Advice on admissions to Ivy League Universities

Exactly - so say OP does amazing at A-levels and gets predicted A*A*A*A*, scores 2400 on the SAT+ SAT II scores, has good extracurricular activities/volunteer work, but due to "low" (not really low, they're good grades after all, just not Ivy material) GCSE results gets rejected from Princeton and Harvard, but does get an offer from Northwestern/UCLA/Duke/Carnegie Mellon, OP will go bankrupt (unless OP is v rich, if so then OP can do whatever OP wants) as these unis don't offer extensive scholarships/financial aid for international students. This is also true even if OP is a US citizen if OP is applying to a college out-of-state (which OP will do, regardless of what university OP applies to).
When OP could apply with the same results to Oxbridge ranked higher than most Ivy Leagues and above Harvard in some rankings, get in, do well and end up with no bankruptcy, save money for a couple years and then do a masters in the US at an Ivy League with financial aid.

Ivies for the most part rank higher than Oxbridge - I've only seen one ranking where Oxbridge ranked higher than Ivies, and it was from a UK Source - you could tell it was heavily biased when Imperial was 8th and Yale or Princeton weren't even in the top 10.. It's only at Ivies and other top US unis that you can literally have no money and still graduate debt-free. Also, it's not a great idea to rank 'Ivy LEagues' against Oxbridge as, 1) they differ in quality for different courses, and 2) You wouldn't Rank 'Russel Groups' against UPenn, would you??

Where are you getting all this information from??

Sorry to burst your negative bubble again, but this is still partially untrue! Duke and Northwestern both meet 100% of demonstrated need to international students. As an international applicant to Duke, you're also eligible for about 3 different scholarships.

Ivies don't tend to offer Scholarships and are just mostly very generous with money so international students can attend anyway. There are about 20 other tops unis and colleges that offer scholarships to international students.

As a US Citizen, OP will fare much, much better finally. OP will be open to ALL of the need-blind policies most of the Ivies and top schools have.

Ivies for the most part rank higher than Oxbridge - I've only seen one ranking where Oxbridge ranked higher than Ivies, and it was from a UK Source - you could tell it was heavily biased when Imperial was 8th and Yale or Princeton weren't even in the top 10.. It's only at Ivies and other top US unis that you can literally have no money and still graduate debt-free. Also, it's not a great idea to rank 'Ivy LEagues' against Oxbridge as, 1) they differ in quality for different courses, and 2) You wouldn't Rank 'Russel Groups' against UPenn, would you??

Where are you getting all this information from??

With a "need-aware" admission policy, you'd have to be amazing to even have a shot at getting admitted. Considering the amount of international students applying and the inherent supply/demand for scholarships (this is true for the highly competitive colleges) you're more likely to not receive one than you are to get it. I'm not saying international students never get any financial assistance, I'm saying that as an international student, going to an Ivy without paying a penny is unlikely. Even for U.S. citizens, not all get enough financial aid - at Northwestern only 60% get any financial assistance at ALL and of those THAT do, a minority are on a free ride. If OP applies to, say, UCLA or UC Berkeley, OP's financial assistance will be limited as OP will be considered an OOS student by these universities and will thus be responsible for paying a substantial amount without financial aid. There is a reason why US parents start saving up from the second their children are born to afford college instead of just encouraging them to apply to universities with a 4% acceptance rate and hope for the best.

QS World University Rankings rank Oxbridge higher than all Ivies except Stanford and Harvard. Times Higher Education ranks Oxbridge top in the world, above any university. This would strongly suggest Oxbridge is equal to or better than some (most) colleges in the Ivies. Both apply factual research methodology. Not saying contextual researcher bias doesn't occur, just saying it's not based on bs.

If OP applied to Oxbridge, OP would be guaranteed financial aid. This is also true for Imperial/UCL which ranks above Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Columbia and Yale according to the QS World University Ranking, and LSE which ranks above any Ivy except Harvard (for social sciences). This is NOT true if OP is 1 out of 40.000 applicants competing for competitive scholarships at universities with one of the lowest acceptance rate in the world against child prodigies with 3A*s, 3A's and 3B's.

Hence, go Oxbridge.

You get 0%, £0, $0 of financial aid at Oxbridge - you pay ALL of the money back. If OP applied to Oxbridge, OP would NOT be guaranteed financial aid.

You automatically get up to £3,500 per annum from Cambridge, and £4,000 from Oxford subject to your household income. These Bursaries are in addition to the SFE loans.

And don't forget SFE loans are completely unrepayable until earnings hits £25k+, the amount repaid is a fixed 9% of income earned above £25k (like a tax), and is written off after 30 years.

K but isn't it better to walk out of uni without having to pay a single penny?

Quite possibly. But the fact remains very few UK students get free tuition at US universities.

Sad, but (kinda) true. It's what makes them so much more coveted and prestigious. Some should stop at nothing to put in their best efforts to get in.

You kind of need to back up your 'very few' with a percentage difference between internationals and citizens. Otherwise, you're just pretty much describing the US process purely as it is. Less than 5% of US Citizens get into Stanford.

Yeah you're right - it's extremely difficult but that wasn't my point..

The applicable bit of data is not that 'Northwestern only 60% get any financial assistance' - it's that 100% of need is met for admitted students. In other words, if you need the money, you WILL get it.

Yes, but the fact that PUBLIC schools, which include both UC-B and UCLA, don't offer financial aid is standard, and shouldn't be considered at all if you're going to require aid. This is a black and white decision. This should be established straight away and OP should target schools that offer aid immediately.

Stanford isn't an Ivy.

Rankings are mostly flawed. Universities are the 'best' for certain people. If money wasn't an issue, one wouldn't (in a million years) choose Oxford over MIT for engineering.

It also depends what you want. For me, a university that can pay for my entire education is better than one that will put me in 60K of debt. US universities also have an excellent educational system which a few UK unis are actually trying to copy. Oxbridge always hold 'inflated' positions, maybe due to a lot of biases - fame attracts fame.. that sort of thing. Exchange students from Cornell at Cambridge expressed their disappointments over the course itself and the overwhelming focus to go to uni 'for the degree' and 'getting a job', rather than for learning. Of course, those will be those types everywhere, but that culture is at a noticeably higher intensity at the less-competitive Oxbridge. In this day and age, an overwhelming majority of the world's billionaires went to Ivies, Stanford, MIT.. less and less from Oxbridge.

But yes, I totally agree that it 'suggests' that.

You get 0%, £0, $0 of financial aid at Oxbridge - you pay ALL of the money back. If OP applied to Oxbridge, OP would NOT be guaranteed financial aid

There is definitely crazy bias at play when both Imperial and UCL rank higher than Princeton, Yale, AND Columbia. PYC each have many, many more times the billionaires, endowment, research papers and renowned profs than Imperial and UCL combined. Columbia, mostly known as a school for PolSci, generates the most money from patents in the entire US. Comparing the revenue from patents to Imperial (a school KNOWN for engineering) would genuinely be embarrassing. Columbia also has the most Pulitzer Prize winners AND the 2nd most Nobel Prize winners in the world (beating Cambridge into a small hole in the ground), only after Harvard. Princeton has the Richest man in the world + other stuff. Could Tell me why Imperial deserves to be 7+ places ahead again?? Oh, also I'm paying under £4K/313K to attend for the entirety of my 4 years. To compare UCL to PYC is an even funnier story...

It's very simple. OP should just consider the tens of other Excellent colleges that offer lots of aid to internationals. I don't see why OP would apply to those super-competitve options anyway..

I didn't argue UCL was better than PYC, I claimed (accurately so) that it was more highly ranked than those respective universities. Obviously they're all top-tier school and to even insinuate that Cambridge by any means isn't a world-class, renowned university which attracts pupils from around the world (including the US) is laughable and absurd. But a Bachelor from Oxford along with a Masters from Harvard is significantly better than a Bachelor from Cornell.

You appear to be either in denial or completely uninformed on how the US college admission process works - it appears you believe that every student accepted automatically is provided with a full ride. I recommend you watch this short video for perspective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmkAfRSjnm0). It's about an excellent US student who got accepted into all eight Ivy Leagues and five other top schools who rejected all of these schools and went to the University of Alabama on a full ride, as none of these "top schools" provided him with enough financial assistance.

You... you do realize loans are a form of financial aid, right? You also only need to pay these loans back when earning over £25k and it gets written off after 30 years... right? And that Oxbridge provide scholarships based on the financial needs of their admitted students, right? The student loan process in the UK is far more lenient than the one in the US.

I don't really think you can say UCL is 'accurately so' when you only checked on source. That's a recipe for making a perfectly uniformed statement. In the Shanghai Uni Rankings, widely seen as the most accurate but are less well-known than QS and THE, don't even rank UCL in the top 20. You can't just conveniently pick and choose the rankings to make your point sound more correct. Princeton is ranked 2 places higher than Oxford here and you didn't see me make a sweeping statement.

I know Cambridge is world-class and didn't insinuate any differently - I have been born and raised in the UK and would know. I picked only one course from both Oxbridges and compared only those. It's absurd that you deciphered that, sorry. OP should choose the university that is best for her, and that may as well be Oxford - it could aslo be CalTech.

I am very aware that not everyone gets a full ride. My very, very clear point was that there is the possibility of doing so. Please quit with changing my words, or maybe read a bit more carefully? With regards to Oxbridge, broke or rich, you end up with similar debt. That kid's case is very, very rare and is not very reflective of the common case. Putting only that video on here is really going to put students off which I think is very unfair. I'd say that the financial aid process for low to middle-income internationals at private unis in the US is bliss and an absolute gold mine. Someone I know got onto a programme called the Sutton Trust, where about 64 students get ~$250K+ in financial aid every single year, amounting to upwards of $16m. sHe got into an Ivy League for Engineering with $290K+ of aid, NONE of which has to paid back, ever.

Financial aid is offered with the intention of receiving 0% back. A loan is fundamentally different in that there is an expectation for it to be paid back within 30 years - that's why it has a different name. Loan lingers over you until you're 52, financial aid is forgotten by the age of 22. With fin aid, you won't pay back a dime even if you're the best banker on Wall Street - if you're on a loan you pay back everything (I believe, correct if wrong pls).

A Financial Aid process will always be easier for a Citizen of the respective country. That's just a simple, undeniable fact.

I didn't quote "one source", I quoted the QS World Ranking of 2018 and Times Higher Education of 2018. Are you trying to say that both of these are inaccurate because they don't go with your own, biased opinion of which university is "better"? UCL is, according to a multitude of sources, higher ranked than Princeton. There is "no most accurate" world ranking because they all contain some element of researcher bias. That's why we study a multitude of sources and tentatively generalize based on them as to which is higher ranked. Even if one does consider the "oh so accurate Shangai Ranking", Cambridge outranks every Ivy in the world except Harvard and Oxford outranks every Ivy except Harvard and Princeton. What's your point? The Oxbridge is equal to or better than some or even most Ivies. I've argued this since the beginning and you've failed to dispute this. Also... um... UCL is ranked top 16 in the world according to that ranking and above Penn, Brown and Dartmouth which are all Ivies, implying that UCL is at/near Ivy level? ALSO hahaha that ranking considers Arizona State University to be a better college than Brown and Queen Mary/University of Delaware to be better than Dartmouth. Seriously, you should study it, it's hilarious! (http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2017.html)

Secondly, you also stated earlier that one would be ridiculous to choose Oxford if also admitted to MIT. This contradicts your statement that "OP should choose what university is best for OP". How about, rather than attending one Ivy, attending two universities that are both considered world-class and simultaneously saving money in the process?

Thirdly, it just is not true that "financial aid process for low to middle-income internationals at private unis in the US is bliss and an absolute goldmine". It just isn't true for anyone regardless of citizenship status, especially not middle-class students. Unless OP is from a low-income family (below 20/25k a year), US colleges will expect OP's parents to contribute a significant portion of their wages to pay for OP's college (this is especially true for the competitive universities outside the Ivies). This is not the case in the UK where each student is given a maintenance+tuition loan so financial aid (which does consist of loans at all US universities to some extent, look it up), but only 9% of OP's future wages are deducted and it's written off after 30 years. This is simply not the case in the US where some alumnus of private, top 30 universities pay off the equivalent of £750 monthly in student loans regardless of income (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7JcHz6ucyI&t=212s). And there are many more cases like this. Google "can't afford Ivies" and you'll find countless of examples where US students turn down Ivies because they cannot pay for it. This is even more accurate for UCLA/UC Berkeley/Michigan/other good colleges. And there is no reason to do this when OP can go to Oxbridge and get an Ivy-equal or better education and then subsequently continue OP's studies at an actual Ivy.

"That's why it has a different name" Hahahaha then why does "scholarship" have a different name than financial aid? They're not different, financial aid is a way to help you pay for college and it can consist of loans.

I'm actually quite tired of arguing lol.

Conclusions for the audience: The Oxbridge is equal to or better than some or even most Ivies. Most ivies are better than UCL/Imperial. If you're middle to lower class, you can get to go to an Ivy for free. If you're the richest in the UK, you can still go to an IvyDuke for free since they also offer money & scholarships based on how much they want you. For engineering, 99% of people would choose MIT, but if Oxford is better for your education, go ahead. Rankings are stupid, biased, flawed and hold far too much sway in students' decisons, but are a decent starting place.

In reply to the bias in the Shanghai ranking, QS ranks Imperial many places above Princeton so "Seriously, you should study it (QS), it's hilarious! "

Some conclusive stats:

Oxbridge = Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Stanford (even though it's not an Ivy)
MIT is slightly superior to Imperial, but perhaps only because of greater wealth
UCL and LSE = Chicago, Penn, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Cornell
Classifying Arizona State as better than Dartmouth /=/ classifying 1 of the top schools in the world as marginally better than another top school

Ivy League - 35,000 applicants to each Ivy, about 6% acceptance rate (much lower for international students, who also follow a need-aware policy)
The Oxbridge - 3000/4000 applicants each, about 20%-30% acceptance rate

US citizens regularly turn down Ivies as they're unable to pay for it due to a lack of financial assistance/not getting a large enough scholarship/not getting a full ride/wanting to save money for grad school, which will look significantly better on a CV

You have no chance of getting a "full ride" with B's at GCSE
If you have all A* at GCSE, five A*'s at A-level and extracurriculars so good Oxbridge would give you an unconditional with a mentally impaired person's interview knock yourself out
If not, apply to less competitive but better Oxbridge, get a 1st in a subject you enjoy, go to Harvard grad school and come out on the other side with a better CV than the all A* at GCSE, five A*'s at A-level and extracurriculars so good Oxbridge would give you an unconditional with a mentally impaired person's interview student who managed to get an undergrad on a full-ride to UofChicago

Ivy League - 35,000 applicants to each Ivy, about 6% acceptance rate (much lower for international students, who also follow a need-aware policy)
The Oxbridge - 3000/4000 applicants each, about 20%-30% acceptance rate

Camford have about 30,000 applicants between them.

Also the 5 uni limit with UCAS is a key factor and tends to preclude every Tom, Deirdre and Mary from applying to Camford, whereas anyone with $80 can apply to as many Ivies and similar as they like (per application).

Right, so that's about 15,000 applicants each, meaning Ivies get about two and a half more applicants than Oxbridge. Cambridge also has an average acceptance rate of 20%, which is about equal to Chicago State, twice as high as Dartmouth and equal to any random private non-ivy college

But as I said, that's because far more of the US student population apply to the Ivies as a "long shot" application than apply to Oxbridge.

And someone applying to Harvard will also be applying to just about every other "top" university. That doesn't happen with Oxbridge (you can only apply to 1 or other). And if you extend "top" in the UK to the Top 10, you can only apply to 4 of them, whereas it's unlimited in the US...