Its being hard for me to decide on staying in South Asia, or applying abroad

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Demographics

  • International Student
  • Bangladesh

Cost Constraints / Budget

  • Need 100% scholarship based on the financial statement

Intended Major(s)

  • Computer Science

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.00 (5.00/5.00 in Bangladeshi curriculum)
  • Class Rank: 500/3200
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1550

List your HS coursework

  • English (advanced)
  • Higher Math
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Biology
  • Language other than English: Bangla (advanced)
  • Information and Communication Technology

Awards

  • Bangladesh Physics Olympiad National Champion

Extracurriculars

  • Debater (Some national achievements)
  • Certified Responsive Web Development
  • Intermediate knowledge of JS and Python

Essays/LORs/Other
Strong in my opinion*.* (Most of the teachers here actually allow us to write on their behalf)

I need a full scholarship for me to make it.

Some personal broad talk:

I am an international applicant from South Asia looking to apply for the next season. I am extremely aspirational about studying CS. Regarding my profile (in my opinion):

The strengths:

1. I have a 1550 on the SAT
2. I became a national champion (11th to be exact) in the physics olympiad last year
3. I am also a debater on my high school team with some national credentials
4. I cracked one of the most competitive admission tests for high school in my country, and so studied in one of the top-ranked high schools in my country
5. I have a decent knowledge of some programming languages (Python, JS, as well as HTML and CSS for web development, with a certificate from FreeCodeCamp)
6. I like to believe the debating has given me insights into the world that make me think critically about many things that most of us ignore.
7. I can manage strong LoRs

The weakness:

1. I don’t have any international recognitions or any kind of research papers.
2. I took a break from both debating and olympiads for the final year of my high school because of the change of environment after transferring.
3. I don’t have any remarkable CS projects. I just have one mildly useful project, which is popular.
4. My financial condition is such that I would need a 100% scholarship, hence getting a backlash in the need-based institutions.
5. Anything that you think is not mentioned in the strengths

Now here is the deal: I need a full scholarship for me to be able to study in that college. I don’t really care whether it is MIT or Yale (which are obviously a very, very, very long shot for me) or any other institution that isn’t even popular. I don’t care if it is even in the US or not. It can be in any country where there is a strong CS faculty, and you just need to know English. So I need to know the odds of making it into any of the colleges that are willing to provide 100% coverup.

The reason I need to know my odds of making it into at least one of the colleges is that I don’t have much time till the application season. And I have an admission test in my country too, which is very competitive, and hence I need to take academic preparations. So here is a tradeoff I need to make. If I think that I have a shot of making it into any of the colleges abroad, I will start taking preparations for my college applications, including building new projects, writing essays, and getting strong LoRs. But if it is a slim chance of making it, then I really need to focus on my local admission tests, because if I get distracted from the local admission test for the college applications and then fail in both, then my life is pretty much ruined.

So anyone who has an opinion on this is really appreciated for helping. Thank you!

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Paging @MYOS1634.

You sound like an amazing student, and I predict you will go far! Unfortunately the odds of acceptance to a US school with all your costs being covered is about 1%. Even assuming you are a much better applicant than most, I would guess that raises your chance of success to about 5 or 10%. However, this is a guess and I am not an admissions expert. Would your current school be able to offer any guidance?

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You sound like a strong applicant, but as you know, your request for a full scholarship is a difficult one. Will you explain your rank, and why it would not be higher given your grades?

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No one can give you precise odds, but I agree you should be realistic about the odds likely being very low. The basic problem is there are only so many scholarships like that available in the entire United States, and there are many, many more International applicants who would want one. And in fact, there are many more International applicants with amazing application profiles than scholarships available. And because of that, it isn’t just about good grades and test scores and competitive ECs. The colleges with such scholarships to offer can look for highly-qualified International applicants they also think will be a particularly good fit for their community, and it isn’t easy to know what will actually get them to see you that way.

I think the silver lining to this is I am actually skeptical you need to spend a lot of time “building new projects” in order to apply to US schools. But I do think to maximize your chances you would need to put a lot of reflection into your essays, and perhaps help your recommendation writers better understand what they should be writing, and it would probably be useful to spend some time really studying what these colleges say they are looking for beyond impressive qualifications. And truly doing that well that is not a trivial process for US students, let alone Internationals coming out of a very different sort of educational system.

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Agree that the class tank is unclear. Can you please explain.

As others have said, it’s best to look outside the US if you need a full ride plus a student visa (where you will need to demonstrate your ability to pay for school).

Students ghostwrite their LOR’s??

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The college I read in is one of the top-ranked colleges in our country. In fact, after grade 10, you need to give a separate admission exam in order to get admitted into this college. So all of the people around me are actually already above the average student in our country. So you would actually find 1500+ students in my college alone with such grades. This year, one student from our college also made it to MIT, although he was in the top 100 in our college already

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Thanks a lot! I definitely will try to learn it. But I think that my problem here is that I am suffering from such decisionlessness that I am not having the relief to even think about it straight.

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about the ranks, The college I read in is one of the top-ranked colleges in our country. In fact, after grade 10, you need to give a separate admission exam in order to get admitted into this college. So all of the people around me are actually already above the average student in our country. So you would actually find 1500+ students in my college alone with such grades. This year, one student from our college also made it to MIT, although he was in the top 100 in our college already

And about the LoRs, Apparently thats a common thing in our country. The teachers are often way distant with the students

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I would say your priority should be the local exams. IMO that is your best opportunity to secure a college education.

Getting a full ride scholarship as an international student is very difficult and you do not rank at the top of your class. Even if you are one of the fortunate ones, your family may still need to pay expenses such as transportation, health insurance, books, etc. which can run thousands of US dollars annually (and as an internationalstudent your work opportunities will be limited).

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Thanks, I myself am starting to believe the same thing. It’s better to have something rather than aiming for high and ending with nothing…

But regarding the ranks:
The high school I read in is one of the top-ranked colleges in our country. In fact, after grade 10, you need to give a separate admission exam in order to get admitted into this college which itself has an acceptance rate in the single digits. So all of the people around me are actually already above the average student in our country. So you would actually find 1500+ students in my college alone with such grades. This year, one student from our college also made it to MIT, although he was in the top 100 in our college already

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Are you a high school student or a college student? The terminology you are using here is confusing me!

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This is just one idea, but the Inside the Yale Admissions Office podcast did a really nice episode called “Should I even apply?”. You can find it here under the heading “The big picture”:

You can also find the transcript here if you search this page for Episode 26:

Of course this is just Yale, and not necessarily specific to International applicants, but I think it gives you a really solid overview into what holistic review admissions in the US is really about, and I do think it applies at least broadly to most of the full scholarship opportunites for Internationals in the US.

As a bit of a preview, they list six things that are necessary but not sufficient to be competitive, and I think a lot of otherwise very impressive International applicants may falter at either five (“academic interests that align with a liberal arts approach”), or six (“maturity, independence, and interpersonal skills to live on a college campus with other people from very diverse backgrounds”).

In fact, they say some interesting things about people who do not meet those criteria. Like when discussing five, they say:

MARK: I know that every year I’ve read some really accomplished and very impressive applications from students who have just done amazing things and they’re going to do great things in college, but they are just a terrible academic pick for Yale.

And it seems that they’ve applied to Yale less because they’re actually interested in the four year experience of learning here and more just because it has an impressive sounding and prestigious name. And sometimes they’re confused like how did I get denied? I’m so accomplished. And we say, well, did you know what you were signing up for?

HANNAH: Right. Right. We want to set you up for success. We want to admit students who are really going to thrive in that interdisciplinary approach.

I think part of what is so challenging for International applicants to highly selective US colleges is this is not really how university admissions works in most places. In most places, by the time you go to university you are already expected to have focused in on a specific program, and it really matters what credentials you have for that specific program. That’s just not the same model that is being used by a lot of US colleges at the undergrad level (yes at the grad or professional level, but not so much undergrad). And I think making that adjustment can be very hard sometimes.

And then when discussing six, they say:

MARK: This one’s a little bit vague understandably but again, sometimes we read applications from students who are just clearly not very interested in using their four year college experience to live and learn with other people from a diverse set of backgrounds. That’s a really important part of the education that we’re offering here. So you need to be interested in that.

You also need to be ready for that. If that seems like something you would rather avoid, there might be a very different excellent school that’s available for you. But you would be again barking up the wrong tree if you’re looking at Yale.

Again, I think the fundamental challenge here is this might not even be a consideration for university admissions in many places, which again can make it very hard for International applicants to adjust.

Anyway, the whole thing is well worth listening to/reading. If you do that and come out of that experience thinking, “Hey, wait, I really share those values, I think I would do great applying to such colleges,“ then OK! But if you are more thinking, “Eh, in truth I am more just interested in going to a great place for my intended program, so I will have to try to fake being the sort of person they are looking for . . . ,” well, maybe not so much.

But the good news is plenty of other countries have great progams that do NOT think this way, and are indeed suitable for Internationals with those sorts of focused values and goals for their university program.

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I don’t know about their system specifically, but I know in a lot of countries, there is a layer before university that is specifically designed to prepare select students for university, and it is sometimes called “college”.

Which is confusing since in the US, we don’t have that layer and we instead use “college” to refer to all Associate or Bachelor’s level programs, including at universities.

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A number of other countries use the term college for high school - my high school in fact was also called “college”. (And some countries use it for a technical/vocational training tertiary institution. D19’s cousin wanted to know what went wrong with her at high school when he heard she was applying to “college” in the US!)

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That actually was a very thoughtful one. I did think about what I was looking for, but not so deeply. See where I come from, the people are almost accustomed to the brand value. Most of the time you don’t have any room to think about what you want either.

But I think what I really am looking for is not really the name. I want to apply because my life plan aligns with any abroad colleges, specifically the US one better than any local colleges. For instance, I have a huge passion in CS, have some projects in mind too, want to have a succesfull tech career, launch a succesful startup if luck favors in the future. But if I study in local college, chances are high that I would not be able to fluorish myself well enough to break into the global market. The philsophy of academics and degree here is entirely different and I’m not understating it. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to do all these staying here, but going someplace else would definitely give me an unprecedented leverage.

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Sorry, I should have stick to using one terminology, I mixed up because we are so accustomed to use the word College here.

So in our country, the senior high school years (grade 11 and 12) are actually called college level. And undergrad institutions are actually called Universities. So the progress goes as: High School (grade 6-10) → College (grade 11-12) → University (Undergrad, Masters, anything beyond)…

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OK, so to me this does not sound like a particularly good fit for the sorts of US colleges that are likely to have the sorts of scholarships you need. There are paths like that available for US residents, but typically they would involve going to one of their in-state public universities with a very good CS program. As in-state residents, it is possible they could in fact get at least most of their college costs paid for (they might also have to work a bit and take out some subsidized loans, but they can do those things as residents). But those universities typically do not have such scholarships available for Internationals. They more see Internationals as an opportunity to get extra funding.

So my guess is your best bets for getting what you want AND need will be universities that are not local but also not in the US. I am not particularly an expert on such programs, but they would likely be more aligned with your goals/values, and at least might be more affordable for you than their US equivalents.

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Please keep in mind that once your student visa ends (when your college studies here end), you will very likely be required to return to your home country. Going to college in the U.S. should not be viewed as a way to permanently work and live here for international students.

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Yes, I believe I have more research to do. Thanks for the insight!

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Yes I am aware of that. I didn’t intend it as a path to settle in the US. But what would help is the academic culture.

For example, in order to get into the tech industry, I would very much need a prior practical exprience, even during undergrad, In the US, it is way easier to do so through summer internships and on campus works, but if I study here locally, chances are I will never have the first hand experience before I graduate because here theoratical stuff are primarily valued, and with no major tech industry, you won’t have much shot at internships or working locally

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