International Student ( India ), Please help me select colleges

Congratulations on your hard work and success!

As you can see above, it’s hard for the vast, vast majority of students to get the annual cost of college down to the $7k-10k level. To do so, students would either need to get enough financial aid (based on financial need) at an in-state public university; get enough financial aid from a college/university that meets full financial need (covers whatever a student cannot cover) (usually private schools); or receives a very generous merit aid scholarship. Merit aid is available at many schools, and sometimes a high percentage of students receive merit aid at a school, but this aid is often 1/2 or less of tuition or total costs, meaning that the cost is often more than $10,000 and can still be $60,000 or more. International students can receive aid at some schools, but even then it is very often more difficult to secure than for US students.

You can google US universities that offer financial aid to international students. I did quick search and get a list with Columba University, Harvard, Skidmore College, Williams College, Amherst College, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, Duke University, Wellesley University (all female), and Vassar College. These are all excellent and are safe, nice places to go to college, AND are all very competitive in admissions. Harvard for example accepts under 5% of applicants, and that includes “hooked” applicants who have advantage because they are recruited athletes, legacies, wealthy/famous, etc.

If you want to take a shot at schools, I’d suggest maybe Skidmore and Trinity, which are also very competitive, and more so in recent years, but not so crazy as some of the others. It had been my understanding that Skidmore and Trinity are generous with aid for international students. Numbers for admissions for international students are hard to find. I’m no expert and acceptance rates for international students may very well not parallel overall acceptance rates. Maybe you could look at Vassar too.

Anyway, these are long shots. Don’t count on any of these schools, and any other US schools you find by similar google searches.

Certainly focus your search in India and maybe Europe too. I know Germany and the Netherlands offer much lower costs for international students. They do have a few universities with classes in English. The Netherlands has several University Colleges that are modeled on US liberal arts colleges, have an international focus, and have classes in English, for example University College Utrecht and Amsterdam University College. You could google university colleges in the Netherlands to find the other ones, if this seems like a desirable option.

https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/university-college-utrecht

https://www.auc.nl

Good luck!