Is being international a crime or am I just under-qualified?

International Students
1

So, first off I am an international student.

The country I live in has the worst kind of opportunities anyone can get. Considering that, I am the best 12th grade student in y county right now.

I have a 1490 on the SAT, and 800 in three SAT Subject Tests- Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics level- II. My country does not have ACT centers and hence I couldn’t take the ACT.

I have pretty decent extracurriculars and a lot of academic and sports achievements. Besides, I have won awards in stage play and acting.

I have a fixed curriculum at school and no AP classes, so nothing there to distinguish me from the rest of my class.

I have a very strong social cause, and I mean it. It is not a childish goof up. I have written a 20 page research paper on the use of technology to cure this social issue, which is no joke.

I applied to a few top colleges from the United States and a few of them as safety schools.

The results of my safety schools- Georgia Tech, UT Austin have come. I got rejected.

I understand they are public schools and they do not take a lot of international students but this seemed too bad to be true.

To make matters worse, Caltech rejected me.

Even though my top colleges results are yet to come, I am completely broken and shattered. I feel all those colleges- MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Yale, Dartmouth are nothing but distant dreams…

Is it just because I am an international student or am I seriously under-qualified to attend these schools?

2

The problem was that the schools you selected for safeties were absolutely not safeties, nowhere even remotely near safeties, not even for domestic students. GT had an acceptance rate of 18.8%. Admission indeed may be harder for international students - accept that - but also understand that you applied to schools that would be reaches even for a domestic student.

There might still be schools out there that are accepting applications.

3

Unless this is a poster who is joking. It’s just a lack of good information. Georgia Tech and University of Texas are extremely competitive for the most competitive students in the USA. They are not safeties for anyone. Students in the USA with your profile would consider these to be dream schools in fact.

So there is some good news. There is a website that publishes great American schools who didn’t fill their freshman class by May 1st. This list is put out by the North American College Counselors association. You can google this. When the list comes out you can quickly apply and possibly get in.

Also there is always the choice of working for a year and trying again. But having a much more realistic list.

It’s not a crime to be international.

No country welcomes more people from more countries than the USA. Despite what the press will tell you. Give it another try or use the list I mention. You sound like a great kid.

4

I think the sad part is that you did not select schools where you could be admitted and you didn’t select true safeties.
Who advised you to apply to all of these schools?

Safeties include schools where you know you will be admitted, that are affordable, and that you wouldn’t mind attending.
Georgia Tech and UT are some of the most competitive and toughest schools in the US. Students do not select these schools “casually” as safeties. Plus, these schools reserve the majority of their limited spots to their instate residents.

Additionally, you happened to apply to the most difficult schools in the world to gain admission, regardless of the fact that you are an international student. US students have limited chances of being accepted into MIT, Stanford, Princeton, etc. . . . because US students understand that you have to be an internationally, well-known person, a multimillion dollar donor, a recruited olympic athlete, or anything else that makes you famous. There are a limited number of seats at each school.

CalTech only accepts 200 freshman, world wide per year. Why would you assume it was an easy admit?

5

Today is the 80th Birthday of Batman. Perhaps The Joker has come to visit.

If not, you have NO safety schools and you should prepare for bad news.

Welcome to CC as of 30 minutes ago. Lots if good and honest info here. :expressionless:

6

Whether a student originates from the U.S. or internationally, acceptance to U.S. colleges will in most cases be determined by the quality of the list of schools to which s/he has applied. Though you didn’t directly state your academic interests, you seem to have ignored many colleges with strengths in the subjects you mentioned (physics, chemistry, math) that would have served as matches or realistic reaches for you earlier in the process.

7

Have you been admitted to schools in your home country, or applied/been admitted to schools elsewhere, say the EU? Do you require financial aid from the US schools?

Unfortunately, as other posters have pointed out, all the US schools that you applied to are high reaches. If you don’t get accepted this cycle, would a GAP year be a possibility?

8

Are you a full pay student? I ask because even if you’d been admitted, unless you can pay, you would not have found GTech or UT affordable. Note that the past couple of years, GT has rejected a few in-state students with 36 ACTs and excellent GPAs. UT has a small number of slots after they accept the students they are required to accept by class ranking by state law.

If you are full pay, you could have a good shot at a lot of very good schools if you take a gap year and try again next year. Not these tippy top almost impossible to get into schools, but very good schools nonetheless. If you need substantial aid, we may be able to help you build a list as well, but that is a bit tougher.

9

If I am remembering this correctly, then at least some of your reaches are need blind for international admissions. Unfortunately they are also very hard to get accepted to, and even harder for international students. I would be quite surprised if UT Austin or Georgia Tech are need blind for international students. Neither would be a safety for any out of state student who needs financial aid.

What is your budget?

If you can afford to be full pay, then that would open up a lot of possibilities. Unfortunately, the application deadlines are past for many schools. You might yet get into one of your reaches. If not, then I am sure that people here can recommend good schools to apply to with late deadlines, or you could take a gap year and reapply to more schools for next year.

10

Acceptance rates for Internationals at top schools are lower than the overall acceptance rate for a particular school. So if you are applying to a school with a 20% admit rate, for Internationals that number is likely to be lower. That’s because schools limit how many Internationals they admit for a class - in the range of 8-11% per class, yet they their total applicant pool has a hefty % of International applicants At one info session for a highly ranked LAC, they said they received over 2,500 International applications. Yet the incoming class has less than 50 International students. That’s a tough nut to crack

11

International is a similar tough nut at MIT—class of 2022 they accepted 115 of 4,714 applicants, so 2.4% as compared to 7.9% domestic acceptance rate.

12

“Is being international a crime or am I just under-qualified?”. The answer is no to both.

However the schools you list are all around a 5% RD acceptance rate. A fair working assumption is that half the applicants are equally as qualified or more so than the stats you list. That means you have best case a 1:10 chance of acceptance. In order to do this you don’t have to just be qualified but stand out in the “qualified” cohort.

In the absence of your results who knows maybe you will pull it off. To properly calibrate your expectations however please consider and do some further research as to what it takes to stand out. “Pretty decent extra curriculars” and a 20 page paper about a “social cause” are fairly mundane relative to those that get accepted. Typically they are leaders, founders or experts within their chosen areas of interest and passion.

Not to be negative but it appears that you may have bought into an unrealistic expectation, and then only after the fact put in the time and effort to realize the impossibility of achieving that expectation. Good luck.

13

You misunderstood how international acceptances work in American universities, and it appears you had no safeties.

Maybe something will work out. Fingers crossed. If it doesn’t you could try again next year in a more realistic, strategic way, to schools more likely to accept you with adequate financial aid.

We’re here to help if you decide to try again.

14

I agree that you misunderstood how the process works. But if you are literally the top student in your country and that is confirmed in your application, then you may well stand a better chance at some of the private colleges you mentioned than the publics you were rejected from. If it doesn’t work out then take account of the suggestions above.

15

Being international, especially if you are looking for significant aid, makes admission to top colleges even more competitive than it is for US citizens. That is a fact. The US cannot educate/pay for the education of all of the world’s bright students – there is simply not enough room at the colleges or funding to do so.

Therefore, it is incumbent on internationals who want to come to the US to research and seek out colleges that are appropriate targets for admission and where the necessary financial aid is possible. (Note that it is also incumbent on US citizens to do their homework to find appropriate and affordable colleges.)

In your case it appears you did not do the necessary research – the safety schools you applied to are reaches even for US students and likely would not offer you enough aid to attend if accepted.

Good luck with the rest of your schools – hopefully something will work out – if not consider 1) going to college in your home country or 2) taking a gap year, do something meaningful, and research US colleges and create and apply to a more well balanced group of colleges.

16

@happy1 The OP has not clarified their financial situation. They might not need aid.

17

@intparent I agree…I did say “especially if you are looking for significant aid” but should have been clearer later in my post.

18

Sorry, I wasn’t clear in my initial post. Honestly, maybe I am confused on what safety school is for me, but I just meant it as the lower colleges I was applying to in US and who have admitted a majority of students with stats lower than mine.

Yes, I have applied to domestic colleges and I will be attending them if I get no favorable reply in the coming few days.

I just guess Prepscholar got my hopes too high. It showed me 98.78% chances of getting into UT Austin and 90.64% of getting into Georgia Tech with my kind of stats. Some of the colleges (not these 2 though) say that they do not have a bias against international students and so I was confident of getting accepted there.

I also did not mention, I have the highest grades in the coursework that I have. Straight A+ in every transcript right from 9th grade to 12th grade ( entire highschool, and the colleges haven’t asked for a lower class transcript).

I do know that Georgia Tech does not offer international students any scholarship.

I have applied to these top colleges requesting financial aid as well.

My thoughts going into applying to these particular universities in the US was that given the cost these 4 years would incur me, only these few colleges are worth attending. Else, I had pre-planned that I would be attending a local college and building up on my current research and applying again to these colleges for a masters degree and eventually a post graduate degree.

Thank you all for the time and support you have given me.

19

Don’t give up hope yet. You are a very interesting candidate and you’ve obviously worked very hard. You also have a nice way of communicating (which hopefully shone through in your essay). While it is true that none of the schools you applied to is a true safety, the flip side is you never really know what these top schools are looking for and it is entirely possible you may be it. If not, as you say, graduate school will be there. I think there is actually a good argument that, for many of the top schools, there is a lot more value at the graduate level, when the classes are smaller and the professors more focused on the graduate students.

20

I forgot to say, let us know how things turn out!