Best schools for UNDERGRADUATE? International Student, chances?

Hello! I'm currently a HIGH SCHOOL student in Latin America and I'm looking forward to going to the states to study finance. I'm on my senior year with a 4.5 GPA so far (I take 12 classes and the gpa is out of a scale of 5, in my country we do bachilleres which means that my curriculum of classes is excusively business oriented. I've taken accounting, marketing, advertising, economics, etc during all of my high school years) My extracurriculars are mostly just very on the media side? I'm on the debate club, did modeling and tv presenting, ecology club, english club, interned at a startup dedicated to events for a while, staffed concerts and my school sends seniors to intern at banks on october and the internship lasts 3 months so I guess that'd be the only business focused extracurricular I'd have? and I'd be a first gen student, my parents are immigrants in my country and i speak 3 languages Would this affect me in any way? or help me?

So far I'm thinking of applying to the following schools

Dream Harvard(SUPER SUPER DREAM), UPenn, Columbia, Cornell. Notre Dame Target Duke, Darthmouth, Safety Villanova, FSU (mostly since it's cheaper for me to study 2 years here and 2 years in the US since they have a scholarship that works like that since they have a branch of their school here), UWO.

I was wondering if there were any other schools I should look into or take into consideration for my list? I've chosen most of this schools due to the financial aid help for international students I saw on their websites and I'd like to live in the north (experience winter and also because it's closer to NYC). I'd really like to know about more schools with a strong alumni network, great academics and that also offer good aid packages or at least scholarships?

Thank you so much!

11 Comments
 

I had looked into University of Michigan and Georgetown! I attended an information session they had in my country last year and I didn't think it'd be a good fit for me. I've been looking into it more lately and I am still not convinced of whether to apply or not. Would these be good to have as safeties? They have a low admission rate and I'm worried about not getting into any schools and being stuck (a pet peeve fear of mine)

 
Best Response

You need to do more research. There is no bachelor's degree in Finance at Harvard, for instance. Plus, you NEED to read the curricula of the programs - not just go for flashy university names. Also, I would highly recommend going to Europe - a whole lot cheaper and more rigorous, and you'll be done with the degree more quickly. You will potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars that way. The only Finance programs in the U.S. that I would recommend at the moment are MIT and Wharton. Otherwise go for Economics. Harvard is overrated btw.

 

I know they don't have finance, most ivies don't and neither do the liberal arts colleges I wanted to apply to (but they all have economics and i'm fine with this). I thought about Europe, but decided against it since it's too far from my family and I also want to study in the US and prefer it.

 

Try nyu. The financial aid is usually ass, but look you can easily do 2-2 with nyu cas economics. You may have a chance at stern as well. International here got into stern with 20k financial aid. It doesn't cover much but you can finish in 3 years. My overall debt will be like 50k USD. It's not easy, but it's possible. If you want a target for investment banks and a great finance school then give nyu a try. Some other internationals I know have gotten great fin aid, but many also get none. Anyways, I feel like stern/nyu is a target school that's attainable when hypsm isn't. Luck

 

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