International student applying to CS in the US

im an international student from India studying in the cbse board just starting my senior year.

grades 10th:91% 11th:86% sat:1520(740,780) writing APs in may calc bc, CS a and physics 1

extracurriculars:

  1. internship in a very large American based edtech company for 2 months on web development in python where I helped them develop a feature for one of their products
  2. Part of student council vice captain

3)worked under a professor in IIIT Hyderabad where I learnt data science and built a model to predict earthquakes based o past occurrences

  1. did an 8 week cs program in IIT madras where we learn about AI and neural networks

  2. part of student lead sports organisation with 20k followers on Instagram where im the head of IT and Developed a website for them

  3. going to do a research paper under a professor this summer which is going to get published

7)started the CS club in our school and was the president

  1. part of the Red Cross society and published in newspaper for my volunteering works towards an orphanage

I do not need any financial aid and was planning to apply for cs, data science and AI and wanted to apply to colleges like uw Maddison Wisconsin, Purdue, uiuc, u mich and ucsd and wanted to ed rice

what else do you think in should add to strengthen my application

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You appear to have adequate qualifications for all of your listed schools, although UIUC’s CS major is very competitive. It would be interesting to know whether or not a 740 SAT math score is competitive for UIUC’s CS major.

Your two advantages are that you do not need any type of financial assistance and that the listed ECs and accomplishments are in your focus areas related to CS.

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I got a 780 math score and wanted to apply for cs+x also what other colleges should I aim for

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I think that I might add the University of Massachusetts Amherst as another school to apply for.

Otherwise I am not sure that any of these schools are safeties, so I would be inclined to add a safety or two in your home country. I do however think that you are a strong candidate and are likely to get one or more acceptances to the schools in the US (my guess would be “more”, unless you get accepted ED and need to withdraw your other applications in which case Rice is a very good university).

Best wishes.

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ya hopefully rice is really good and I want to aim for that

what do you think are my chances for ed rice

Why Rice? Will you be able to provide a convincing reason in your essay?

UMD and UMass. There is a possibility of getting merit scholarship at both places. Maybe Virginia Tech.

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No. UMD does not give merit scholarships to international students.

No problem, I stand corrected. I went by the wording “eligible non-citizens” on the scholarship page.

Understandable. But that term includes very specific classes of US residents. I don’t want to detract from the main focus of this thread so I won’t go into the details, but for OP’s information - as an international student residing in India, they wouldn’t be eligible.

I think so in my essay I will be able to convince them. Im not sure about my extra curriculars

University of Waterloo in Canada might be of interest to you. The website includes application instructions for students from India & China.

Stevens Institute of Technology may also be of interest to you. (Close to NYC.)

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I’m not sure how to judge your academic qualifications (will need @MYOS1634’s help), but would you say you’re one of the top students in your school? State?

And what is your budget? I know you said you don’t need aid, but can you afford $90k per year? $70k? Something else?

We can suggest schools more appropriately if we know your budget.

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As you are interested in Purdue, you might look at it its “Data Digest” on the Purdue website, here: https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/. The links for “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations” and “New First-Time Beginner Profile” – which are interactive – may provide information that will allow you to gauge the likelihood of admission for an international student.

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ya the budget is not an issue it just has to be a t20 cs school

Rice is not a T20 CS School in most rankings. But I have not looked at all of them as there are too many rankings these days.

its 18 overall in us rankings

Why? Which rankings?

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I’m not sure which rankings you’re looking at, but this one is most popular for CS because it aggregates rankings from 4 sources:

Rice is a great school and it does have a good CS program, but it’s not considered a “top 20” program.