SAT: 1530 (800 Math/730 EBRW), 6/6/7 Essay
SAT II: Math II & Chemistry - Aiming for 800s but will be taking in May
IB: Currently predicted 43/45, with the following subjects:
HL: Math 7, Chem 7, Econ 7
SL: English L/L 5, Spanish ab initio 7, Music 7
And here is my current list of prospective unis, in roughly descending order of preference (without taking into account acceptance chances):
Yale (super reach)
NYU Abu Dhabi
Brown
UC Berkeley
UPenn
UMich
UC San Diego
UBC
University of Toronto
Possibly Earlham College as a safety option
If I plan to do a major in Economics (and possibly a minor in CS), what should my match/safety options be since these are mostly reaches?
ImaCraftiMama thanks but I’m just looking for any sort of Economics major, sorry if the title was a little misleading. Now that you do mention it that International Economics major at Richmond does look quite interesting though, I’ll consider it.
Admissions is tougher all around for international applicants - even full-pay applicants. Other than the few places that have automatic admission for stats and extend that to international applicants, what would be a safety for a US applicant is more like a match for you. Whatever you see as a published admission rate for US applicants is likely to be more than twice what the admissions rate is for international applicants.
Do students from your own school regularly apply in the US? If so, what has their experience been. That will give you a better notion of what your odds are.
happymomof1 in my school, the vast majority of non-EU students end up applying to the US, and chances have been fairly bad. However, my school in particular has had strong ties with NYU Abu Dhabi and Brown, with large proportions of the student populations in both schools having been from other branches of the same school. Of course, as you know, this year has been particularly bad for US undergrad admissions for my school’s senior year, but quite a few do get accepted, especially those who EA’d or ED’d. In particular, though, Ivy day was quite devastating for the school population as a significant number of overqualified students got rejected from all Ivies with a few notable exceptions.
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that you are/would be an international student. My daughter wants to study International Economics, so that is how I got confused. George Mason may be a good safety school. They seem to have a strong economics department.
@ohmydaysman For internationals to determine match and safety schools, they need to look at international acceptance rates, not U.S. acceptance rates. International acceptance rates are considerably, and are not necessarily proportionate to U.S. rates from school to school.
The Catch 22 is that it’s very difficult to find transparent and accurate international acceptance rates, though sometimes you can extrapolate by reading admissions announcements. Wesleyan (which I would recommend) is notably helpful. For the class of 2021 they received 2260 application and admitted 269, 12%. http://www.wesleyan.edu/admission/informationfor/international.html
Barring that you should look at the colleges’ Common Data Set and see the percentage of internationals enrolled. Berea, for example, only enrolled 29 internationals last year (about 7% of the class) which is on the low side for liberal arts colleges. Now we don’t know how many applied (Berea says “hundreds” ) or how many admitted students actually enrolled, but the fact that they only enrolled 29 students from the whole world indicates that Berea wouldn’t be a safety.
I would agree that applying ED would be a good strategy (especially if you’re not applying for aid). I’m not sure about EA. The key point is that you have to devote of energy to your essays and other application materials. U.S. colleges, even the most selective, like the thought and experience diversity that internationals provide. You need to articulate how your background would contribute to the campus community.
I haven’t studied international acceptance rates at mid-size and large universities. If you are interested in LACs, then I you might look at some of these schools which have a relatively higher percentage of enrolled internationals.
Enrolled / total first year class
Swarthmore: 55 / 392
Carleton: 58 / 522
Barnard: 61 / 603
Colby: 61 / 508
Middlebury: 72 / 635
Macalester: 76 / 506
Richmond: 81 / 801
Skidmore: 81 / 661
Wellesley: 81 / 603
Colgate: 82 / 771
Oberlin: 85 / 728
Bryn Mawr: 90 / 354
Smith: 95 / 639
Grinnell: 97 / 414
Dickinson: 99 / 607
Clark: 107/ 671
Wesleyan: 108 / 761
Holyoke 151 / 529
I agree that international acceptance rates vary from school to school The Wesleyan data shows that being a full pay international student confers an advantage. The admit rate for the class of 2021 was 16.2%. The admit rate for international students was 12%. However, the admit rate for internationals requesting financial aid was 4.7%. The admit rate for international students not requesting aid was 19.2%. The admit rate for US students was 17.1%. Wesleyan data for the classes of 2020, 2019 and 2018 show even higher acceptance rates for international full pay students of 20.8%, 20.8% and 22%. So I would be careful in relying on blanket statements about the admission rates of international students. How those acceptance rates compare to rates for US students varies among schools that are needs blind for US students but needs aware for international students.
Kudos to Wesleyan for providing such clear and complete statistics on international admission. If more schools would do this international applicants wouldn’t have to do so much fruitless extrapolation among the various data points that are available.
The number of international applications, especially at LACs, has risen dramatically in the past year. Many schools have noted in their admissions press releases that their increased efforts in international recruiting have really paid off, and the U.S. State Department has an initiative to promote American education throughout the world.
It’s time for the colleges to provide transparent information on admission rates, so that international applicants can make informed reach/match/safety lists.
I would look at Wisconsin. It is a top 10 graduate program in Econ. Excellent CS program. The undergraduate program in Econ is big. It has a specialized track if you are looking at grad school(math heavy theory). Wisconsin is a little easier to get into than UCB or UMich.
If you plan to start out as an econ major and hope to have the option to add a CS minor, you need to look very closely at the accessibility of the particular school’s CS department and courses to non-majors. Many CS departments are highly competitive to get into and while minors may exist on paper, you can’t complete one in real life if you can’t get into the classes.
You might check out Northeastern. They’re very international-friendly, and their CS program is excellent and quite accessible. Also, adding a CS minor or combined major to Econ opens up a world of possibilities in terms of co-op experiences. https://www.ccis.northeastern.edu/program/bs-computer-science-economics/