How can I get scholarships

Answered

There are only 2 ways to get a scholarship in the US. 1.) Need-based scholarships. 2.) Merit-based scholarships.

Need-based scholarships are most common and they are based on your family income and assets. If you are low-income (less than USD 75,000 per year) then you can apply to most colleges and they will give you some form of aid based on your personal situation. Most T20 schools will give you full tuition if you are low-income and some will give you almost a full ride. The income scale is on a sliding scale so each school has its own sliding scale. Some schools like Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, might give you almost a full ride if your family income is less than USD $ 75,000. Then if it's like $100,000, you might get full tuition which is like $60000 per year and you have to come up with the remaining $35,000 per year through private loans. And maybe at $200,000 per year, your family has to pay between 25% and 40% of the total cost of attendance. After $250,000, you are on your own. It's much harder for international students to get great financial aid because a.) Americans are a federally and state-subsidized for about $10,000 per year. b.) Amerian state college have no priority to fund International students (places like UCLA, UCBerkeley, UVA, UNC, U MIchigan), and c.) most endowments focus on funding Americans not International students. Therefore, there are different rules and policies for Int'l students vs. Americans. You have to research each of the schools you are interested in applying independently. If you don't you could be wasting the $80-$100 application fee.

Merit based scholarships are based on your academics (GPA, course rigor, intellectual vitality, class rank) and your standardized test scores. Almost all T20-T25 schools do not give out merit scholarships because for instance, everyone at MIT is smart already. But if you apply to the University of Miami, Tulane, and other hundreds of smaller liberal arts colleges they have to offer some merit aid in order to fill their classrooms full of qualified applicants. To get a full tuition merit scholarship at a good college like a T50 to T100 school, you still need to compete with many students and fill out separate applications. For example if you apply for merit aid at USC, you probably need a minimum 1500 SAT score or 34 ACT score. It's not easy to get merit aid. The same is true at a school like Syracuse University. It gets more lenient when you hit a T150-T200 school like the University of Oregon, University of Arizona, or University of Alabama.

Therefore, there are basically 2 kinds of International students who get into top US colleges, 1.) Super rich smart kids 2.) Super poor smart kids. If you are say upper middle class and your parents don't have $75000-$100,000 per year budgeted for your higher education, there are probably more economical choices in Europe or Asia or Canada or Australia.

Good luck with your college journey.