Although this link says it’s all “full-ride” scholarships some ARE full-rides (tuition, room & board) while others are tuition only or tuition and some enrichment funds. Also, even if a college offers a Stamps scholarship, at some schools it’s a full ride and at others it’s tuition. As with any third party links, make sure to double-check on each university’s website, as details may have changed since the article was published. Although there are some very well-known schools on this list, there are also some that don’t get as much attention. Schools that don’t get as much attention are likelier sources of a full ride, as there is less competition.
From some of the schools I mentioned above, these offer full rides for which I think you could be competitive:
If you’re a Louisiana resident, it’s a full ride, but if you’re not a resident I think it comes out to about $7500 or so that isn’t covered by the scholarship. I believe @2plustrio’s S23 received it.
Check Washington state resources, such as a separate tool for searching for private scholarships, when one creates an account:
“ Smarter Scholarship Matches
theWashBoard.org is your free online resource for finding scholarships that match your needs. Create a profile and let us do the rest.
Whether you’ll be attending in state or out, you save time by entering your profile once and letting us find the scholarship opportunities that fit. theWashBoard.org is spam-free and will never sell your information.
Also, Washington State offers some full tuition awards (which I did not see any of on Western Washington’s site), so that might be another school to research further.
Rhodes is also one of my favorite LACs to suggest to those on a merit hunt. However, they no longer have the full ride merit scholarship (Bellingrath?). They no longer have an association with that foundation. We found that out with my D21.
Another nice thing about Rhodes is they will stack some Fellowships scholarships on top of other merit awards.
Although OP’s original list was filled with small liberal arts colleges, there just aren’t that many that offer linguistics as a major. From College Navigator (the feds’ site that uses IPEDS data), there are 36 colleges with fewer than 5k undergrads that offer student housing that indicate they offer a major in linguistics (source). There are some, like Earlham and Furman, that when you go to their website, that seem to have stretched (or no longer have) a major. Furman offers a minor while Earlham’s major in Comparative Languages and Linguistics is not what I would generally consider a linguistics major, but perhaps an expert like @dfbdfb would judge otherwise.
Schools like Brandeis, Bucknell, Macalester, Bryn Mawr, Pitzer, and Scripps, though they offer merit aid, don’t offer full tuition scholarships, much less full rides. Lawrence only offers up to half-tuition. Rhodes, at present, doesn’t seem to offer a major or minor in anything linguistics related.
I guess I have a couple of questions for @meeshmash:
How important it is to be able to major in linguistics vs. having a a small school, preferably with a liberal arts atmosphere?
How do you feel about schools with religious affiliations and a more religious atmosphere on campus?
If you are open to more religious/conservative colleges, you could look to see if any full rides are offered at schools like Calvin (MI), Cedarville (OH), Gordon (MA), or Union (TN), all of which seem to have (relatively) popular majors in linguistics. There seems to be a struggle right now between the board of trustees and the faculty/students at Seattle Pacific (the former more conservative and the latter more liberal), but Seattle Pacific does have 5 full-tuition scholarships available, and my sense is that overall it is not as conservative as some of the earlier schools mentioned in this list, though I could well be wrong about that.
Be aware that linguistics programs at Christian colleges (eg Gordon & Cedarville) might be heavily focused on the type of linguistics study that is needed for Bible translation. I’m not familiar enough with linguistics programs to know how applicable this is to other branches of linguistics, but definitely look into the details of the programs first.
An issue is that the most generous schools are also those with the highest sticker price. At many “top” colleges, if your family makes 125K or less, you automatically get a full tuition scholarship. Financial aid covering books, housing, etc. will vary depending on how much less than 125K your family makes. Yet these colleges tend to cost 80K+… so if you look at the “sticker price”, they look exorbitant, when in reality they may be the most affordable.
You’re correct that each school will look at your CSS Profile and determine, based on their own formula, how much you “need”. So, you need to run the NPC on each of them.
Also, some colleges ‘package’ the loans already whereas others don’t (in hat case you CAN borrow the federal student loan amount, subsidized - 2.5K max- and/or unsubsidized - 3.5Kmax- on top of that “no-loans” financial aid).
My advice would be to run the NPC on UW, WWU (your likeliest “other safety”), Whitman, Dickinson, Brown, and Vassar. Look at the “net price”. Is it affordable everywhere?
Then compare the results to Connecticut College, Wheaton (MA), Willamette, Lewis&Clark, Fordham, etc.
YOU will only be allowed to borrow 5.5K for freshman year. Anything else will have to be borrowed by your parents.
I didn’t read the entire thread, but there are also Universities that allow you to design your own major in the Honors Program. One that I am familiar with is Baylor (which I understand isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but there are others as well) which calls it the University Scholars program. I will note that I have heard from students that it seems going that route is only of value if you are planning on going to grad school. You would likely receive generous merit aid as well.
In post 73 he said he has run some MyIntuition calculators and they are coming out with family contributions between $25K & $30K. The MyIntuition calculators are not as accurate as the “regular“ NPCs, but it does look like schools will generally expect his family to make some contribution more than the amount he will be able to borrow himself.
Do they consider it’s not their responsibility to pay for your education or do they think there are big scholarships for top students such as yourself?
(Their attitude toward this is likely to orient how we can help you)
Have you run the NPCs on public universities in the state?
how do your parents feel about these costs?
How aware are they of college costs (ie., to pu it bluntly, most middle class families are expected to pay 30K, full rides have almost vanished, and unlike when we were going to college it’s no longer possible to “pay your way through college”).
(Enough parents don’t realize how expensive college has become and think their kid should do as they did, loans+part time job+frugal living)
Are they willing to take loans for you?
(ie., do they know you can only borrow 5.5K - and public universities WILL package that into your FA package; you cannot borrow more than that because the total amount is roughly what college graduates can pay back over 10 years. Anything else needs to be borrowed by people with collateral, ie., parents.)
Do you live near a commutable college?
Do you know if they make 125K or under (ie., you’d automatically qualify for a full tuition scholarship at a lot of elite LACs, and a “full tuition” scholarship may sway your parents?)
If you run the NPC on various colleges - Mount Holyoke was a good suggestion because they offer merit as well as need based aid, so running that would give you a good idea whether it’d be possible. Same thing with Whitman.
By selecting the correct courses, yeah, you’d get what I’d call a linguistics major. However, it really does seem to be more of a comp lit major at heart—it would be way easier to end up with that as the primary focus.
But a “linguistics and a language” major is a very normal way of doing undergrad linguistics—and, in fact, it’s what I did myself at Maryland (where that’s still offered as an option, all these decades later).
But reading through the thread, the OP needs heavy merit aid? High-price colleges often offer comparatively lots of merit aid, though $50k off an $80k sticker price is still worse than $10k off $35k, so your mileage may vary with that approach. The problem is that LACs tend to have high sticker prices (aside from a very few of the public LACs), and meaningful merit discounts can be hard to come by. There are public colleges that offer stats-based OOS tuition waivers on top of other scholarships, but not only are they generally not LACs, they’re not very likely to be the flagships people discuss a lot here on CC, aside from a few Southern flagships.
So the combination of your geographic and college type restrictions places you in a bit of a bind.
Which leads to a couple thoughts related to coming from Washington: First, the University of Washington is not a reliable safety, even aside from the competitive entry to comp sci others have noted. You may be dreaming of New England, but you need to be realistic given your other restrictions, so look at WUE colleges, and take some time looking at Washington State, Western Washington, and also Evergreen State—WWU and WSU have a lot of what you seem to be looking for aside from the LAC vibe, and Evergreen doesn’t offer linguistics despite having a department with that word in its name, but they seem to check several other of your boxes.
I do live in commuting distance of UW, but my parents and I definitely want me to have a residential college experience. I believe it’s $0 toward any school. I can probably ask if they would be willing to contribute at least a little, but that’s kind of an uncomfortable conversation as they’ve already spent so much money on me.
I get that everyone is enamored with the “residential college experience” but at some point, the realities of what you can finance on your own, how much you can borrow on your own, and how much institutional aid you can expect are going to collide.
I do prefer not to go to the South - but that’s really just a climate preference, definitely something I can get over. I’m broadening my search to the South since several people have mentioned schools in the region.
Understood, I will keep this in mind. I am very grateful that there are affordable options for my situation, but I don’t want to give up on my dreams of an elite college just yet.
Thanks. I think it’s a combination of factors: 1. They want me to be self-sufficient— their parents never paid a dime towards their education. 2. I have two younger siblings who aren’t as academically high-achieving as I am and thus in their eyes have less of a chance of scholarships. 3. They think very highly of me and my academic and extracurricular achievements. If I’m being totally honest they might be overestimating the accessibility of big merit awards. I’m trying to explain that there are limited schools that offer full-rides, and even when they do, that they’re very competitive, but they keep encouraging me to apply to my dream schools just in case.