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<p>*Like you I have a top stats kid and like your family, we are “rich” Our S will be going to our state flagship in the honors program with almost a full ride in merit money. We know he will go to grad school so we now have 4 years warning to save every penny. *</p>

<p>Our older son did the same thing…took the near-full ride at a flagship. Younger son also got a lot of merit…full-tuition plus $4500 per year. </p>

<p>Right now, I’m sitting at a Starbucks outside of a Top 20 National U while son is visiting with profs. He’s been offered a free ride for their PhD program…full tuition plus a large stipend. Every school he’s applied to has given similar offers. </p>

<p>Now, I know that not all grad programs offer merit. And, certainly many professional schools (law/med/business) don’t either. We expect to pay out big time when younger son goes to med school in 2 years.</p>

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<p>So much for the notion that the big state schools don’t have merit money to give away. And full ride! (Just not UIUC, it seems. No surprise given the way Illinois has managed its budget–even before the Great Recession.)</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>Many flagships do not give huge merit, but some do. Some only give competitive scholarships. And, some only give the big bucks to instate students. My kids’ flagship gives the money to anyone with high stats…instate, OOS, and int’l. If you have the stats, you get the merit. Last year’s frosh class had over 500 students with full tuition scholarships (ACT 32+) and about 125 on near-full-ride NMF scholarships. Another large number were given 2/3 tuition scholarships for ACT 30/31 or SAT equivalent. </p>

<p>Doing this puts a lot of strong students’ feet on the campus. The win/win for the school is amazing. It’s much easier to attract better STEM profs when they know that they will have a class full of high stats kids. Rankings improve, alumni/donors are happy, and everything gets better. </p>

<p>The issue is funding…schools really can’t use tax payer money for such offerings, so they have to find well-heeled donors to underwrite these scholarships. The school president said that the scholarships cost $60M per year. The state isn’t paying for that and neither are OOS rates. The money is coming from donors.</p>

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<p>Mom2 - you know someone’s going to ask. What college is that that gives full scholarship to ACT 32+? Thanks!</p>

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<p>^^^ University of Alabama for one. I think Auburn has similar scholarships, and there are other schools in the south with similar programs.</p>

<p>Check out the Presidential Scholarship:</p>

<p><a href=“http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html[/url]”>http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I’ve been told it is automatic - meet the scores, meet the application deadline, and you get it.</p>

<p>Unfortunately our state flagship is pretty stingy with merit aid. My S got a small scholarship, but I couldn’t convince him to go to the deep south for the big money.</p>

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<p>Bama gives full tuition scholarship for an ACT 32+ and a 3.5 GPA (including weighted and all classes). This includes OOS tuition. If your school doesn’t weight GPA, then you can have your GC write your weighted GPA on your transcript and Bama will accept that. </p>

<p>This is an assured scholarship as long as you apply by Dec 1st of senior year…and submit the scholarship app and send scores/transcript. Bama doesn’t super score and the last ACT score it will accept is Oct of senior year…and the last SAT score it will accept is Nov of senior year for scholarship consideration. However, any score before those deadlines is fine, too. </p>

<p>Also, if you major in Engineering or Comp Sci, and you have an ACT 30 or above, you will also get full tuition. And you’ll also get an additional $2500 per year. (SAT equivalent as well).</p>

<p>Auburn gives a 2/3 tuition scholarship for that score.</p>

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<p>Wayne State University in Michigan also gives full rides to top students regardless of income. My next door neighbor got one. It’s a decent school and even has a Med school.</p>

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<p>There are also schools that offer in state tuition to OOS students based on scores and GPA. Clemson was one but I think they offer 2/3rd off now. For those who are flexible, there are lots of deals for top students. Parents would be wise to “help” students love those schools rather than stand by as they fall in love with that $60k school.</p>

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<p>I am sympathizing with this thread. The cost of upper tier schools puts our top achiving kids in a tough spot. They have been working hard to achieve success in high school, and separated themselves from the “herd”. Their competitive nature, and our society drives them to want a highly selective college, but most of these are 200k -a ton of dough for most families.</p>

<p>From a purely financial perspective, its a dis-incentive to perform well. (with exception of the top-top students who get merit from the top schools). </p>

<p>Granted some states (ie Michigan) have top publics - others are good but not special. The special kid wants a special school, they only do college once.</p>

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<p>A disincentive to perform well? I certainly hope not! If a student is doing his or her best strictly for the reward of going to a private expensive school, then shame on them and the people responsible for reinforcing that. That sense of entitlement will not serve them well in search for a school or anything else in life. We have to stop convincing our kids that price tag equals value. Friends of my D insisted on considering nothing but expensive private schools even though many of them had inferior academic reputations to our state schools. Some of the parents who made a hobby out of bashing the local public schools don’t have to wonder about the source of that mindset.</p>

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<p>We have a family friend who took the ride at the flagship (2340 SAT, 8 APs, many awards, research and publications while still in HS). Got interviews for fully funded grad programs with H, P, MIT, JHU, Duke and a couple of others. Decided yesterday to accept an offer for a fully funded PhD PLUS an extra fellowship award. Got NSF funding, too.</p>

<p>Makes me wish we’d pushed S1 a little harder on the full ride he was offered.</p>

<p>I agree that high schools do not do a good job of educating parents about the reality of costs. I suspect some are afraid of directing kids to options based on SES and don’t want to be caught in that. I was asked to give the parental perspective about the college app process to a group of junior parents at the end of S1’s senior year. All I talked about was money. When I told them their FAFSA would likely show an EFC of 1/3 of their pre-tax income, you could hear the gasps.</p>

<p>Dumbparent, it’s not like WashU and W&M are slacker schools, and they will cost you less. We know kids who attended both and they were very challenged. You’ll also find that the midwestern flagships have a lot of tippy top kids. There is not as much of a flight to elite privates there as on the east coast (in part because the midwest flagships are so strong to begin with!).</p>

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<p>I echo concern at this apparent feeling of entitlement to attend private schools. It’s fine to feel entitled to attend the state school, for which taxes have (assumedly) been paid.</p>

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<p>I think there is a feeling of entitlement to attend a top school, if one can qualify. Public or Private. Lets use the CC top schools for discussion purposes. The problem is most of these are 200k.</p>

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<p>I think high school kids have been given the impression that if they work hard and do very well that they can go wherever they want. The reality is that they cannot, and schools and parents who perpetuate that myth are doing a disservice to the kids.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>That’s a little different from what you said in your other post, where you clearly suggested there was an entitlement to attend top privates in the $200k range. I have no problem saying that an academically gifted kid should be able to attend a good public university. Because there are excellent public schools that offer in state tuition or even a full ride, that is something towards which to strive. The incentive for the child whose parents cannot afford that $200k private is to get the grades and scores for the best public within means. I do not believe doors are shut with that choice.</p>

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<p>I’d like to address two of the many repeated claims here about financial aid. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>That it’s only the very poor or the very rich that can afford to go to expensive private colleges.</p></li>
<li><p>The full pays subsize the others.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>There are a very tiny handful of college in which financial aid for even those with incredibly modest incomes (under 60K) is extremely generous. These schools have admit rates that are below 9% and some of the largest endowments in the country–schools such as Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.</p>

<p>For most of the other schools, even very selective ones with high USNews rankings, financial aid, even for the families with very modest incomes, is not that great.</p>

<p>The IPEDS data for ‘net price’ (the price the family pays after federal, state, local or institutional aid, but not including loans, I think) for Northwestern is as follows: </p>

<p>Family Income Net Price
$0 – $30,000 $12,783
$30,001 – $48,000 $16,065
$48,001 – $75,000 $21,062
$75,001 – $110,000 $27,191
$110,001 and more $40,197 </p>

<p>So, if you are a family earning 30K or less, the net price for Northwestern is around 13K, around 45% of income. </p>

<p>Compare the data to Harvard:</p>

<p>Family Income Net Price
$0 – $30,000 $2,170
$30,001 – $48,000 $1,413
$48,001 – $75,000 $4,570
$75,001 – $110,000 $10,141
$110,001 and more $32,145 </p>

<p>Harvard is much more generous because of its endowment, not because it has more full pays to subsidize the aid.</p>

<p>There are more schools with net price data like NU than Harvard, and most schools are not even as generous as NU.</p>

<p>So private school tuition, even with aid, is hard for all families. There really isn’t some sort of advantage to being of modest means (and I can’t believe that people even think that it’s better to earn less than more in any situation). It’s one of those myths that keep getting circulated around.</p>

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<p>I said highy selective, not private, in earlier post. This would include top publics. But these are pricey too, unless you happen to live in that state.</p>

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<p>

</p></li>
</ol>

<h1>1, FA is school dependent, maybe NU isn’t all that great for full-need. doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of other schools which provide much better aid.</h1>

<p>did your post somehow disprove “myth #2”? didn’t see anything which somehow proves it’s a myth.</p>

<p>

I don’t think anybody ever disputed Harvard FA given it’s huge endowment. It’s the best deal for low income and well into middle income (up to 150-170K). After 170K I guess you go from paying 10% of income to full-pay as a step function… that question’s been asked here and never answered. But back on topic, HYP are without a doubt the best FA deal out there, the only problem is getting admitted is extremely difficult. So using Harvard’s FA is kind of pointless since there’s only a couple schools like that in the entire country.</p>

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<p>“The full pays subsize the others.”</p>

<p>Whatever skrlvr meant, this is hardly ever true; most/all schools’ endowments subsidize those on “financial aid” and ALSO the full pays.</p>

<p>“So private school tuition, even with aid, is hard for all families.”</p>

<p>And at need-aware schools (those with limited endowments) it is meant to be hard (to maximize the number of needy students they can support), but it’s also not impossible: these schools get takers for their FA offers, and the money is dispensed. The system is not perfect; some find the offers generous, some find them impossibly weak.</p>

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<p>Apologies if I’ve missed this: where does the money for merit aid at private schools come from? Do USC and U Rochester (to pick two examples) fund their merit aid from their endowment, or from special donation pools? Or are the full-pay students at these schools “subsidizing” the discounting that the merit aid kids get? </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, then they’re clearly saving money over the non-special kids, who apparently are doing college more than once at non-special schools. :D</p>

<p>skrlvr, great post.</p>