Does the following schools offer financial aid for international students?

Answered

Hi @Khalil

Thanks for your question. This is one of the most popular and misunderstood areas of the college admissions process. Each year about 6-7 million applications are processed from Int'l students. Most of them are applying for financial aid. Since 95+% of American colleges are need-aware, not need-blind, most of these students are disappointed that their applications fail. And even if they are accepted, they can not secure additional funding to attend.

For you and any other 9th-12th grade high school seniors reading this, I will outline some basic facts.

1. Most American colleges are need-aware. Like the ones on your list. So they are not going to have much funding available for Int'l Students. I would say the most you can expect from these schools is 0% funding to 20% funding for the total cost of attendance. If you are an exceptional student that normally would qualify for an IVY or Stanford, but wants to apply to lesser schools, some of them would love to have you and fully fund you but most really clever students want to go to the best schools possible. Need-aware means that when you apply to such schools, they factor in your ability to pay. If you have no or little ability to pay, it's really a waste of your application fee.

2. The main reason so few American colleges fully fund admitted international students is both a function of how wealthy the school is and how liberal their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are. That is why Private Old colleges like the Ivy league, top liberal arts colleges with deep pockets, and elite colleges like Stanford, or Duke can do this. In general, it costs a college about $60,000-$70,000 more to fund an International student because they do not qualify for Federal grants called Pell grants, State grants, and work-study programs. And often some of these students are so poor that their technology is incompatible and they need add'l start-up grants to get them the basics to move into their dorms. So given the choice of either admitting an American vs. Int'l applicant, for most colleges, the choice is simple.

3. The other reason most blogs and research articles do not discuss is that in general, your average Int'l applicant doesn't have the same level of compulsory education. In the US, most applicants have a k-12 (13 years of schooling), and many recruited athletes have 14 years because they attend a private boarding school for a post-graduate year. In some African and Central American and South American nations, students apply to college with only 10 or 11 years of formal education. Along with this, many Int'l students do not have access to AP courses, IB courses, taking dual enrollment college courses, honors or accelerated courses, very limited extracurricular or co-curricular activities, and limited opportunities for leadership roles both in school and in their community. Some countries do not have the resources for students to prep and take the SAT and ACT as well. So side by side, domestic American applicants have a lot more data points for the college admissions officers to evaluate holistically. It is so much more difficult for an Intl student to compete, that many private schools have been established all over the world that are just focused on American college preparation.

4. So in summary, if you are an Int'l student, you do not want to apply to large public State research universities or Private colleges that are not prestigious or lack funding. Their priorities are not to fund international students.

Here is a good list of colleges that have very good funding for international students. These are mostly Private colleges with a couple of exceptions. The rule of thumb is that the better the college ranking and prestige are, the better the funding for International students will be. So if you can get admitted to Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, or Columbia you will get 100% of your financial need met most likely without loans. But if you apply and get admitted to Bucknell, College of Wooster, Franklin & Marshall, and Clark, you will most likely have to take out some loans as well.

So the takeaway advice is to try to work as hard as possible to get accepted into a very good college in high school. Sometimes it even makes sense to take an extra year to prepare by taking a gap year or an extra year of high school. This way you are doing everything you can to improve your odds of both getting accepted into a great school and getting financial aid.

Amherst College

Bates College

Barnard College

Berea College

Brandeis University

Brown University

Bryn Mawr College

Bucknell University

Carleton College

Clark University

Colgate University

College of Wooster

Columbia University

Cornell University

Dartmouth College

Davidson College: link

Emory University: link

Franklin & Marshall College

Gettysburg College

Grinnell College

Harvard University

Lafayette College

Macalester College

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mt. Holyoke College

Occidental College

Oberlin College

Pitzer College

Pomona College

Princeton University

Reed College

Rice University

Smith College

Stanford University

St John’s College

Swarthmore College

Trinity College

Tufts University

Union College

University of Chicago

University of Notre Dame

University of Rochester

University of Pennsylvania

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Vanderbilt University

Vassar College

Washington and Lee

Washington University in St. Louis

Wellesley College

Wesleyan University

Williams College

Yale University