2
2 years ago
Admissions Advice

I did not get good funding from college I applied as early action. I am looking for a perfect college for me?
Answered

I am an international freshman undergraduate applicant from Nepal. I have a 1390 SAT and a 4.0 Weighted GPA. I applied to Olemiss, Whitworth, and Uni of Alabama and didn't get the funding I wanted. I want to major in chemistry and don't care about university rankings as far as It is affordable for me. As per me, I do have very good ECAs and CCAs that include Student of the year, participant in an international chess tournament, and many more.

Can you suggest to me some colleges I can look for the regular decision?

I do have a justifiable Gap.

1380
affordable
AcceptanceRate
100%
4.0
2
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2 answers

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Accepted Answer
2 years ago[edited]

Sorry for your problem. But it's a problem which is endemic to all International Students unless they have a very good American college counselor to guide them through the college admissions process. Yes, you wasted a couple hundred dollars if you didn't get fee waivers and 50 hours applying to those 3 schools but you can learn from your lesson, just don't repeat it.

I'll be as brief and accurate as possible. First, funding for Intl students is very limited compared to Americans. There are 4300 4 year colleges and 4200 of them will not give you good funding. In America, there are basically 2 type of colleges, 1.) Seller Schools and 2.)Buyer Schools. 10% are sellers, 90% are buyer. A Seller school is like Ivy League college, Elite College, Large Research Univ, or Top Liberal Arts Colleges. They are "selling" their brand to the top bidders. They are heavily endowed and have a long term strategy to improve their rankings, and improve their clout in the world. This is no different than LV, Ferrari, Gucci and Rolls Royce. A Buyer school is everyone else, they are just trying to survive. They need students to attend their schools and pay high tuition. They fill a need to deliver higher education to the masses and there is very little differentiation between a school like OldMiss and UofAlabama. It's the difference between driving a Dodge Ram Pickup or a Ford F150. It's a pickup truck. It has value and utility but no prestige or clout.

Seller schools have the best financial aid. Buyer schools have the worst.

Seller school have a line out the door with people willing to pay full ticket price of $350,000 for a 4 year degree. They have enough buyers to fill their classrooms 3 times over without giving a single cent of financial aid. But they don't want to do this. They have imposed onto themselves some sort of personal sainthood of higher education that tells them that they need to mix up the pot with marginalized kids, first generation college kids, brown kids, black kids, and queer kids. They truly believe the best institution will have some delicate balance of all kinds of kinds from all kinds of backgrounds. Therefore, they spend $125 million (for a small school like Columbia College) to close to $300 million for UPenn to attract diversity to their campus. They are looking for smart kids from Nepal. U of Alabama is not.

Buyer schools need to attract tuition payers so their financial aid budget are flip flopped more toward merit aid and athletic scholarships. You can get a full ride to Lehigh or Ohio State or Syracuse if you are an excellent D1 athlete but MIT will not give you a single penny. So when you look at the Section H financial aid paragraphs of a college's "Common Data Set" for a buyer college you will see that more financial aid is budgeted for those students who do not require "need-based" aid. It's mostly merit scholarships. If you want to sell pickups in America, only until recently, no one paid the Sticker Price because there were so many pick up trucks for sale. Therefore, all the big pickup makers like Ford, Chevy and Dodge had to give low interest loans or discount the sticker price to ensure a steady stream of buyers. That's how buyer colleges work. They encourage everyone to apply and give out $5,000 here and $20,000 there, in the scheme of things this kind of financial aid are marketing promotions. You are still left on the hook for $250,000 to attend these schools.

This link is a list of both buyer and seller colleges. The ones with the most aid will be obvious. Mind you these are not exact aid packages by rough averages based on a variety of people applying for financial aid. What it is clear is that Ivys, Elites and Top Liberal arts colleges have the most generous aid. You might not qualify to be accepted into Harvard or Yale, but certainly look a schools like Skidmore, Vassar, Hamilton, Colgate, Berea College, Soka University and others where you can get a find education as well.

https://blog.collegevine.com/schools-that-grant-financial-aid-to-international-students-a-complete-list/

Good luck.

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1
2 years ago

I suggest that you apply to colleges that commit to supporting full financial need. Several schools will give you as much money as you are determined to require, and they won't make you pay it back. Most of these schools are private schools, because private schools are much richer than public schools in most cases. I would also suggest applying to schools who have a history of giving out very generous merit-based aid (not based on financial need). I think that you are a very desirable applicant, so you should apply to schools that have a lot of money they can give you.

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Unweighted GPA: 3.7
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4.0
SAT: 720 math
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800
| 800 verbal
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