Author: Samik Goyal

Before starting this, there are some ground rules to know of.

1. This information pertains to Indian citizens applying for stem degrees.
2. The claims in this post are not purely from my own experience, rather from what I have heard and seen with students all around me. However, this also means that I am biased as the people I’ve met are ones that attended the same events as me (IOITC/IOAITC/etc.).
3. This post has some unconventional takes. Have a scientific mindset.
   • Listen to both sides, and look at proofs for both arguments.
   • At the end of the day, your college admissions are going to affect only you, so you should pick what to believe in.
   • And as is the case in such matters, the actual truth is probably so complex it cannot be compressed into a piece of writing.

First, we will look at the financial aid systems, as for most people money is the thing they worry most about when it comes to international universities.

The financial aid systems.

Whether you ask for financial aid/scholarships matters a lot. Now, it makes perfect sense that your chances of success with aid will always be less than or equal to chances without. However, there is more to it. Broadly, we can classify universities that offer aid into three systems:

1. Need Blind

Used by MIT.

This is the system where whether you ask for aid or not does not change your probability for success. That is, the university does not look at financial information while making an admission decision and offers need-based aid to every single student. This is the system MIT follows. Inarguably, this is the most “pure” system out there.

However, there are other universities which claim to be need-blind such as Yale, Harvard, etc. but for whom it is an open secret that they are not. This is a big enough claim that warrants evidence. Look at the opportunity insights study¹ for reference. Also look at the 568 cartel lawsuit.² Well, if this isn’t enough, look at this excerpt from SFFA vs Harvard, Page 2³:

the full committee’s votes is tentatively accepted for admission. At the end of this process, the racial composition of the tentative applicant pool is disclosed to the committee. The last stage of Harvard’s admissions process, called the “lop,” winnows the list of tentatively admitted students to arrive at the final class. Applicants that Harvard considers cutting at this stage are placed on the “lop list,” which contains only four pieces of information: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race.

Now, in this case, Harvard argued that this was to protect low-income students and make sure the committee doesn’t cut out too many of them. But, this still violates blindness.

2. Normal System

Used by Cambridge, Oxford, NUS, NTU, many Indian universities.

This is the normal system we are all used to. Admission and scholarship are separate processes. Therefore, getting admission + scholarship is much more harder than just admission. However, this system allows for a very important possibility, that is, you get admission without scholarship. In that case, the student may opt for an external scholarship or loan. This is still a “pure” system. Most universities outside the USA follow this system.

3. Need Aware System

Used by a lot of top USA universities such as Stanford. In effect, even universities like Harvard, Yale behave as if they are need aware.

This is the worst system, designed to favour money. The way this works is simple, it eliminates the possibility of giving you admission without aid. That is, if you ask for aid, either you will be offered admission + scholarship or nothing. This leads to these types of universities having effectively two admission pools: full-pay and with-aid. In case you are wondering, the quality of people going full-pay is extremely low as compared to with-aid. For example, I know of people who have gotten Stanford full-pay but would get absolutely nothing (not exaggerating) had they applied domestically/to a university with a “normal” system.

Conclusion

From these system types, I hope it is visible that the need-aware system is designed to prey on people who cannot pay fully. For that reason, I would recommend staying away from such universities (unless you have the ability to full pay).

The top universities and what they look for.

This section is for going over the three different countries mentioned above in depth.

United States

As I have said before, some American universities have a very predatory aid system. This often leads them to attract dumb people. Two reasons:

1. A full pay education at an American university is going to cost in the ballpark of INR 3-4 Crores. The number of families in India willing to spend that much on education is extremely low. Therefore, the full pay admission pool is highly unskilled.
2. Moreover, people who are, say, slightly skilled might get into an IIT or another good university at a significantly cheaper price. In that case too they probably would not pick the need aware university just because the economic loss outweighs the opportunity loss.

However, one of the main advantages of being in an American university is well that it is America and does have a lot of opportunities.

The best universities here and in the americas are MIT and Stanford. A lot of people seem to think that your essays matter a lot for these universities. I would beg to differ. Covered in depth in the unconventional take section.

MIT basically only admits Olympiad kids. You would need a gold medal at an Olympiad to go here. Besides that, you need a lot going on.

Stanford is as I have mentioned before a Need-Aware university. This means that the quality of Indian kids going to Stanford is shockingly low because of this. However, they rarely take some Indians with aid as well. These tend to be ones from the research competitions, primarily IRIS/ISEF.

A lot of people have the view that American universities are just better than European or Asian ones. However, this view has been changing recently in particular with the political atmosphere in the USA. I have never understood this. As, for objective measures, Europe or Asia is quite good as well.

United Kingdom

The best universities here and in Europe are Oxford and Cambridge. However, it is important to note that, for both universities, the College you apply to makes a big difference. For example, Trinity College in Cambridge has significantly better students (and is more competitive to get into) than other colleges. Moreover, you can only apply to one of Oxford or Cambridge in a year.

Since these universities use the Normal aid system, you still need to be quite good to get in. These focus almost completely on their entrance tests which involve math. There is also an interview with basic Olympiad style questions.

I’ve seen the benchmark be around IOITC level for CS to get into Trinity. For getting a scholarship, you would need to be an international medallist, probably Gold or Silver. Look at the BIG Scholars list (filter for Cambridge/Oxford).

A pretty good advantage of these universities is that they have three year courses instead of four years. Moreover, their curriculum strictly only teaches you your subject. For example, for CS, I have no non-CS classes besides some math. There are no common curriculum or other requirements unlike universities such as MIT, NUS, or even IITs.

Singapore

The best universities here and arguably in Asia are NUS and NTU. Though there are good universities in Hong Kong as well. Even though both these universities use the normal aid system, it is significantly easier to get a scholarship in NTU (on the order of 10 times). You also have the option of taking the MoE Tuition Grant. Note that scholarships in NUS are competitive even for IOI medallists (as in you need to be ≥IOI Silver to have a good chance).

It is important to note that scholarships in Singapore come with a three or six year work bond. That is, you have to work for that number of years for a Singaporean entity. You don’t have to necessarily work for the government or any other unwanted job. You can also work on your own startup as long as it is registered in Singapore.

As for admissions, the important thing here is board marks or international olympiad medal. However, I have seen people get in if they have very good other ECs as well. With an international olympiad medal, you are basically guaranteed admission though.

One of the arguments I have seen for these universities is that they have a dumb student population as well since they admit students on the basis of board marks. However, it is important to note that, the same system is followed by other top universities (MIT, Stanford, Oxybridge) for their domestic applicants. It is just that NUS/NTU holds Indians to similar standards as MIT does to domestics. The top students in NUS/NTU are also quite smart.

NUS/NTU attract a lot of international medallists from Asia though. NUS in particular has the highest number of IOI medallists after MIT and Cambridge.

The Unconventional Take

Essays and holistic ECs do not matter.

Well, this actually used to be a small statement in the earlier version of this post. But, I feel like this claim is big enough that it warrants its own section along with more proof.

Note that this claim is mainly for MIT and Stanford.

It feels as if you search online, people make it seem like your essays do 50% of the work of admitting you into these universities. I will now give you multiple arguments for why it is not:

1. Data based: If we look at the past admits into MIT from India, almost all of them had a gold medal in a prestigious olympiad (IMO, IOI, IPhO, IChO). If essays or other ECs played a role in the admissions process, we should expect inversions where a silver with good essays beats a gold sometimes. But, this is rarely observed in practice. In fact, this pattern isn’t unique to India. You can observe a similar heuristic for MIT international admissions globally: almost every country has an implicit Olympiad cutoff.
2. Economics based: Who told you essays mattered? Was it the…
   • College counsellor who also sells a service where they help you write your essays?
   • YouTuber who also has an essay-writing course? Making you think essays matter is integral to their business. Not to say that this alone implies they are lying.
3. University based: Let us think from the perspective of a university. Is MIT dumb enough to base their admissions on essays which:
   • Might not have been written by the student themselves (college counsellors).
     • Even if the student did write, have a counsellor would’ve supposedly helped him a lot.
     • In particular this would advantage the rich students.
   • Are not verifiable.
     • If I say I saw my dog get brutally murdered when I was five, how can you verify that information?

But then why keep essays? MIT still claims personal qualities matter the most to them.

Here is my theory: it is to provide a data point which is completely subjective and can be based off on any factor the admissions committee wishes. For example in the famous SFFA vs Harvard³ case, it was revealed that as a part of Harvard’s admission process they evaluated each applicant on four areas: Academic, Extracurricular, Athletic, and Personal. Analysis showed that Asian applicants were given much lower scores on the Personal metric than other races (by a huge margin). Note that the Supreme Court also ruled against Harvard in this case.