I’m a recent grad, happy to help try and answer a few questions, although its been some time since I was last on this page!
a) Unfortunately, the number of admits from India is particularly small - generally only mid single digits per year. Of the international students I know (and I was one myself) although some did hold major international prizes and the like, it was certainly not required. However, considering how few international students are accepted it certainly helps. Far more important however is the story you can weave about yourself, your life and your interests, and how compelling and moving that story is.
b) I can’t say what the best decision for you is, but I’m happy to give you some of my reasoning when I applied years ago:
- I was pretty sure that I was at least competitive in terms of academics, ECAs, recommendations, etc.
- I was also very sure that Harvard was my No. 1 choice (although just from a statistical standpoint, especially as an international, I didn't hang all my hopes on it - I would have been ecstatic with any of my top choices).
- Harvard has officially stated that there is no meaningful difference between applying SCEA or RD. People on this forum have debated it both ways, however with about half the class being accepted SCEA in a far smaller (albeit stronger) applicant pool, I like to believe there may be some slight statistical edge to applying SCEA.
- With that in mind, I knew that I would always wonder "what if" if I didn't apply to Harvard SCEA and instead applied to one of my safer schools.
With those basic assumptions, the decision ended up being straightforward for me. As I was probably competitive, I was fairly confident that I would end up at a school I was pretty happy with at the end of the year whatever happened, so I decided to gamble my early action choice on my dream school. It turned out well for me, but I also knew that if it didn’t, I would have had no regrets.
I’m not saying that this should be your logical conclusion - but I think its worthwhile laying out your own thoughts about the process and arriving at what makes sense to you. Think about how you feel about the process of SCEA at Harvard or ED’ing NU - they’re both great schools! What’s important is what you feel about them and what would make you happiest at the end of the day.
c) I can’t speak to other people’s experiences but I had a wonderful time. I think consistently what you find students say is that the most meaningful and best part of the whole experience was the people - the other students are amazing. They’re who you spend all night working on problem sets with, working towards some conference for an extra-curricular or just talking to about topics from topology to Kant to just about anything, and they’re who you learn the most from.