If you thought of UChicago as an easy admit, you probably need to research more about the higher education landscape in the U.S. Some modesty might also help.
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Agree, and will add that TO is typically not so TO for international applicants to selective schools. Admissions officers are challenged assessing the strength of most overseas high schools. Test scores provide a helpful data point that can validate a student’s readiness when the high school is unfamiliar.
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From your other thread, these are some very pertinent questions that you did not answer:
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So others have covered the pay status issue and how it is an extremely important issue with need aware colleges like Chicago.
So I will instead note that in your prior thread, I wrote a post explaining that MIT is not just looking for Math outliers, it wants all of its students to be well-prepared and indeed enthusiastic about taking high-level HASS classes too.
Chicago is in fact similar. Indeed, Chicago has what it calls a Core Curriculum:
That core explicitly requires HASS classes, just like MIT’s curriculum did in its own way.
OK, so Chicago, like MIT, is looking for affirmative evidence you are going to thrive throughout their Core Curriculum, including all those HASS elements. And we can see what that means in terms of some academic qualifications.
Like, Chicago in its 2023-24 CDS reported a 25th percentile SAT EBRW of 740, and 97.09% had at least a 700 EBRW. You don’t have that.
Of course you can try to “hide” that from Chicago by going test optional, but first, Chicago is toward the lower end in terms of how many people it actually admits test optional, and second, the people it does admit test optional (and unhooked) very likely had other ways of affirmatively showing Chicago they were in fact good bets to thrive in all their Core Curriculum classes.
So what in your application would be serving that function for colleges like MIT and Chicago?
Which leads me to a final issue. If you in fact used AI for your essays, and they either detected it or suspected it, this would very plausibly be further evidence in their minds that you are not in fact the sort of strong HASS candidate they are looking for.
OK, so what to do about all this?
Well, as others are pointing out, you need to be extremely focused on colleges that might actually have the sort of aid offer you need available for Internationals.
But you also need to be comfortably well-qualified for those colleges, including as to HASS requirements. And that means no more AI, and also looking for colleges where a 670 EBRW would actually be competitive.
As an example, consider Lafayette, a well-respected Liberal Arts and Sciences College that would be reasonably suitable for your academic interests. Lafayette is one of the 70 or so meets need for Internationals colleges. And while they are need aware, and indeed demonstrably way harder for admittance as a needy International than a full pay International, let alone a domestic applicant, they at least apparently do have the budget for at least some larger aid offers for Internationals.
OK, then a 1410 is actually a median cumulative score for them, and a 670 EBRW is at least at their 25th.
To be honest, that is still pretty borderline, since you are a needy International. Nonetheless, since you are such a strong applicant in other ways, I could see Lafayette maybe–emphasis on maybe–deciding to give you one of those high aid offers.
So that is how I think you should be reacting to what has happened so far. You need to take very seriously this issue of showing you are qualified for HASS, not just STEM. You need to understand how much harder it is for needy Internationals. And you need to identify colleges where there is at least some chance your HASS credentials will be sufficient to compete for a rare offer as a needy International.
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Presumably MIT saw your test scores because MIT requires scores.
UChicago’s acceptance rate is similarly low, so rejection should not be a surprise there either.
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About those essays: UChicago puts a lot of energy into designing the prompts and reading the responses to their supplemental essays. The prompts are formed to extract a certain kind of student, one who has thought deeply about UChicago’s intellectual culture. They also separate strong writers from the rest of the pack. If the OP did indeed view UChicago as “lesser” option, I’m left to wonder how they approached those supplemental responses.
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Absolutely. Chicago is a very good example of that, but I think many highly selective US colleges use their essays, among other things, to try to weed out highly qualified applicants who are not a good fit for their academic culture, not least Internationals who may not have a strong intuitive grasp of what the Liberal Arts and Sciences tradition means to these colleges.
Like if you listen to the relevant episodes of the Yale Admissions Podcast–these are nice people trying to be diplomatic, but it is also pretty clear they are doing exactly that. In fact they have an episode specifically called, “Should I Even Apply?”, and they talk about six things that are really necessary to be a viable candidate, and one of the things they talk about is this concept:
https://admissions.yale.edu/podcast-transcripts#should
HANNAH: All right. Number five would be academic interests that align with a liberal arts approach. And this kind of goes back to challenging yourself academically because you’re looking forward to challenging yourself in college. We don’t admit students who are going to come to Yale and study one thing in a vacuum. That is not the type of education we offer here at Yale.
It’s a place where students inform their studies across disciplines. And you need to really be excited about that in order to be a successful, happy Yale student.
MARK: I know that every year I’ve read some really accomplished and very impressive applications from students who have just done amazing things and they’re going to do great things in college, but they are just a terrible academic pick for Yale.
And it seems that they’ve applied to Yale less because they’re actually interested in the four year experience of learning here and more just because it has an impressive sounding and prestigious name. And sometimes they’re confused like how did I get denied? I’m so accomplished. And we say, well, did you know what you were signing up for?
HANNAH: Right. Right. We want to set you up for success. We want to admit students who are really going to thrive in that interdisciplinary approach.
And I am very sure they could be talking for Chicago here, or indeed MIT. Or any similar US college.
So how do they know this bit (or at least suspect it):
And it seems that they’ve applied to Yale less because they’re actually interested in the four year experience of learning here and more just because it has an impressive sounding and prestigious name.
Well, it could be anything, of course. Could be your transcript, or recommendations, or activities, or an interview.
But I suspect the core of it is usually the essays.
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As others have suggested above, make sure you have a balanced list and include affordable alternatives in your home country.
I would also suggest that you have realistic expectations. Your thread title “This is so weird” worries me.
Since you’re a math guy, let me put this in math terms:
Let’s say there’s a drawer filled with 100 socks, 98 of which are white and 2 are black. If you close your eyes and randomly pick a sock, what color would you expect it to be?
If it turns out to be white, would you say that’s weird?
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I also think part of the problem is some applicants do not fully grasp that is a self-selected “drawer” to begin with.
Like, maybe some of those socks were pretty well-qualified but still overestimating their qualifications and/or fit for those colleges, so were more dark grey than black.
But then at least like 40+ of those socks probably all look pretty much just black to the naked eye. And yet somehow these colleges are going to pick out 2 they like the most for reasons that are usually impossible to reliably predict and apply to those socks in advance.
I will say I am concerned the OP is only applying to colleges where they are a dark grey, not black sock.
But yes, even if they were a black sock, being among the 38 of 40 black socks not picked is the default, expected result. Being 1 of the 2 black socks they do pick is the actual unexpected result.
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I do remember at the info session at D19’s college (not a tippy top but still pretty selective) where they said a good essay won’t get you in (by itself), but a bad essay (in terms of what they are looking for) will keep you out.
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Yes, I agree completely. There is something next-level about some schools’ approach to the essays, which can be more than the standard-issue “why us” prompt. I don’t want to get off-topic on Yale, but am an avid listener of that podcast and heard to how they craft their (many) supplements. They and some of their peer institutions want to know that you understand their cultures and are not just shotgunning the USN&WR “T10” or “T20.”
UChicago, through its marketing, relationships with college advisors at top prep schools, and it’s strategy for inducing ED, is protecting itself from being a second choice to HYPSM. And it has a distinctive intellectual tradition that it’s trying to uphold as it curates a student body. Their essays prompts are…atypical.
Anyway, it’s also possible that the student has other factors inhibiting their competitiveness.
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Yes, the basic truth is you can do “everything right” as far as anyone who looks at your application can tell, and still not get accepted to some or indeed any of your Reaches. And then you will never know why.
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Not just possible, but I might rewrite my comment to say likely.
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loans? positions like RA, TA; on campus jobs
does it include loans?
i am. some safeties
do they use some AI checker software?
aah i see
yes
georgiatech, amherst college, vanderbilt, illinoistech.
they can afford 17-23K USD a year at max