Yes, but these colleges are not within the Top 50 that give merit which was the original question. These colleges are more like #81 - 106 according to Forbes which takes into account all colleges and IMO offers a better ranking than US News.
And the three colleges above are private and expensive even with significant merit.
@socaldad2002: Maybe so, but OP listed these specific schools in the opening post.
@socaldad2002 My definition of T50 is pretty loose haha, I listed those three schools as places I’m interested in applying at the top of the post.
Not to be nosey but would you list the safeties if you don’t mind? Gives a better picture and there are too many threads on CC that start with “I didn’t get into any schools including my safeties”…because the safeties weren’t actually safeties.
My bad…carry on…
Look into the following:
Robertson Scholars Program at Duke
Cameron Impact Scholarship at any college/university
Coolidge Merit Award at any college/university
Hertz Fellowship
Rice has a long list of scholarships on their website.
@chmcmm Mount Holyoke, Occidental, DePaul U, UIUC. I would consider Brandeis a safety too. Also applying to Boston U and USC, which are targets but I’m guaranteed half-tuition scholarships if I get in.
No one can accurately predict if a given poster here is going to get into the most selective colleges, let alone get merit money from them. Of course, one should try— if possible. As I said in above post, some of these schools automatically include all applicants for these awards and do not permit direct application or lobbying for these awards. One can research the awards and who has gotten them and work on the applications to best showcase features that appear to be the sort that attract these awards or are in common amongst those who have gotten them. But, the odds are very low on getting money from these schools. CMU, last I looked, no longer gives merit money though they may direct accepted students to private award programs. Of course, things change from year to year, so one has to research what is current.
If OP know what the school budget is for the family, and also understands what schools are expecting the family to pay, it comes down to big merit money, if OP is going to be able to go to a private school or to the higher end OOS public schools outside of ones state. UIUC is an excellent school and will be hard to beat for the price. With the resume the OP has, it is also far more likely that Illinois will come up with some scholarships to further lower the cost from sticker price, than the OP will get one of those very competitive scholarships from top schools. It is also likely that a number of private snd OoS public schools will come up with scholarships to rival or even beat UIUC costs, but UIUC may still be preferable if OP is looking at ratings and reputation.
You are lucky that one of your safeties, UIUC, is also a T-50 in your field. However, as you probably know, they suck at financial aid, even for residents.
However, you should look at Wisconsin and UMN, bot have top programs in economics, and both have better merit funding than UIUC.
Northeastern and Boston University also have scholarships for National Merit Finalists, as does Tulane.
University of Southern California also has some merit money.
Princeton.