What are my chances at MIT and Northwestern Class of 2024 regular decision?
Academics:
SAT I: Not taken yet, but expecting 1400-1450 with math 760-800 and verbal 640-670
SAT II: already taken: math lv2 (800), physics (800)
IB (predicted): 42/45
HL: Math (7), Chemistry (7), Physics (7)
SL: ESS (7), English lang&lit (5), Spanish ab (7)
School doesn’t provide rank but probably 10-5 % percentline
ECs (only main):
LaunchX club president and founder
Coding club president and founder
Robotics
Soccer (10+ years)
summer experience: Yale Young Global Scholars
Recommendations
All my teacher, whom I am asking for letters, and my counselor like me very much, so I will say they all would be a 9/10 .
Demographics:
Country: Sudan
Ethnicity: black
School: UWC Costa Rica (studied at sudan till 11th grade and switch to take a full scloarship at UWC)
Income bracket: ~4k
Hooks: low income from developing country?
Note: I haven’t won any olympiad or participated in research because there aren’t any in Sudan. How can I get the colleges to understand this fact?
Also, I cannot afford college if I don’t get a full scholarship. What universities give international students full scholarships?
Your IB predicted and two 800’s on the SAT subject tests are great. Predicting your chances is hard, but will be slightly less hard after you get actual SAT results. My personal experience was that I took the SAT at the last possible moment to apply to MIT, and got my acceptance to MIT the day before I got my SAT results (which suggests that MIT got the results faster than I did). As such it is not always possible to have your results before you post a “chance me” thread and we just need to take our best guess.
MIT is need blind for international students, and also meets full need for international students. As such your need for financial aid will not impact your chances. I think that it is worth an application to MIT. However, you should of course be aware that the acceptance rate for international students at MIT is low. You should also be aware that most applicants to MIT are one of the top students in their high school, and one of the top students in their country for international students. As such if you attend MIT you will suddenly go from being the top student in your school to being average. Expect to work very hard if you do get to attend MIT.
Northwestern is not need blind for international students. As such your need for financial aid will be taken into account. However, Northwestern is overall not quite as highly selective as MIT. You are a very strong candidate and you probably do have some chance there.
One other thing to think about: Stanford also is need blind for international students, meets full need for international students, and cares a lot about “diversity”. Again your chances there would be in the low single digit percentages, but it might be worth considering as another option.
I do not know whether any of these schools includes money in their financial aid to cover things such as transportation from home to the schools, and a good winter coat (which would be a light jacket at Stanford). With your income just getting to the school would be expensive.
Be aware that each of these schools might take a single student from Sudan or Costa Rica, or might take no students from these countries in a given year. To me it looks like you might be the best applicant that they get from these countries this year, which is what it would take to give you any realistic chance of admissions.