I’ve seen a few needle-in-a-haystack full-tuition merit scholarships offered a few places, but outside of those, everything I’m aware of seems to suggest top students (i.e. potential Ivy/T20 contenders) without financial need will probably get offers in the $25-35K “estimated costs of attendance” range at lower-ranked 4-year colleges and universities.
Does that sound about right? Anyone know of even better packages ever being offered?
There are the full COA awards given to National Merit Finalists. All those students aren’t Ivy/T20 students, but of course are good students.
Full tuition merit may be better than $20k merit at another school if the tuition is $50k. Students without need at will get no merit at all at an Ivy or at some other T20 schools if they don’t give much merit.
It’s really not dollar amounts that you should be concerned with but percentage of COA that is covered by the merit award.
Why assume those scholarships are “needle-in-a-haystack“? Quite a few schools offer auto merit full tuition scholarships for high stats/NMF students. And there are full rides that aren’t impossible to win for an average excellent student. You just have to look beyond scholarships like the Jefferson, Robertson and Stamps.
UT Dallas offers their AES scholarships to high stats kids, highest level is full tuition and fees plus stipend will leave your out of pocket cost for room and board and books at about $5K a year. This was our plan “B” if DS20 didn’t make National Merit.
We also looked at UA Huntsville, I believe they offered full tuition for high stats kids just leaving R&B.
Boston College has 15 full cost Gabelli scholarships. It’s a post acceptance process, competitive and invite only.
However it covers the 280k if you are awarded.
You receive 4 years housing, first pick of housing and lots of connection types of opportunity.
If your student can deal with a LAC environment, consider the very generous Johnson Scholarship at Washington and Lee, which covers at least tuition, room and board for about 10% of the class:
https://www.wlu.edu/admissions/apply/first-year-applicants/the-johnson-scholarship
@fatdog11 I don’t think you are asking for suggestions of named scholarships. I could be wrong, but I think you are asking for typical discount rates (given in $COA) for a high stats kid at a lower ranked (say, t50+). school? So, what would a 4.6 GPA, 1500 SAT, full compliment of rigorous classes and ECs, expect to pay at a, say, regionally known, very well-respected LAC? Amirite?
Go down the selectivity scale to find more, including automatic-for-stats full tuition or better. For example:
https://www.tuskegee.edu/programs-courses/scholarships/freshman-scholarships
https://www.pvamu.edu/faid/types-of-aid/scholarships/university-scholarships/
https://www.aamu.edu/admissions-aid/financial-aid/scholarships/index.html
https://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships/freshmen/freshmen-non-al-merit-tuition-scholarships
In general, the biggest merit scholarships are offered to what the college considers the most desirable admitted students. So if the college is already a reach for the student, its biggest merit scholarships are several levels up in reachiness. But it may be more realistic for a student to see if colleges which are likely or safety for admission (i.e. where s/he would be one of the top applicants) have large enough merit scholarships available.
Exactly, cypresspat, thank you! I should have said that full or near-full COST scholarships–those subsidizing room and board for children of the relatively affluent–seem pretty rare.
For example, looks like just 1.8% of Boston College freshman are awarded the Gabelli–and that’s a very competitive pool to begin with. The rarity of these types of scholarships are not surprising, since I can’t imagine that NOT ONLY waiving the tuition BUT ALSO subsidizing the living costs of relatively affluent students, no matter how accomplished and talented they may be, is part of the mission of any college or university. Generous donors seem to have set up a special program here and there for such students, but they appear to be quite rare as a percent of students awarded, and for good reason.
I may stand corrected, though. Interesting that Washington & Lee pays full cost for about 10% of students and that UT Dallas’ total costs could run as low as $5K/year.
Based on other replies, looks like cost of attendance for top students can get down below the range I estimated–for example, $18.4K at UA Hunstville and $22K at Arizona State. The UA Huntsville and AS numbers maybe just reflect lower cost of living/providing room and board in those areas, so that’s not too surprising.
In terms of our personal situation, I sure would like to know the best deals (outside of specific scholarships) the type of students you describe have been offered at a “regionally known, very well-respected LAC.” One of those is actually my daughter’s top choice, and she’s applying to a couple of others as well. Could we expect any to beat the Net Price Calculator if they like her enough, bringing the total cost down to the state flagship? Does that ever happen? If so, what’s the best deal someone without need has been given?
But I’m also just curious about those kinds of UT Dallas and Washington & Lee situations. My daughter’s school counselor told my daughter she should be able to “go to college for free or even get paid some places.” When pressed, though, the counselor couldn’t point to any specific schools she knows have done that for students like mine. But then again, I didn’t know about UT Dallas and Washington & Lee subsidizing affluent high-achievers either, so maybe she’s right and they are out there.
It wasn’t mentioned explicitly in post 1, but also consider the Florida schools if your daughter makes NMSF. University of Florida, Florida State University and the Honors College at University of Central Florida are all excellent schools and would be free rides (room and board too) through the Benacquisto program. It’s automatic, conditional on acceptance, which is assured at all except perhaps UF (but very, very likely for NMF).
University of Richmond also gives full rides to about 3-4% of its entering class I think, which should be much easier to attain than BC, for instance.
@fatdog11 What does your daughter want to study? Can you give us her SAT (or ACT) score and her unweighted GPA? Do you have a specific budget in mind?
Trinity in San Antonio offers 20 full ride scholarships which is close to 3% of entering freshman.
That sounds about right IME.
IIRC University of Rochester offered many different options in merit aid. Some were quite generous, including full ride.
Mount Holyoke awards around 20 full tuition scholarships a year. On their website you can see the averages of students who got merit (although it’s not specific to which scholarship… they have a few categories). Grinnell used to give out full tuition but I’m not sure if it’s still offered. Case Western used to have some as well.
University of New Mexico offers a free ride (tuition, fees, room & board, books, transportation allowance) to all NMFs.
There’s also the competitive Regent’s Scholarship awarded to 25 students/year. It’s the same free ride as the NMF scholarship. Eligibility for the Regent’s starts at 31ACT/1390SAT and a 3.9 GPA.
This database is the most helpful way I’ve found to get a read on how many/how much merit aid is available at different schools.
Let’s take a look, for example, at selective (less than 30% admit rate) privates. You very quickly see who the big merit players are.
Of course, you have Tulane. 56% of kids without need get non-need based aid. And the average merit award is $26k. Sticker price is $70k with $57k tuition. So you can see that Tulane is doing a decent number of 25-50% tuition awards, with a nice chunk of full tuition awards mixed in too.
Compare that to the profile of Duke. Only 4% of the kids get the merit awards, but those awards at FAT – $68k average award. So Duke does a very very few merit awards (i.e. Robertson), but those extremely hard to get awards are total full rides.
The other big players in this band are easily identified – USC (28%, $20k), Vandy (20%, $24k), and Rice (18%, $21k). If you drill down, you’ll see that Vandy for example does mostly full tuition (CV, Ingram, Chancellor) awards, but then mixes in a bunch of much smaller awards (which brings the average down).
UChi has very high 26% of kids getting awards, but the dollars are low – $9k average. ND is 9% and $13k; Emory is 8% and $27k. Because ND’s awards top out at $25k while Emory does the full-ride Woodruff’s.
For stat driven auto-awards, the typical range at most privates is 25-50% of tuition. To get more, it is typically a competitive scholarship process requiring a separate application and (sometimes) scholarship interviews.
When you get into the competitive schollies, they go from very very hard to get (like at Vandy) to ridiculously hard to get (like at Duke). Outstanding mere mortal kids can get merit awards at Vandy; while only potential future Rhodes Scholars or future cancer-curers get merit awards at Duke.
https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-best-college-values-college-finder/index.php#Table
“When you get into the competitive schollies, they go from very very hard to get (like at Vandy) to ridiculously hard to get (like at Duke).”
Only if you confine your search to top 40 schools. There are other competitive scholarships which I wouldn’t classify as “very very hard to get” (just “difficult to get”). For example:
https://park.ncsu.edu/
https://www.centre.edu/brown-fellows/
https://honors.utah.edu/admissions/eccles-distinguished-scholarship/
There are many private colleges (definitely not top 50 or so) where almost none of the students pay list. Everyone talks about a bunch of named scholarships here on CC, but most ‘scholarships’ are really just discounts. And the concept is simple. Colleges are judged by the quality of the students who go there. They know they have a brand. They know that the market has a number in mind that they think they are worth. Admins every year try to figure out how to spend those $ (the allowable discount pool which won’t throw the college into bankruptcy) in a way to at least match last year’s stats. Hopefully raise them. So, what’s an admissions dept to do? Give out x full rides for fabuloso kids, or, 2x half rides for excellent, but not fabulous kids? The fabuloso kids are tough to snag; they have many options. The almost fabuloso kids have stats just above the 75th percentile. A 99th percentile kid doesn’t move your stats any more than a 76%ile kid. (Because 25th/75th-iles are reported, not means.). The 99th %ile kid costs twice as much as the 76th%ile kid. Which is a better strategy for moving your stats?
Colleges change their strategies ALL the time (even within a given admit year). So for the high stats kid hunting for merit, you gotta spread the apps around.
The ‘named’ scholarships are mainly for marketing. The much larger amount of money is doled out to build a class. $10k for kids in this range, $18k for kids in that range, etc. They have set formulas; they know what % of applicants, with certain stats for certain majors, will take the offer at $10k, and at $18k.
This is somewhat like landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier. Overshooting and undershooting are both bad. Having too many kids take high scholarships than expected is bad. Having too few Lower (but still strong) kids enroll is bad, too.
It comes down to their revenue needs. Not hitting it has major repercussions for the college for a while. An ‘unprofitable class’ has to be made up for in the next year. Thus, , strategy shifts. A really good revenue year can mean an especially generous year following. (They try to buy a lot of strong kids to improve their brand). Those are the years where you hear about a strong kid paying less for the well-respected LAC than the state flagship.
Make no mistake, being in charge of enrollment for a private non-top 50 college is as stressful as being a bomb defuser.
For parents, this is the game. Your kid can go to a lower brand college for less because he/she raises he school’s brand.
My hands are somewhat tied as my kid wants an engineering major and that rules out almost all LACs. And our state flagship (tOSU) is the deal of the century, and our kid’s safety happens to be his #1. But he is a high stats kid, and if he wanted to be an economics major, you bet he would be checking out the schools where he’s the 76th percentile. Problem is with high stats kids…those are elite schools which happen to be the ones who play this game very differently. So high stats kids face yield control issues and have to ensure they learn a lot about the schools they are applying to. Yield control is real. Revenue management is king. If a college feels a high stats kid is too expensive that year, they’ll pass in a bunch of them. Being the 99th %ile is either a great place to be, or the worst. Not that much in-between.
As far as I know, there is only need based aid, no merit scholarship of any kind at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, U Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford, MIT, CIT, Amherst, Williams or Pomona. Even National Merit Scholars don’t get any money there anymore.
Among top 20 schools, only Duke, Rice, Vandy, U Chicago, NU and USC still offer some merit scholarships. These are probably best bets for no aid eligible families. Even if you don’t get full tuition, even a 20-30K per year scholarship can be a blessing considering their high cost for upper middle class families. You can attend a top college at a rather affordable cost. These are highly competitive scholarships.
If you are are looking for auto full tuition or full rides then you’ll have to go much lower, most schools offering those don’t even make top 100 so basically just buying applicants who wouldn’t consider going there if they had to pay a dime there.