Hi! I’m posting for any ideas for my friend, a current senior. She’s looking at Bowdoin and other SLACs including Amherst and St. Olaf, Tulane, American University, Colorado College, Bates, Bard, Indiana University Bloomington, Pitzer, Skidmore, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Union, Washington & Lee, Yale, Michigan Tech, Pacific University of Oregon, Northern Michigan University, University of Oregon, and some other Oregon schools because of a good cultural merit aid program. This list is mainly based on schools that may give her some aid due to certain scholarships-it’s not necessarily her type. She’s a small liberal arts/small to medium engineering girl, if possible. This is just a start–more suggestions please! However, a lot of aid for international students is very competitive and limited. She is not a usual applicant.
She lives in a refugee camp in Gaza, and goes to a public Gazan school (not an American or IB curriculum). This presents major difficulties, especially with teachers who are very against a girl going to university here. But she does have two strong recs. She is the strongest person I know.
Her main common app essay is wonderful and is about the experience of doing a peace program with Palestinian and Israeli teens, especially in context of her childhood (she survived bombings and three wars). It’s about how she found peace personally with the Israeli students and learned not to judge based on nationality, as well as the difficulty and resistance she faced in joining the program.
Financial aid: this is the main issue. She needs a lot of aid, preferably full ride or a low family contribution.
Grades: nearly all A+s and As, GPA isn’t calculated there, but her numerical grades are all high 90s out of 100. She is in the scientific stream, so takes the hardest math (4 years) and the hardest classes of physics, chemistry, and biology, 3 years of each science.
SATs: 1110/1600 new SAT. Because of unreliable internet (electricity is usually out), expensive course fees, and unavailability of books, she hasn’t been able to prep too much. But she’s done everything she can. However, she’s super smart and these scores don’t reflect that.
TOEFL: 86. Same issue as SAT. But she speaks fluently and writes excellently (I am a native English speaker).
Extra-curriculars:
-Led school-wide chemistry project making soaps and other stuff, took classes at university to do this, part of science club
-Leads English club and has a women empowerment project with it, presents a woman of the week
-volunteers with Islamic Relief Society visiting children in hospitals and elderly in homes
-very competitive American university summer program (not naming for privacy)
-Top scorer in English competitions
School type: she honestly just wants to get in anywhere, preferably US but open to Canada as well. She is interested in engineering if possible, but is open to the combined programs or studying math or physics undergraduate. She prefers small to medium colleges, but again just wants to get in somewhere.
What are her chances for the various colleges, especially Bowdoin? And financial aid?