Several posts above are in the same neighborhood as (maybe influenced/informed by) this recent NYT magazine article, which I know has been discussed elsewhere on CC. If you aren’t up to speed on “financial aid optimization” algorithms and external consultants (I wasn’t, and I thought I knew a lot about the process) this is a pretty riveting read.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/college-admissions-paul-tough.html
Also check out University of Miami (FL). Lots of merit awards including 100 full tuition Singer Scholarships and some full COA Stamps.
@northwesty I took a look at the Kiplingers database that you linked to and am a bit confused. For example, it says the average non-need based aid for Pomona College is $5000 but that the average % receiving it is less than .5%. However, Pomona doesn’t give non-need or merit aid. What am I missing?
There are places that don’t advertise one big named full ride scholarship but that stack several and smaller ones together to equal a full ride or close to it. My kid had such a deal at our state flagship. It was unusual, but it does happen. NMF was about half of it and then the others were added on. This was her target school, but they knew she had other options so they came through for her.
Go right to the CDS to get this info, best not to use secondary sources: https://www.pomona.edu/administration/institutional-research/information-center/common-data-set
The 2018/19 CDS, section H2a, shows that 3 ug students (total, not just freshmen) received non-need based scholarships of $5K ($15K in total from second column H1, row 4) (note these are students without financial need). Not sure what those awards are, or if they are a ‘named’ scholarship. I am sure someone in their institutional reporting department could fill you in.
If you look at the second column of h2 (g) you will see that 1 student in the entire school with financial need received non-need based aid…the amount would be buried in the averages.
As you can see from @Mwfan1921 post above, the Kiplinger data base presumably is pulling the data right out of the CDS reports.
So pretty accurate and much easier to sort and research as compared to looking up a few hundred individual CDS reports. You can always go back to double check confirm later.
The thing I like best about Kiplinger is that it gives you (in one place) BOTH the how many and the how much. You really need both numbers to judge how a school operates.
Duke ($68k average) looks better than Tulane ($26k average) for merit initially. But not so much when you see Duke’s 4% of students vs. Tulane’s 56%.
“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”).”
Of course.
You have to be well above average to get merit money. But there’s thousands of colleges in the U.S. So every kid is above average at some school!
All my kids attended college with merit money even though they were quite different kids. One at a top 20, one at a top 50, one at a top 900.
Being way above average at a top 20 is obviously a much tougher thing than at a top 900.
Thanks! I am just trying to reconcile that with the schools saying themselves that they don’t give any merit aid. Can anyone shed any light on what possible situations could explain that?
@lemonlee Harvard is another example. In their CDS (https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2018-19.pdf) they have 4 freshman that got a total of $7k. Interesting, but not really worth figuring out why.
Sometimes athletic scholarships get mixed into the merit money numbers as well.
But it really isn’t worth it to try to figure out the odd scholarship.
Merit schools generally are loud/proud about their merit programs. And the no merit schools are also loud/proud about how they don’t do merit.
Some of the schools have private merit scholarships that are run through the aid office, but they are few and far between. I remember Harvard used to have one for ‘students named Murphy’ that was clearly a tax benefit in the old days so that someone could funnel money to dependents. NMF awards are sometimes the reason there is a small amount of merit aid showing up on the CDS.
These are such a small percentage of total aid and the chances are so low that they really shouldn’t factor into the decision of whether you can afford the school. Go for the big merit of 50% of tuition or $25k.
What i am getting conflicting anecdotes on is: does the applicant have to fill out the fafsa if they seek merit aid? We are not asking to be considered for financial aid since we wont get any. Also, not interested in work study or loans.
Some schools do require FAFSA to be considered for merit aid, many don’t…you have to check each school’s website. If the info is not there, call/email admissions and/or financial aid office and ask.
@cypresspat Good point about the percentiles and eye-opening explanation of the vicissitudes involved at any particular school in any particular year! Gosh, this is nerve-racking!
@northwesty I can’t believe I’d not seen that Kiplinger’s resource! I’ve been going by a Washington Post “aid for the affluent” table. It and Kiplinger’s overlap a lot, but not completely. I think I’ll ask my daughter about a couple of schools on there that look more generous than it seemed on the other list. Thank you!
@Itisatruth Whoa, thank you for linking that article. What’s surprising is how they can quantify and predict now. I guess it makes sense an industry has popped up to assist colleges, given that it’s big money. Also very interesting links to median incomes and outcomes at various schools the NYT posts interactively. A lot of that doesn’t make sense. Take Yale as an example. Median family income like 200K, and that median family spends $250K+ on a Yale degree. At 34, the median Yale grad has an income of $76K. Taking out taxes, health care & retirement deductions, etc., that’s a take-home of about $4,300/month. Considering what apartments rent for, especially places where a Yalie would like to live, and a car payment, that’s not much left to save for a house payment or deal with uncovered medical expenses. I’m not saying that’s not a nice income for a 34-year old, but this country seems to act like the Ivies are the golden ticket in life. And how many Yale grad over the 50th percentile are employed places with extremely high costs of living that eat their extra? And yes, while the medians from top colleges are much higher than for “lesser” schools, considering the work ethic, talent and family connections that help get one into an Ivy-Plus, those surely account for a lot of that difference. Reminds me of the study where the authors concluded where a student applied rather than matriculated was the best predictor of later earnings. I walk around feeling like a loser because we don’t feel anywhere near rich enough to pay $250-$300K for a bachelor’s degree, especially given her do-gooder career ambitions, but seeing the article you linked and the connected link at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/yale-university help! Thank you!