How’s financial aid for international students at Northeastern University?

You should try to learn about the financial aid for undergraduate as well as graduate students as both of these have different types of grants, scholarships and requirements. Since international students are unable to qualify for US federal loans, they have to pay up more but they can ease off their burden by doing part time work by making some money. 

Students placed in the top 10%-15% of Northeastern University’s pool are given preference for competitive merit awards which is between $10000 and $25000. As an international, you wont have many funding opportunities. You can get financial relief through mostly these:

• As a University Scholar
• Need-based scholarships based on expected family contribution
• External Scholarships
• Merit and Talent based scholarships

If you enter as a university scholar, then you can get your entire tuition waived and you only have to incur costs on room, board and other personal expenses. For this, you should have an outstanding academic record in order to be selected. Ofcourse, this will be another challenge to be their top candidate in order to enter the college as a university scholar.

If your expected family contribution(EPF) is less than the actual tuition fees, then you may be awarded a scholarship or a grant which will help him cover up the remaining tuition. However, the EPF amount is low and there is no guarantee that the rest of your fees will be covered. You can get $5k- $15k in grant award for tuition.

As an International student, you may find it difficult to avail scholarships unless you have an excellent SAT/ACT score with an impressive extracurricular profile. You should work hard on making a good profile to stand a chance to win these scholarships. Students with good extracurricular activities get recommendations and get their fees waived off or whatever scholarships they have won.

You should contact the college regarding this in order to have better insights and options.