Okay so I checked the universities with the highest acceptance rates from the governments list.
I’ve added a few schools with low acceptance rates but I still want to apply to them.
Schools I really want to get into:
Nyu 28%
University of michigan 27%
Boston University 25%
Highest acceptance rate schools:
UCD 43%
Uni of Maryland 45%
University of Washington 46%
Ohio state 48.1
Penn State 50%
University of Wisconsin Madison 54%
University of Massachusetts 58%
University of pittsburg 60%
UIC 77%
Those are not international admit stats, and really again, mostly no matches if your GPA is as written and you have no test score.
Your hook is your full pay status. apply to safety/match schools and sure, keep your reaches, ED full pay at NYU with a less popular major/school is a possibility next year when the financial crisis is fully exposed. You really know how the financial thing works? That isn’t going to be under threat? It is oil money that pays?
Look up the international acceptance rates, not overall, and pay attention to the major popularity and rigour which will raise the standards.
^ also, whatever site is collecting those stats is out of date. Two I know off the top of my head this year are NYU 15% and Boston U 18%. As Sybylla says, international rates are generally much lower. Also note that the stats for the publics you have there are generally skewed, where instate students usually have a significantly higher admit rate than out of state students, and internationals will usually be lower still.
Your full pay status will indeed be a help, and I agree it would be useful to use it for ED IF the process allows it. Will you already have the guarantee of funds before you apply, or do you first have to have an acceptance? If the latter, will the typical turnaround time of approximately 2 weeks to accept/deposit at an ED college be realistic for you?
The fund will be guaranteed as soon as I show them an acceptance, but the whole process to get everything finalized will take about 4 months unless I pull some strings and contact some people. I will need to ask more question about applying for ED instead of RD and if its possible.
If it takes 4 months, then many schools on your list are going to be difficult to achieve from a logistical perspective. Some of those have rolling admission and EA where this might work for you, but many of the schools announce regular decisions sometime during March, and students have to (in a normal year, covid has delayed some deadlines this year) commit by 1 May. Unless I misunderstood how the 4 month timeline works, that’s just nowhere near enough time.
I would say the coronavirus might help and might not depending on how things pan out for 2021.
Michigan is tough but next year will be interesting as they will need to manage depending on what happens with this virus
BostonU and NYU you might have to apply to them ED 1 or ED 2. To go from a 3.0 to a 3.5 in a year is tough. BU might have issues if they start spring instead of fall this year (They’ve announced it as a plan)
The state schools listed are a great combo to look at. Is Michigan State on your list?
Ohio State accepted 8000 more students this year then last. I think you have a better list now. Keep in mind the acceptance rate is low for international at most of the schools listed. Penn State its 20% (son goes there) and Ive met a few Emiratis their GPAs are higher with AP and IB
As for your brother the UK and Canada are a headache as you enter a major and if you want to change you need to reduce foundation again. Going from the American system to those system are no fun especially that you need to do foundation.
California UC’s are need-blind so they do not consider an applicant’s ability to pay in their admission decisions, so being full pay is not advantage if you cannot meet the minimum UC GPA requirement.
Below are the UC Admit rates for 2019 International applicants. For the UC’s campuses, the admit rate is higher than overall average due to a low yield/matriculation rate but also the academic standards are usually higher.
Admission Rates for International Applicants:
UCLA: 8.49%
UC Berkeley: 9.16%
UC San Diego: 29.7%
UC Santa Barbara: 34.6%
UC Irvine: 40.5%
UC Davis: 42.1%
UC Merced: 50.3%
UC Riverside: 69.5%
UC Santa Cruz: 74.5%
Again posting admit rates based on UC GPA:
2019 Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.00-3.39 capped weighted and not major specific:
UCB: 1%
UCLA: 1%
UCSD: 1%
UCSB: 1%
UCI: 1%
UCD: 2%
UCSC: 13%
UCR: 18%
UCM: 53%
2019 Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.40-3.79 capped weighted and not major specific:
UCB: 1%
UCLA: 2%
UCSD: 9%
UCSB: 6%
UCI: 7%
UCD: 9%
UCSC: 40%
UCR: 53%
UCM: 80%
Just giving you a perspective. You have gotten good advice in the above posts and being full pay is an advantage for many schools.
Ok so this is not that helpful as presumably his UK grades would have been taken into account by Pitt as a transfer? Or did he leave the UK really early in his uni career? Out of interest, what UK uni and what program - i am only really aware of medicine and vet med based programs being 6-year programs in the UK.
Your brother went to your high school and then studied abroad. Surely there are other students from your high school who have done this as well. Get in touch with them, and create your own database of admits if your guidance counselors are useless.
You also could seek advice from the AMIDEAST office closest to where you live. The counselors there will know where students from your country have been admitted and what their profiles were like. https://www.amideast.org/
Would your country accept Eckerd and UNC Wilmington? Both are very good for biology yet would probably welcome a full pay student with a 3.2-.3.3 GPA.
Many state universities have a biology or applied biology major under the aegis of the college of agriculture. Because it’s harder to find and many students can’t see past “agriculture”, it’s typically much less selective than the usual “college of science” equivalent. The difference typically is fewer gen eds/more specialized classes.
If most students at your school have GPA’s in the 2.0-2.5 range, you’ll need to get your GC to list that. If colleges see : sub 2.0=20%, 2.0-2.4 = 20%, 2.5-2.9= 30%, 3.0-3.4= 20%, 3.5+=10% (or whatever applies) it’ll help them place your grades in perspective.
Then your best odds are finding state universities with a biology-type major in the College of Agriculture. I know Penn State, NCSU, Iowa State, University of Minnesota and Purdue have one. Purdue’s is quite hard to get into though.
(Note that biology has really poor job prospects though, you might be better off with something else.)