<p>I'm hoping to get into and possibly get merit $$ from Davidson, Vanderbilt, U of Richmond. I'm from New England but want to go South. Other ideas? especially quality schools with merit? </p>
<p>Stats:
SATI V 670 M 800 (1470 total)
AP Jr year: US History (5), English (4)
AP Sr Year: English, Calc, Physics plus European History as independent study. (My school has block schedule so it's tough to fit in more.)
SAT II - US History (750), Writing (680) and Math (740)
Major EC is track - three seasons entire time at HS.<br>
Weighted GPA is about 4.0
Rank is about 11% (just missed top 10%) - Freshman year wasn't great.</p>
<p>What are my chances at these schools and other recommendations? Thanks</p>
<p>davidson is mostly athletic scholarships, even though they don't talk about it. A cheap school with really good merit aid is washington and lee, maybe substitute them for each other</p>
<p>Duke gives good financial aid and is the best southern unversity. Might look at W&M and Richmond. While not southern, might try some Patriot League Schools like Holy Cross or Bucknell. Holy Cross gives merit aid.</p>
<p>Check Rhodes College in Memphis (unrelated to the scholar) It has better merit aid. Congrats for heading south. Really fine schools get ignored. My mom says look at Wake Forest and Furman (doesn't know about the merit aid)</p>
<p>If you're looking for merit aid at Southern schools, check out Sewanee (where I live!). Its academic quality is superb. The student body is pretty unappealing for the most part, but there are some serious students. You're a great candidate for merit aid there. Rhodes, in Memphis, is about the same story. Also consider UGA-- Athens is great, and it's a good school. Milsaps would almost certainly fund you, as would Birmingham Southern.
Also, I'd say that merit money at Vandy and Richmond are not out of the question.</p>
<p>Fiddlefrog - why is the student body at Sewanee unappealing? My daughter is considering it, but we visited in the summer when there weren't any students.</p>
<p>fireflyscout, the Sewanee student body is the most drunken I've ever seen-- and I've seen quite a bit. It's a very homogenous group in many ways, dominated by upper-middle-class to outright aristocratic white kids from the South. They are, in my opinion, mostly a lazy, spoiled bunch. Sewanee's selectivity is not at all commensurate to its quality, which results in some frustrated professors, who have to deal with many mediocre students.
All that said, the professors are really amazing for the most part, and tend to be very generous with their time with more serious students. There are some interesting students at Sewanee, no doubt, especially in the Chemistry, Geology, and foreign language departments. The English department has top-notch faculty but for some reason attracts a lot of slackers as majors.
Frankly, visiting the campus during the summer is a mistake. The campus is full of writers, there for the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and musicians, there for the Sewanee Summer Music Festival (my beloved summer home), both nationally known programs. If you visit during the summer, all you see is the gorgeous campus and the vibrant conference life. You should have your daughter visit during the school year, and decide what she thinks of the social atmosphere and the classes.</p>
<p>south05, after another look at your stats, it occurs to me that I know someone with lower SAT scores (but higher GPA) who's on scholarship at Davidson. You have a shot.</p>