Be the top applicant from your country.
@auntbea I understand what you say but it won’t be possible for me to pay up that debt. Now just think over this, that would you still gain debt if you know you can’t pay it up ?
@PurpleTitan Well, I’m not so sure about LAC’s. Can you tell me more about it ?
They’re small liberal arts colleges.
Bottom line: the competition for a place at the “top universities” with generous aid is so fierce that you need to become an informed applicant, know what matters, what the options are, the terms, the process.
It’s not just stats, not just dreams.
Love this @lookingforward “It’s not just stats, not just dreams.”
Also can anyone suggest me some of the universities that are at par with those in my list but are “in reach” and can be listed as “safety colleges” in my list ?
The main factors I am looking for in colleges are 1. Academics i.e a great CS department.
2. The financial aid factor.
3. Employability factor.
There are NO SAFETIES for international students needing extensive financial aid. A safety is defined as a school where you are highly likely to get admitted and can afford. You have no such schools, if you need money.
As an international student on a student visa you will need to leave the USA after your studies and after your OPT has ended – unless you can find an employer willing to sponsor you for an H1B visa and later a Green Card. That said, computer science is a good field for finding employer-sponsored visa. Just don’t think it will be easy and quick.
If you’re serious about studying in the USA, you have to increase your chances of admission/financial aid by applying to a variety of schools. Your list should include lesser known schools in less-popular parts of the country (the south, the central states) where there is less competition for financial aid. Use Google to find these schools, then verify if their automatic scholarships based on SAT scores are available to international students. You got a few ideas on such schools earlier in the thread (University of Alabama is one.)
Read the Fiske guide to see how colleges differ from one another. Us colleges have a ‘personality’ and you need to understand it to target what colleges want.
Any Fiske guide from 2015 and on is fine. If you can’t find one, Princeton review’s best colleges or Insider’s guide to the colleges would help too.
To start understanding the distinctions, read about Washington and Lee, Reed, Smith, Wellesley, u Chicago, Colgate, Oberlin, Clark, Notre Dame, and BYU.
UCLA, UC Berkeley, Georgia tech, and CMU do not offer financial aid to internationals.
Nor do UK universities.
Seconding UA Huntsville.