<p>You should go to the websites of schools you’re considering and read thoroughly their directives for international students.</p>
<p>The likely suite of colleges you’ll be targeting will 95% not even consider any ECs. The vast vast vast bulk of US colleges do not consider ECs as admissions criteria. The ones that do, are the very selective ones (which based on your SAT – you should not be applying to).</p>
<p>Lol, the only reason someone might want to improve their ECs is to get into a college. >.></p>
<p>Colleges require transcripts. It would be difficult to hide the courses that you don’t want revealed. They want your true GPA in order to determine whether or not you appear capable of doing well at the college/university.</p>
<p>And there is that pesky little statement on most applications that state you are being truthful…</p>
<p>haha this is probably why you won’t get into to many of your top choices…
if you are actually passionate about something…anything… then it shouldn’t be very hard to develop your interest in it.
if you want to demonstrate interest superficially then that won’t last long.
think about what you like and do it.
Simple, honestly.</p>
<p>Imagine you’ve graduated college and are working. </p>
<p>What ECs would you want to do - sports, art, music, community service, political action, hobby. </p>
<p>Those are the ones that you should do.</p>
<p>cure cancer, develop a new field of calculus, raise a million dollars for charity, all the standard stuff every ivy leaguer has under his belt.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with applying to 27 universities? Doesn’t it increase your chances of being admitted. Especially with being an international student, my stats not so great and needing a huge amount of aid.</p>
<p>Do you really have 27 universities that you are knowledgeable about and would love to attend?</p>
<p>The schools that give a “huge amount of international aid” all require essays and supplemental materials beyond transcripts and test scores. There is no way you can write strong essays to that many schools and the reused and modified attempts to do so will weaken them all.</p>
<p>It takes an awful lot of energy to apply to ONE school. Each school has a different supplement that requires much thought to complete sufficiently. When you start filling in applications, you will understand why you are advised not to apply to 27 schools.</p>
<p>Unless you have 7 schools outside of commonapp, you are restricted to 20.</p>
<p>Applying to 27 universities is lazy. Instead, spend some time researching the schools you’re considering, and identify 4 or 5 that you would love to attend, offer the aid you need, and offer a decent shot at admissions. Then devote your time to completing their applications to the best of your ability. The energy devoted to that smaller group will shine through in your applications, and improved your chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>For an international applicant with so-so stats who needs a lot of aid, it is extremely important to focus the list to those institutions that are more likely to offer admissions and aid. Perhaps there are 27 small regional LACs that would have the money for you and where your stats are likely to get you admitted, but you do need to recognize that even at those places you will be up against a fair number of others who are playing the “small regional LAC that has one big scholarship” game.</p>
<p>You need to spend some time thinking about why you are so hell-bent on coming to the US for your education. Certainly there are some possibilities in your own country that would be easier to get into and easier to pay for.</p>
<p>If you apply to Harvard, the acceptance rate is 6%. If you apply to Harvard and 26 more schools, the acceptance rate is still 6%. Colleges don’t sit in a committee and divvy up every applicant so they all get to go somewhere nice.</p>
<p>And as an international, I don’t even think the schools that give THE BEST aid in the country will give you much even if you live in the slums of Mumbai.</p>
<p>I’m guessing you haven’t actually started the application process yet? It takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to get those apps done.</p>
<p>It can also reflect a lack of knowledge. If you’ve properly researched all your schools, chances are that you would be able to cross some off, because you didn’t like something about it (environment, curriculum, class layout, etc.) or because you realized that your chances are similar at certain schools, so you cross some of those off your list. you can’t add up the acceptance rates- this isn’t the lottery. all colleges look at the same sorts of things. if you end up being rejected/accepted at one for reasons x,y, and z, chances are you’re going to be rejected/accepted at other colleges for the same reasons</p>
<p>I got a C in A.S. Business Studies and all my other grades are straight A’s</p>
<p>Why not? And…why are they letting you remove it?</p>
<p>Let me jump in here as someone who works with International students.
While 27 colleges may seem excessive, it depends on the caliber of schools you’re applying to and how long you’ve been working on your applications.
Let us imagine that, at this point, you’ve ALREADY worked on many applications, have written the Common App essay (topics have been posted for a while), and have started on a few supplemental questions.
If that’s not the case and you’re still fumbling around with them, get to work. NOW. 
If you’re asking because you haven’t started yet, you’ll realize why applying to 27 schools from scratch with only 7 months to go is very impractical unless you sleep very little and are super efficient.
So, let us start from this assumption: “applications are in the process of being finished and essays have been worked on”.
As an international student, you’re probably applying to some highly selective schools simply because they’re the only ones who are need-blind for high-need students. If you’re good enough to make the cut, they’ll pay 100% for you to go there and train you to serve the US economy rather than your home economy. Essentially, they want the most brilliant students on the planet, regardless of how rich or poor they are. However, it’s impossible to know you’re one of the most briliant kids on the planet, so any school with an acceptance rate under 20% can’t be counted as a “number”. These schools are in a category you’ll set aside and call “extra” (“in addition to the rest”), no matter how long you’ve spent working on their applications. They do not count as a potential result because too many variables come into play, and so you must act as if they weren’t there. If they count as part of your 27, then yes it makes sense that you’d apply to so many.
Then there are schools with merit aid (the basic criteria are usually explained and you need to exceed them) and schools that are need-aware.
Second, many internationals want to attend <em>any</em> school in the US where they won’t be subjected to whatever is a frequent problem in their home country (sitting on the floor, libraries open 4 days a week until 4pm only, being forced to study whatever the government has decided you could/should, being randomly hit by sticks, sexual harassment, ethnic or religious discrimination, force-feeding of religious doctrine, etc.) Essentially, many students think “whoever will take me and help me financially to escape where I am stuck now, I’ll go”. I’m not saying this is OP’s situation, of course, and there’s a world of difference between someone attending Shri Ram and someone from Dharavi, but many internationals look for American schools because they offer something no other school does at home. For this they’re willing to leave all their friends, their families, familiar foods, sounds, etc. and so “any school will do” can be the approach.
Nevertheless, this approach is not constructive. Osamasayegh, you’ll need to think about what is important to you when you draw your list of schools. Try to find a book such as “insider’s guide to colleges”, “the fiske guide to colleges”, “377 colleges” -even an old one will give you an idea of what the school stands for. Ratings are very misleading in that respect. Can you imagine attending a school where a large portion of the student body is drunk from Thursday till Sunday? Can you imagine attending a school just for guys? Can you imagine attending a school where you’ll have religion classes (either Christian theology or “comparative religions”) and where almost everybody believes in some God, or can you imagine attending a school where few people belive in God and care? Can you imagine attending a school where you, as a student, will be asked your opinion about governance? How important is it that your classmates are as engaged as you are (or are you comfortable being the only one talking while almost everyone else dozes off/looks kind of surprised you’d jump in that often?) Are you even wondering why you should be “engaged” in class and only expect to sit, take notes, and spit all that out that the right moment? What about drug use (esp. marijuana), does that make you very uncomfortable or is that a given for you? Do you consider sports an essential part of your life or would you rather engage on heated debates about our carbon footprint? Does locally grown food matter to you or are you drooling at the idea of eating at mcDonald’s, Sbarro’s, Panda Express, and other quintessentially American fast food outlets?
You may have already answered these questions for yourself (and some, obviously, should remain private and NOT end up on your application), but they all play into the equation. And the equation where university type and candidate type “balance” is “fit”. You need “fit” to get admitted.
If you have 27 schools with varying levels of selectivity but excellent fit, okay. But if you have 27 random schools, then you’re off to a bad start. Americans schools look for “fit”. So you have to choose a range of similar schools, not too unlike each other, with a range of levels (for example: Haverford/Grinnell/Earlham/Guildford or UT/UGA/Penn state/Ohio state). You can mix urban and rural + other characteristics, but you can’t mix totally different “types” (ie. a mix Haverford/Ohio State/Yeshiva/Baylor would make no sense.)
You MUST however, without the “extras”, have 4 safeties (your stats place you at leastover the top 75% of applicants), 4 matches, and 4 reaches (not shoot-for-the-moon-who-knows reaches, but reaches where you’re still within the stats of the bottom 40% of those admitted).
The reason is that, for many international students, there’s no such thing as a “safety” (such as a state school for someone in-state). Criteria aren’t the same , especially when the school is “need aware”, i.e, for two students with one having more money than the other, the one with more money is given preference even if the other has better everything. No one knows where they really stand a chance financially (unlike Americans who can use the net cost calculator, etc).
Since OP seems to say he’ll need substantial FA, it thus makes sense to “hedge his bets” and apply to a lot of similar schools from different levels of selectivity in order to hope to have 2 or 3 admissions with FA.
Finally, if your 27 do not include the “extras”, then it’s definitively too many.</p>
<p>As for your OLevel (or GCSEs? IGCSEs?): School only want to see your top 5. You are thus encouraged to discard the others. If you got excellent grades (A or A<em>, even B) in more than those 5, you are welcome to add them to the roster. But generally a strong roster of A-C grades in 5 subjects (preferably A</em>-A for top schools) is enough.
The exception being if your top 5 are vocational or foundation, and your D-Gs are English, math, foreign language, etc.
- for US readers: GCSEs aren’t on the A-F scale, but A-G, and a B actually is what in the US would be an A-.</p>
<p>HOWEVER AS is not Olevel/GCSEs. You’ll need to show at least 4 AS results and 3 predicted A2/Alevel results.</p>
<p>@MYOS1634, thank you so much for this enlightning reply, It has seriously made me see the light about many things. Basically, you’ve proven me right! Contrary to what people might think, I have decided to apply to schools that actually do have a high percentage of international students and provides LOTS of aid. I have three safety schools, 10 matches and the rest are safety. Well, my only issue is, all my grades in the IGCSEs are A and A*, but one of my AS’s is a C, should I send it?</p>