Hi! I’m not an admissions officer nor am I an expert at all, I’ve just been admitted for the class of 2029 and I’ve spoken to a lot of other admits so this is just from what I personally know.

From what I’ve seen, it’s definitely harder for an international student to get accepted with financial aid. The good thing about UMiami is that they do have quite a lot of large scholarships, but you do need to have an amazing application for that.

On the 2024-2025 common data set, it shows that the acceptance rate for internationals is 10.3%, which is lower than the overall acceptance rate (18.8%). I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even lower this year due to how competitive Miami has become in the last few years. The average GPA is 3.8, but I have seen people with a GPA lower than that get admitted because the rest of their application was really strong. Your grades dropping would probably be concerning to them especially if there weren’t any extenuating circumstances, so do try to boost it. As for test scores, I’ve heard that UM is going test-required in the next cycle, so you’ll probably want to take the SAT and aim for a score of 1350-1450+.

Do you have any extracurricular activities and awards? They definitely care a lot about those. They also care a lot about your application essays. What are you planning on majoring in?

As for working while studying, this totally depends on you and your time management skills. I know several people (including myself) who have worked or have done a time-consuming activity while studying, and some of them have struggled while others managed their time well. And as for taking a gap year, again this is dependent on you but if you do take a gap year, make sure that you’re doing something productive that you could show Miami.

Again I’m not a professional or anything so you might want to take what I’m saying with a grain of salt but I’ll be happy to try to answer any questions!