u/Cute-Chapter-1864

I am sharing my results for future international students who want to take the U.S. admission path.

Here are my results.. I tried to apply to as generous private schools as possible.

Allegheny College --> Rejected

Bates College --> Rejected

Bowdoin College --> Rejected

Brandeis University --> Rejected

Bucknell University --> Rejected

Centre College --> Waitlisted

Columbia University --> Rejected

Connecticut College --> Rejected

Cornell University --> Rejected

Denison University (ED1) --> Rejected

DePauw University --> Rejected

Drexel University ---> accepted with very bad aid (38k aid and 58 COA)

Duke Kunshan University --> Rejected

Fairfield University --> Waitlisted

Franklin & Marshall College --> Rejected

Gettysburg College --> Rejected

Goucher College --> Rejected

Hamilton College --> Rejected

Howard University --> Rejected

Juniata College --> Rejected

Kalamazoo College --> Rejected

Kenyon College --> Rejected

Lafayette College --> Rejected

Lake Forest College --> Rejected

Lawrence University --> Rejected

Lewis & Clark College --> Rejected

Luther College ---> accepted full tuition only, and 18k COA

Macalester College --> Rejected

Middlebury College --> Rejected

New York University --> Rejected

Northeastern University --> Rejected

Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences --> Rejected

Pitzer College --> Rejected

Pomona College --> Rejected

Princeton University --> Rejected

Providence College --> Rejected

Sewanee: The University of the South --> Rejected

Skidmore College (ED2) --> Rejected

Texas Tech University --> accepted, great school in terms of job reputation. I got almost full tuition and COA is 18k. u would almost certainly get full tuition from TTU with 4/4 GPA and 1400+ SAT

Trinity College --> Waitlisted

Union College --> Rejected

University of Delaware --> Rejected

University of Notre Dame --> Rejected

University of Richmond --> Rejected

University of Vermont --> Rejected

Vassar College --> Rejected

Villanova University --> Rejected

Wabash College --> accepted full tuition +2k, COA 18k (got the presidential scholarship and then appealed for more)

Washington and Lee University --> Rejected

Washington University in St. Louis --> Rejected

Wesleyan University --> Rejected

Westlake University --> Rejected

Whitman College --> Rejected

Williams College --> Rejected

That's it..
what do you expect?

Oh there is one more I forgot to mention:
Grinnell College --> waitlisted then got accepted full ride

Out of 60 colleges i applied to, i only got in Grinnell College.

Here is a feedback:

Stats
1420 SAT (780 math first trial and didn't even study it - 640 EBRW with 3 months of studying. i started w 420 lol)
GPA 4/4
i would say it is a very rigorous school but with unknown system

(having good GPA doesn't mean ur good with the unknown systems for AOs, but having bad GPA means ur bad.. that is how it works. like not because u maxed school grades doesn't mean u'r academically good, the exams maybe were so easy. but having bad GPA and bad class rank especially directly tells ur AOs that you didn't withstand the academic withhold in ur class, so how will you be able to withstand academically in good school (esp if ur intl and needing aid). so academics certainly wasn't the reason for my acceptance from Grinnell)

Many would say AOs weight more:

academics
activities
personality (essays)
awards and then some other factors like (first gen/interview/work experience/etc..)

but what i would say is:

the overall vibe of ur application
academics
activities and so on..

what i mean about the overall vibe is like how everything correlates to each other. like even if you have 1600 SAT, Olympiads, and maxed every single category from the four factors i mentioned, and the profile feels chaos and too cocky, u will obviously get rejected from top schools.

the profile needs to have a story to look like a person, not someone just a nerd and smart ass achieving everything.

Being a nerd and smartass is still a huge factor of getting accepted (i am not overrating it).
But i am underrating how people overlook the overall vibe factor of ur application, like how ur personal statement, activities, honors feel like one person - one mind - and one goal.

I didn't have any Olympiads, neither did i do elite summer programs like YYGS and MITES/SIP/PROMIS etc...
but what i had is 600 hours of work in my personal statement and a correlated story with my activities and honors that i am really passionate about and had fun doing them.

(also some of you may say, u just got accepted by luck and there is no way, but don't forget that my application passed two reviews (one before the waitlist and one after the waitlist))

I may have reassured many people, but that is not the general case.

many people worked on their application and have much better stats than me and got rejected from every single university in the United States because they are needing full ride. many people who really have amazing and wonderful essays, wonderful character, wonderful everything literally, and they unfortunately didn't do it.

I think I really got lucky with Grinnell.

Two disclaimers:

it wasn't a full full ride (my COA is 10k with indirect costs, so the direct costs i give to the university is 8k, but from the on-campus job i get 10-12k per year (even more if i used the 40 hours per week in summer), so i am not really paying anything.
not because i got accepted with these stats means like you will get accepted with these stats at any school (i indeed never saw anyone who got almost a full ride with those similar stats. i suggest to take a gap year if you have those stats or check China (i got accepted full ride for a top 20 worldwide school located in China) but i am going to Grinnell. China is really easier and won't take that much time from you.

Two tips:

just be you when writing your personal statement. remember that universities care about diversity. if you try to fake ur personality to just look good and fit, you will not find a way to write the personal statement in an artistic way that hooks every reader. just be you, even if your personality isn't good according to people. understand that every university is trying to gather all personalities possible for their class.
do activities you like.. not because you see successful people all moving toward some certain activity then it means if you didn't do that activity ur a failure. no and big fat no. do activities you genuinely find fun doing, passionate about. like my whole school were moving toward research programs but i did theater because i love it :)) and took a recommendation letter from the theater supervisor that was amazing even so my major is computer science.

and another thing is that liberal arts schools don't weight academic activities more than non-academic ones (maybe research universities prefer academics over non-academic but liberal is more holistic on that point).
so just have fun doing activities dude and be you.

i think that's it. if you guys want a post about my personal statement and how i wrote it and how i connected it with everything, tell me in the comments (i hope you reached till this point)

oh holy capp did i write all of this?!😭

isw the waitlist aint moving

intl seeking full ride (10k efc) with 1420 SAT applied to 60 universities, here is how it went...