a student has and will not admit a student who has significant need, because the college doesn’t have enough money to give enough grants to meet that need.
What you should be looking for are “need blind schools that meet need for international students” or that give great merit aid to international students. There are only a handful of the former, and the latter tend not to be the famous schools that you are targeting.
“Need-blind” means they don’t look at the amount of need you have when deciding whether or not to admit you. But they also have to be “meet full need” or else they will admit you but you can’t afford to go.
Also, please be aware that “meet need” is a different amount of money for each college and they calculate that based on forms you fill out. It is very often less generous than what the family thinks they can afford.
Wishing you well, and joining in with those who also suggest you apply to colleges in India as a Plan B. You can always turn them down if you get a better offer!
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I would also strongly encourage you to sit for the exam and apply to financial safety schools in your home country as a backup plan.
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Unfortunately, internationals who need financial aid can’t just apply to one of the literal handful of meet need/need blind colleges. Their list needs to include colleges with guaranteed or competitive merit for their stats (and almost all the guaranteed full ride/full tuition scholarships from the old -2009?- thread are just gone and offers shrink every year 
so it’sa really difficult ordeal) as well as some need aware colleges that meet full need. Obviously, at need aware colleges, being able to pay ~10k is not going to be the best though better than the odds of “EFC 0”-equivalent applicants. 
Getting into just one college with sufficient funding is really difficult to do and quite unpredictable.
That being said, an 86 Class XI (4.0, perhaps have your title changed from “low GPA” to 4.0 since it’s totally different from a US 86)+top school + the very impressive ECs make you a contender.
So the hard part will be making a good list, which means also good time management.
The timeline I’d recommend for you would be to start with a throw-away app - a tech school or university that will be your practice app and that you don’t care about. Could be WPI or UAlabama Honors with the Randall research or EPIC scholars application - August1. A few minutes or a few hours after you click send you’ll realize there were many mistakes. It always happens after you send that 1st app So you use that and improve.
Then you have August, September, and October to get your MIT app ready alongside a few other priority apps where you could get merit scholarships or need based aid. Lots of scholarship programs have Nov1, Nov 15, Dec1 deadlines so you have to be very organized.
Nov1 your MIT EA application is due.
But throughout November, you will need to keep working on your apps in case MIT doesn’t admit you and decide whether you want to apply ED2 to Bowdoin or try your luck with RD choices.
The more you can get done over the summer holidays the better.
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I updated the title as per your comments from “low GPA” to “4.0 equivalent” to more accurately represent OP’s stats.
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You are an extremely well qualified students but you are competing against the whole world. You are really doing yourself a disservice if you focus only on top programs from some rankings list. Many students find it useful to get an undergraduate degree in the home country first because funding options for graduate programs are different and often better. A lot of foreign students with modest budgets will simply go to community college for two years and then transfer but I don’t think you can afford to do that. With travel costs and incidentals in school, insurance plan, various fees, you really still need a full tuition and housing package. You need to be applying much more deeply in the undergraduate pool or more practically save your funding for graduate school.
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Do you have any source for this? Because I have seen people get admitted to a school that they were rejected from before after they levelled up their profile in the gap year.
International Admissions rep to see whether they could put you in touch with a current student pursuing that major
I will definitely try doing that. Better to learn from somebody who had been in my shoes.
Talking with the person representing MIT
No MIT rep has ever been there in our school. We have had reps from UCs, state colleges, UTs and some Canadian colleges. How do I connect with MIT reps?
@
… and I was forgetting Waterloo and UofT. Scholarships rules and deadlines vary even within a university so you’ll need to keep all that information on a spread sheet! 
An advantage Canadian universities have over US ones is that they’re quite predictable - while a scholarship isn’t guaranteed admission is highly likely based on your current stats.
https://future.utoronto.ca/pearson/about/
With a 10k budget you can also look at European programs that have low tuition fees - most of your budget would go to housing but the scholarships could be small if tuition is low or non existent.
@happy1 : I don’t think it’s possible for OP to sit the JEE-IIT in Jan 2025 and work on US/Canadian college applications. It basically requires full-time study on its own so the student commits to one or the other 
.
However of this admission cycle is disappointing, OP could always switch gears.
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I can always earn more money from my podcast and by running other side hustles. I have been starting to get paid for my motivational keynotes. My book is earning some money as well. I have 2-3 transcripts ready. I had a web development agency 2.5 years ago which I had scaled to $10k over 4 months, and my skills were not developed at that time. I quit it because money was never exciting for me, I wanted to learn more and grow but if need arises, I will get back to the hustles. But I do understand your perspective as I cannot tell the Immigration officer all this.