<p>I have been following the sticker shock thread with interest so I'm hoping that those you going through this process might be able to shed some light on which schools are the best candidate for Academic Merit awards. My daughter is an outstanding student and I'm really counting on academic scholarships for her. We are keeping our fingers crossed for high PSATs to perhaps get her into National Merit consideration. Her teachers feel she can do it. I know talent trumps academics in most instances for acceptance into the program, but I would like to make sure she includes schools that are known for being generous with merit scholarships since it appears most talent awards are meager and few and far between. </p>
<p>Pace was the most generous of my daughter’s acceptances, and I believe the entirety of the 2 awards was academic – she was notified of them when she was accepted academically (before she even auditioned for the school).</p>
<p>We got very good academic and talent aid from SCAD. They have automatic tiered aid that you can look up on the website. </p>
<p>Rider and Pace both offer academic merit aid</p>
<p>I know that Drew is not an MT school but my daughter got almost a full scholarship due to merit…</p>
<p>If you are interested in guaranteed merit for NMFs, there is a thread in that forum that lists all the awards.But in the new cc format, it doesn’t fit as a post so Bob Wallace is maintaining it externally. He has a link in the thread. </p>
<p>CCM- U Cincinnati gives $20K/yr to NMFs, about 1/2 COA if you are OOS.The scholarship is called ‘Cincinnatus’ and is guaranteed to 60. But they don’t get that many NMFs, so it’s not really competitive. Ten students get a higher competitive award, not necessarily NMFs. Another $7K/yr or so more. I presume there would be a music scholarship in addition?</p>
<p>My D is at ASU, in regular music though, not MT. ASU gives automatic full tuition/fees to all NMF, over 100 freshmen last year. NMFs ordinarily are in the honors college, Barrett, though it is not required. I inquired at the time and it is also possible to be in Barrett but live in the Herberger dorms if you want to be with all the arts kids. D is in a Barrett dorm(much nicer than Herberger dorm) and her floor is all Herberger kids. In addition, the music department does award a talent scholarship that stacks on the general ASU one. So it is a very good deal. They have something a bit different there, Lyric Opera. I can’t claim to know a thing about it. Don’t know how the ASU MT is generally regarded, but a recent grad of the regular theater program (I think?) is doing the Broadway musical lead of ‘Book of Mormon,’ so it seems possible to ‘make it’ from there.
<a href=“Help Center - The Arizona Republic”>Help Center - The Arizona Republic;
Their regular academic merit scholarship for good students who are not NMFs is $13K/yr.</p>
<p>Two of the most generous merit awards D received were from Oakland University (in Michigan) and Illinois Wesleyan University. (IWU may have been a merit/artistic combined now that I think about it) Ball State gave her the most merit/artistic combined award. Indiana U was the next most generous with Merit only award… just wish their OOS tuition wasn’t triple the IS.</p>
<p>We were disappointed that not only is COPA more expensive than regular Point Park tuition - but the merit awards listed on the website do not apply to COPA - and the merit award amount was not anywhere near comparable to the published merit awards on the PPU site.</p>
<p>We completely ruled out BOCO when we found out that they don’t give any merit aid. In my mind, D worked too dang hard for those grades and test scores to not get some reward for all that hard work!! She is not a NMF - but has a 4.0 unweighted and 31 ACT (32 superscored). I think she got some amount of merit award from every school that automatically grants. 2 schools here in Michigan (Michigan State and Western Michigan U) invite you to compete for scholarship money (one was her non-audition safety) Unfortunately, both competition dates conflicted with audition dates… so if either of these schools is on your list, keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Good luck to you - our experience is definitely that her grades and test scores are helping with the bottom line!!</p>
<p>Kategrizz, did you get your FA package from Ball State? We are waiting and when I phoned yesterday, they said they mailed them on Wednesday… </p>
<p>We got her talent notifications separately in the mail and we know she will qualify for the recipricol scholarship for anything above a 3.0… </p>
<p>My d is not a 4.0 or 32 ACT score like yours though…congrats to you!!! How proud you must be of YOUR D for managing rehearsals, concerts, plays, dance classes, schoolwork and this crazy audition process. My d really just prefers to sing, dance and is excelling nicely in senior foods class and pasty arts lol!! </p>
<p>The University of Oklahoma offers significant merit dollars, especially for NM finalists. Here’s a link to the current out-of-state award schedule for students entering as freshmen this fall: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ou.edu/content/dam/recruitment/Non-Resident%20Scholarships%20-%2011.26.13.pdf”>http://www.ou.edu/content/dam/recruitment/Non-Resident%20Scholarships%20-%2011.26.13.pdf</a></p>
<p>Baldwin Wallace, Rider and Wagner all gave significant merit awards.</p>
<p>Son isn’t a tippy top scholar, but his merit award and generous talent award from Otterbein brought the cost down to being equal to the cost of our in-state. </p>
<p>@futbrodmom I am VERY proud of her. Her Dad was a similar student, and her older sister as well. (I am sorry to say, that I could have been a better student had I applied myself in HS). </p>
<p>We did, however, talk her out of AP Calc her senior year! We knew the amount of school she would have to miss, and that that class would be exceedingly difficult to keep up. And she doesn’t need it! For MT! She took AP Micro and Macro Econ as an independent study instead to get her senior math credit. </p>
<p>No official FA package yet, but did get the scholarship awards from Ball State. </p>
<p>Got merit/academic awards from OU, Montclair, and Pace</p>
<p>We had the same experience as entertainersmom with Otterbein. Their merit-aid system is very transparent and generous, and they do allow students to stack academic and talent awards (not every school does that).</p>
<p>Our D was a high-stats kid, and the general rule of thumb we found was that the more academically selective the school, the less Merit money they offer. Guess it’s logical, since at top academic schools every kid would be deserving of Merit awards. Many of those top schools have huge endowments, though, so need-based aid can be extremely generous versus less selective schools.</p>
<p>Rider gave excellent Merit aide and a talent scholorship</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the excellent suggestions. I’m particularly happy to hear about ASU as that is definitely a top contender as my daughter likes the idea of being able to do both MT and Opera. And since we are in So Cal it is much closer to home, which I like! I appreciate all of the responses!</p>
<p>ASU has an excellent program. For the past few years my daughter has taken voice lessons from profs and grad students there, and she has received wonderful classical and musical theatre training.</p>
<p>WSU offers full in-state tuition, room & board, books and fees to NM Finalists and SEMI-finalists. CCM (U of Cincinnati) offers Full in-state tuition and room & board to NMFs. GPA and test scores not a factor in those awards. Other merit awards at WSU are clearly laid out on website.</p>
<p>IU offers $1000 to NMF. They also offer various other merit scholarships, some require separate application/essay. Ditto on @kategrizz comment about IU OOS being triple the in-state tuition.</p>
<p>Both merit and talent awards at Shenandoah max out at $25,000 and cannot be stacked above that. For maximum merit award at Shenandoah student needs to be ADMITTED to the school by February 1st - meaning fall or January audition.</p>
<p>The WSU award is for tuition only, not rm/bd/books. It does cover OOS tuition.
<a href=“Scholarships | Admissions | Washington State University”>Scholarships | Admissions | Washington State University;
<p>UCIncinnati award is tuition/fees/room for in-state, but NOT board. For OOS, additional $3,000.This is about 1/2 COA for OOS.
<a href=“Student Financial Aid - About UC | University of Cincinnati”>Student Financial Aid - About UC | University of Cincinnati;