One more thing that would increase your chances at UT Dallas - you are out of state. They are looking to broaden their name, outside of Texas.
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ here’s every automatic merit aid school.
It really depends on the school and the scholarships. Most merit scholarships primarily focus on academic performance. After you reach the threshold, then they may look at something else. For major scholarships at UMich, you first need to have great GPA and scores, and then they would look at your EC. They simply cannot give scholarship to every student with ACT 35+ or SAT 2340+ with GPA 4.0.There are also some merit scholarships that added a need component to it.
For UIUC, you can pretty much forget about it. An OOS girl accepted to their ChemE program with GPA 4.0, ACT 35, 800s in SAT2 and 5 in 6 APs with NMF and state level award still got $0 merit aid.
For Purdue, they have around 1000 Trustees and Presidential scholarship each year. Your stat may give you a slight chance for the Presidential Scholarship ($5000-$10000/year). They also have merit scholarship with need component that may add another $10k/year.
For USC, the best way to get merit aid is by NMF which you don’t have.
@tigerrocks13 Thanks so much for this list, will really help me when I start to pick out colleges.
@billcsho Thanks for the input, I’ll probably have to broaden my horizons to find any decent merit based aid for out of state schools.
@gtaustin Thanks for the input, I might just apply and see what happens.
UW awards a merit scholarship (“Purple and Gold Scholarship”) to OOS U.S. students. You would be automatically considered for the scholarship and a likely recipient based on your stats. According to the UW website, “For autumn 2015, scholarship amounts range from $3,000 to $7,500 per year ($12,000 to $30,000 over four years) and were awarded to about one half of U.S. students who are not residents of Washington State.” The range of awards seems to fluctuate year by year. If I recall correctly, in 2014, the high end was $9,000 per year. Not a ton of money, but every dollar helps. Good luck!