Do you think that me being not a student of a feeder school will affect my application as an International student?

Answered

First of all, the concept of feeder schools in the context of improving admission odds to US colleges involves mostly American Private Boarding and Day Schools. Perhaps one has improved chances at Ivys if on attends Eton, Harrow or Westminster in the UK, or Upper Canada, or Le Rosey, Aiglon or TASIS in Switzerland but for the most part these feed into Oxford-Cambridge and UK colleges, or in Canada, UToronto/McGill or Switzerland top French Universities like the Sorbonne.

If you are applying to US college as an International Student, unless you are a currently attending a top boarding school like Exeter, Andover, Deerfield, or Choate, it really doesn't apply to you nor matters. I wouldn't give it a 2nd thought but I will use this space to explain to you the significant edge these schools have.

What is confusing about feeder school stats is that everyone uses a different metric for measuring matriculation success. In general, if the graduating class has 200 students and 45 matriculate into Ivys, then the simple math is that 45/200=22.5% of the class attends an Ivy college. But since the Ivy pool is self selecting, or at some boarding school instances, rigged where only pre-approved students are permitted to apply to certain Ivys while others are not, then the admit rate is much higher. So if 1/2 the graduating class applies to Ivys that would be 100 students. If 45 matriculate in the 8 Ivys with a avg. 73% yield rate than that means 45/0.73=62 Students get admitted to 1 or more Ivy. 62/100 is a huge number, it's 62%. That is why they call them Ivy feeders. At the top US Boarding schools 62% is about the right number of acceptances out of the self selecting pool. This is why 4 years at an US boarding school costs about $250,000. The clientele that these schools cater to feel it is a great value proposition.

Remember that about 25-50 students will get a full ride athletic scholarship to various schools that are not necessarily Ivys but have good athletic programs, like Colby, Bowdoin, Colgate, Trinity, Lehigh, etc. And many students just apply to their parents alma mater for legacy admission whether that's Duke, Stanford, UChicago, NotreDame, Georgetown.

By comparison, American high schools probably graduate about 750 students each senior class and less than 1% matriculate into Ivys. There are 27,000 US public secondary schools and only 15000 freshman seats at Ivys, so less than 1 person on average gets into an Ivy institution from a public school. The best public high schools in America might get 10-20 into an Ivy but I'd say 1/2 of American High Schools get ZERO into an Ivy.

The admissions process is different for International Students than it is for American students. You will not be put into the same application pool as those applying from Top American boarding schools or public high schools. You will be judged in the context of those applying from your country, drilling down to the city level. So the thing to be most concerned about is to gauge what kind of peers from your country are applying to similar schools on your college list. You need to decipher whether you are above or below the qualifications of admits that originate from your country, not the US.

Good luck.