We live in Colorado, and my daughter is a Junior with high ACT/SAT scores and straight A’s plus AP and honors. She is going to apply to CU Boulder & Mines, but she really wants to spread her wings and go somewhere out of state. We don’t qualify for much if any need-based $ and we are older parents and close to retiring, so we don’t want to spend an arm and a leg. What are some colleges out of state you all may know of that offer decent merit aid to nonresidents? In case anyone else is also searching for something similar, these are what we have found so far… Rice University recently started offering half tuition if you make under $200,000 a year, which is much better than most schools, although their tuition is pretty high to start with, and their acceptance rate is 10%. She loved Duke when we visited, and they do give out ~100 merit scholarships a year, but I hear that it’s pretty hard to get in there even if you do have a good student. And we can only afford Duke if she gets some very good merit aid. Ohio State University gives some generous merit aid to non-residents, so we are going to go visit them. Any other suggestions? She wants to do computer science, and doesn’t necessarily want to go to one of the schools that are all tech. She wants to have the fun college experience, but also go to a school that’s good and has a decent computer science program. Sidenote on OSU, they are Collaborating with Apple (https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-collaborates-with-apple-to-launch-digital-learning-initiative/ )which is pretty cool, for any others looking at computer science. Any suggestions or further information about the ones I’ve mentioned would be great!
Forgot to add that CU Boulder and Mines are both pretty pricey and even though we’re residents & may cost more than it would be for her to go out of state.
What are you able to spend? The SUNY schools in NY are reasonably priced ( relatively speaking) for OOS students, even without merit. Check out SUNY Buffalo and SUNY Binghamton. I would also look at Pitt, NC State, U of Delaware. Students seem to love Ohio State. I would not count on merit to Duke and similar schools. My friend’s son received $25,000 a year to Lafayette and I know somebody who was offered half tuition + a smaller award to Lehigh.
If you tell us what you can afford to pay you will get plenty of suggestions.
Well, if she wants to go to Alabama or Mississippi, most of the public universities in those states have large merit scholarships. There is also a private school in Alabama that has large merit scholarships (Tuskegee).
Some out of state schools may be low cost at list price or with WUE discount. South Dakota and New Mexico state universities could be candidates here, and these states have small engineering / mining focused schools as well.
Will she qualify for national merit?
Assuming not, some places to start looking - University of Alabama, Arizona State for bigger schools. If she wants a little smaller, a lot of the private schools that are ranked say about #50 and down give some merit aid. We just toured Case Western Reserve the other day and they have a decent CS department and give some merit aid.
We are in CO as well - schools where you can get cost down below CO in-state - University of Utah, Arizona (look at UA, ASU and NAU,) Montana State, University of New Mexico, Boise State, Wyoming, also SD schools.
Southeast - we loved Alabama’s campus and it was a frontrunner most of this year for S19 - great merit and extremely good co-op and internship placement, Ole Miss, Miss State.
My S19 went after some competitive merit and ended up with a full ride plus as a Distinguished Scholar at Delaware but was shut out of competitive merit at Maryland (received $12,000/year automatic merit)
Also, with regards to CO schools. If she possibly has a shot at being nominated for the Boettcher scholarship, even making it to semi-finalist will bring extra merit at both CU and CSU. S19 was a semifinalist and received increased offers from both
Shoot for the moon with Duke but understand very few kids get true merit there. Competitive merit is just that - competitive. You can search CC for threads that will give you an idea of how competitive it can get.
I think you will get more targeted help if you list her test scores, a target budget and maybe some preferences for parts of the country.
Good luck! I am in the same boat with S20 although he maybe just as happy at CSU as anywhere else. (Still 3 hours plus from home so still an “away” school for him)
My soon to be STEM daughter got really nice merit at Case Western, Grinnell, Kenyon, Macalester and Butler. She also got a great and totally surprising scholarship at Georgia Tech. We are OOS in CA. She has pretty darn good stats and visited CWRU, Grinnell and Macaslester.
You can look at the University of Rochester
Congrats on the full ride!! Thanks for all the helpful info
When searching for merit at LACs with the goal of CS, you want to explore the offerings. Kenyon, for instance, does not have a CS department or major.
University of Nebraska (Lincoln) has excellent OOS merit for high and even medium high stat kids. But not sure if I would abandon Boulder for Lincoln. Though I have met very happy kids who left high-cost Illinois for Lincoln, loved it, and stayed after graduation. I hear Wyoming and Montana are generous also.
Example: here is a list of merit scholarships at University of Arizona:
https://financialaid.arizona.edu/types-of-aid/scholarships/freshman-transfer
Scroll down for non-resident awards. The largest award is slightly less than non-resident tuition and fees.
It would be very helpful if you can tell us what you can spend. “Nice merit” at some of the schools mentioned only gets the cost down to around $40K. If your budget is $20K, for example, that isn’t useful.
https://raikes.unl.edu
Nebraska has a unique honors-college type program for very high achieving students who want a blend of computer science & business. They live in their own dorm, & typically get a combination of merit scholarships that is tough to beat.
Congrats on Georgia Tech!
Thanks so much to everyone for all the helpful insight - we have a lot of research to do on the great suggestions!
In-state costs in CO are $27K-$32K (for tuition, fees, room and board). If that’s “pretty pricey” then you’ll probably need to look for full tuition (or better) scholarships elsewhere and many of the schools cited above either won’t get you that, or will be an extreme reach for the required merit.
So focus on options like Boettcher in-state, auto merit schools (like Alabama) if you qualify, and apply for competitive scholarships (though without getting your hopes up too much). Note that Utah is more generous than Boulder when it comes to merit (including 30 full ride Eccles scholarships per year and full OOS tuition at ~34-35 ACT).
Boettcher is offered to only 20 girls and 20 boys. It focused on leadership, and its not worth bothering, unless your high school is up for one, they rotate who they give it to by high school. Boettcher usually gets awarded to premedical students, and students who want to become school teachers. Its rarely given to computer science majors, but occasionally. It involves extensive interviews. They award 80 finalists because so many Boettcher scholars turn down the full ride for a better offer out of state. Only 40 students can win in any given year. So if your student gets to the finalist round , they may still not win.
You can get IN STATE at U of Utah after one year. The requirements are the student stays the summer in Utah after
freshman year and gets a drivers license in Utah and also registers to vote in Utah, then in state tuition for years 2,3 and 4.
Case Western Reserve U in Ohio, offers Presidential awards of about 2/3 tuition, and a great CS program.
Ohio State is fantastic and offers OOS merit.
RPI offers girls a very big scholarship, even if they do not get the RPI Medial. RPI medial is awarded to juniors in Colorado and all 50 states, and often goes to girls.
On Rice, they tend to accept National Merit Finalists from Colorado and high test scores, so ACT of 35 and 36. Do you know if your daughter made the PSAT cutoff score? You can look at her PSAT score and compare it to last years finalists, in Colorado, to figure that out. Each state has a different score to win, Colorado is not as high as New Jersey or CA.
If she is a National Merit Finalist, then look at U of Texas Dallas, U of Oklahoma and U of Tusla, all could be nearly free!
U of Oklahoma Norman offers many full rides to NMF, including travel , books, room , board and tuition.
Vanderbilt offers excellent merit, and a lot of students win, more like hundreds of awards, instead of 20 Boettcher awards for in state Colorado full rides. and often, a bunch from the top Colorado high school students win merit at Vanderbilt one the years. (Fairview HS in Boulder and Niwot HS in Longmont have sent many students to Vanderbilt for huge discounts ).
To get into Vanderbilt requires a very high test score, 35 or 36 on the ACT. Need even more to win a merit award, so summer research, a science fair win, special talent in music, art , debate etc.
Vanderbilt has an arguably good engineering college, but not as good as Case Western or Duke.
No sane person would.