I have been out of the game for a few years, but will be back in a blink of the eye with second child.
Have any schools upped or lowered merit $$ or is it the usual suspects still. It would be nice to simplify the next go around and not have this one apply to 17 schools.
Where are some of the best places to go if student has 33+ ACT and high GPA with APs, etc?
usual suspects at the moment:
auto merit: Bama, Arizona, New Mexico, Ole Miss, Miami OH
competitive: South Carolina, Clemson (has been lowered/much harder to get), Furman, some Florida schools, Pitt (harder/lower amt), Denison, plus a range of other ‘lower tier’ LACs
cohort scholarships: Vandy, UNC, Duke, BC, W&L, Richmond, Davidson, others…
I guess a lot depends on your budget. There are many schools where you can get down to $40/45k but far fewer for $25k. Also depends on what major and type of school is desirable.
Am sure others will chime in too!
Florida state schools like UCF will give a lot of merit money if you are a National Merit Scholar.
This could be changing.
From my perspective, there seem to be fewer ones offering merit $$ for high test scores/NMF than there were a few years ago, other than the ones mentioned below by @CollegeMamb0 as auto merit or competitive. You may have to try and access older lists of schools that awarded merit $$, and then go school-by-school for your specific schools of interest to dig out the updated merit information.
Texas Tech engineering has very generous auto merit.
Though the OOS NMF scholarships are likely changing at the Florida schools, FSU, UCF AND USF are going to continue to offer very attractive scholarships to students with the stats the OP mentions. Also University of Miami gives a lot of money still.
WVU has a matrix somewhere on their website. Plug-in your GPA/SAT and see what you get.
S21 got the in-state tuition waiver at FSU. Very affordable.
What’s the intended major? Any preferences on size or location? What’s your budget?
Are you sure about the University of Miami? They used to give out a lot of merit. Our friend’s daughter graduated this year and loved it. They had a matrix on their cost calculator. That changed a few years ago. My S20 was very disappointed. His stats would’ve gotten significantly more merit 2 years earlier. Did you mean Miami University in Ohio instead?
I’ve been through the last two cycles with S20 and S21. My thoughts are schools are moving more towards need based aid than merit. Also, the large scholarships start with SAT/ACT scores above 1500/34, also assuming a high GPA. It’s basically gotten more competitive, even in the span of 2-3 years.
Would like to keep the yearly cost at $15K could live with $20K. Was able to get that for D19 at MiamiOH, especially once she moved off campus. She would have preferred Pitt but $$$ weren’t there.
Not sure about major yet.
No talking about U of Miami at Coral Gables. My direct experience is a few years old but just reading the admit threads this year they are still giving awards of $20,000 to $30,000 per year and then also 60 or so full tuition Singer Scholarships. Competitive, to be sure, but better than similar schools.
Look at Ole Miss with a published table of scores/grades/awards and has an excellent honors college. It does have OOS kids but feels more southern than Bama or S.Carolina. Oxford is a great town too. I think our net price at Ole Miss was about $15k or less.
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