I’ve lived in the US since I was about 2 and all of my education has been from public schools and public magnet schools in the US. I likely won’t become a permanent resident in time for college admissions so I was wondering where that places me in terms of how admissions officers will view me. I’ve heard that the international student acceptance rate is much lower than the domestic student acceptance rate. I just want to know where I stand in terms of how competitive I am to colleges.
I’ve been very active in my community and every year I lead a STEM program at a summer camp for girls, along with other programs during the school year. I also have other leadership positions including marketing lead on my robotics team and yearbook co-editor. And this year, a friend and I started an online tutoring organization for middle school students. I also have 450+ service hours.
I also have pretty decent scores, almost all A’s except freshmen World History and sophomore Calc AB. But I also did get 4s on my APES and AP Lang exams. I am also taking college classes full time in my junior and senior years, I’ve taken Multi Calc during fall semester of junior year and I’ll be taking linear algebra in fall of senior year. I’ll also likely be taking organic chem 1 in fall 2020.
I really hope that didn’t sound like a lot of bragging, but I just wanted to know what “international applicant” means for me amidst everything else.
Generally speaking, what would be a safety for a US applicant, would be a match for you, and what would be a match for a US applicant, would be a reach for you. So start with that.
What is your immigration status? Certain statuses will allow you to study, others will require changing your visa to F-1. Being undocumented opens a whole other can of worms. If the legal permanent resident status is in process, it might be worth it for you to take a gap year and apply when you have your green card.
What can your family afford to pay? Until you have legal permanent resident status, you are ineligible for federally determined financial aid. Depending on your state of residence (and again your immigration status) you might qualify for state aid and/or in-state status for tuition and fees. So investigate that. Many places simply do not offer any aid at all to students who classify as international. For the places that offer aid, the competition for that money will be stiff unless you identify institutions that guarantee aid for specific grades and test scores for both US students and international students.
What do you want to study? That will affect the types of places you will want to investigate.
My daughter is undocumented. She was rejected from all the private schools she applied to. She mostly applied to private schools because she would not get any Financial aid from public schools. She also applied to U Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill and Florida state. Guess what - she was accepted to all the 3 state schools. Michigan and UNC would not give her any merit scholarships, they basically told us that we will have to pay full tuition. Florida State granted her OOS tuition, which is 6k per year. She will most likely go to FSU.
Her stats - SAT 1540, ACT 34, GPA 3.92, APs - 12
Did you D apply to private schools that consider undocumented students as domestic applicants as opposed to international applicants?
These schools include Swat, Pomona, Emory, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Oberlin (could be more too)…domestic students generally have a higher rate of acceptance, and this particular set of schools are need-blind for undocumenteds/domestic students but need sensitive for internationals.