as an academic scholar who also gets involved with various activities, how good do you have to be to get into top schools with financial aid?
The schools that offer needblind financial aid to NZ students are: Harvard Yale Princeton MIT and Amherst. This is a pretty broad question, so if anyone has other opinions please feel free to comment. But I’d say in general you would want aim to be in the top 5% of your class, and have achievements and involvements/leadership experience that are outside the school, perhaps on a national or international scale.