<p>They all seem to have pretty steep price tags. Looking at the websites, they do look like very appealing places to go, but without a nice merit scholarship these would be out of the question. Just wondering if any stuck out as being more affordable.</p>
<p>Name / % students receiving merit aid / Average award size</p>
<p>Denison / 51% / $13,331
Kalamazoo / 45% / $11,080
Birmingham-Southern / 43% / $11,985
Rhodes / 43% / $11,891
Hendrix / 42% / $18,931
Wooster / 41% / $14,407
Millsaps / 40% / $15,604
Ohio Wesleyan / 40% / $14,587
Austin / 38% / $8,965
Centre / 38% / $12,214
Eckerd / 36% / $9,328
Lynchburg / 35% / $9,020
Guilford / 33% / $8,000
Southwestern / 32% / $10,510
Earlham / 32% / $7,657</p>
<p>Thanks for that info. It will be nice to refer to this while comparing choices.</p>
<p>Holy-Moly!! If 40-50% of the students receive merit aid and some number also receive need-based aid (60% at many schools), who's paying full tuition?</p>
<p>Pretty interesting, isn't it? Some of these schools do a fair amount of gapping in their need-based packages. For instance, Eckerd meets 85% of need on average - not bad, but not spectacular. But others do a good job of meeting need too. Denison, for example, meets 99% of need.</p>
<p>Denison offered my son fantastic financial aid! Very pretty campus and nice staff, too.</p>
<p>New College of Florida may be the most affordable CTTL. It's a public LAC, and FL publics are inexpensive relative to the nationwide average cost at publics. NCF also gives merit money to many admits, and you can determine how much you qualify for on their admissions website.</p>
<p>Calreader do you have the numbers for Cornell College?</p>
<p>Cornell College has a high average award size: $10,350.<br>
% of students who receive merit aid: 23% (from 2006-7)</p>
<p>This average award size can be found both at the College Board (free) and US News ($15/year). On the College Board site, type in the college name, and once you get the college overview, choose the "Costs and Financial Aid" tab. Scroll down and you'll find the average non-need-based award size.</p>
<p>The harder info is the % of students who receive merit aid. US News used to have this, but now they don't. If a college makes its Common Data Set public, you can find it there in Section H (subsection H2A). I did a Google search on "Cornell College Common Data Set" and found that the college does put their CDS on their web site, though the most recent one available was for 2006-7. They give you two useful numbers: # of total undergrads and # of undergrads without financial need who received non-need-based aid. Then you divide to get the % you want.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info and for telling me how to find out on my own...1 of several new things learned today!</p>
<p>You're welcome :-). As you can see, I enjoy this kind of thing.</p>
<p>Calreader, you have made my day. Good job.</p>
<p>^^ Thanks :-).</p>
<p>One more thing - US News giveth as well as taketh away. Though they no longer show the % of students who receive merit aid at every college in their database, they now have a Top 100 list of the one hundred schools where the highest percentage of students receive merit aid. Some of the average aid amounts are small, some are large, but lots of students get it.</p>
<p>The US News list is here:
colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/most-merit-aid</p>
<p>Son's friend was rejected by OSU, but got a free ride to Denison.</p>
<p>Funny about Denison. While D got a $15k scholarship & a need based grant, the school was still more expensive & included more loans than the other CTCL schools (Rhodes, Centre, Hendrix) that all met our need with scholarships/grants/loans.</p>
<p>Hendrix is a bargain, BTW. Great scholarships, low cost (comparatively).</p>
<p>Toledo, that qualifies as absolutely freakish. Statistically speaking, that is. Denison accepts far fewer kids (39%/59%) and has higher ACT and SAT scores. Sounds like something went horribly wrong with that app to OSU.</p>