Hi, I am international student and I applied to us universities this year on regular decision
Here are my stats:
4.0 unweighted GPA ( my school doesn’t have weighted GPA)
Duolingo score- 130
SAT- 1280 and because of that I applied test optional everywhere
Honors & Activities
2nd & 3rd Place in Literature Bowl
(1,500+ participants each year.)
Regional Chemistry Olympiad: 2nd Place Medalist (Top 2 out of 1,000+ competitors).
Regional Physics Olympiad: 3rd Place Medalist (Top 3 out of 1,000+ competitors).
Government Academic Excellence Award — Top 1% nationally; recipient of state-issued price laptop.
FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) program winner, spent 1 academic year in Texas high school (1-2% rate) with full scholarship.
NASA International Space Apps Challenge (48 hour international hackathon) Regional Winner- leader of the team that created board game for astronauts adapted to microgravity
Captain of 6-person team, 3 consecutive city and 1 regional titles in Quiz Bowl
Culinary Arts Scholar in local culinary college with full scholarship
Several Debate tournament finalist
Math peers tutor at school
Literature club founder
Dnd Club founder/DM Master/Designer
Equestrian in local horseback riding club
Red Cross School Ambassador & Youth Volunteer
(Organized 5+ eco-projects; collected supplies for 20 families. Recruited 30+ volunteers.)
Colleges list
Bates college
Colgate university
Denison university
Franklin and Marshal college
Furman university
Grinnell college
Kenyon University
Lafayette College
Oberlin College
Sewanee
Skidmore College
Whitman College
I applied to liberal arts colleges mostly because I haven’t chosen what i want to do so I applied undecided asking for almost full aid. I’ve always liked liberal arts style education and I wanted to try.
can you tell me why I got rejected from every college? I don’t think reason was essays because I spent a lot of time and everything was good
was it because-
I applied test optional?
I applied only on regular decision January
I was asking full ride scholarship
I don’t have good activities or honors
I am taking gap year and applying againg so I would appreciate pieces of advice what i need to improve or change, How I can change, what mistakes I made and etc.
As intl applying for full aid, you have way lower chances. But the major error you made was not taking out time to do well on the SAT and u instead applied test optional...US Schools need the SAT to evaluate your academic standing since they cannot fully judge your school grades.
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