Financial Air Expectations

<p>My daughter is a Junior at a public school in Florida. She scored a 2240 on the SAT; she is in the running for a National Merit Scholar based on her PSAT score; she has scored 5's on her APUSH, AP Art History and AP Bio exams; she is currently taking AP Chem, AP ENG COMPO; AP Latin Vergil; AP Calc AB; and AP US History. She has been on the Cross-Country team for three years and is currently the Captain. She is a member of the math and latin clubs. She has a 4.0 unweighted GPA and I think a 4.5+ unweighted GPA. </p>

<p>My question is, given her scores and stats, how much money, if any, should she hope to expect to receive in scholarships to defray the current, unaffordable amount associated with attending Stanford?</p>

<p>Stanford doesn’t grant merit-based scholarships: “All university scholarship funds are need-based.” Though, apparently their grants are extremely generous.</p>

<p>Stanford generally awards financial aid based on family income and assets–not on the student’s qualifications. Your daughter is certainly a good student, but out of the 32,000 + applications they receive, there will be plenty of applicants just as good as she is and a whole lot who are even better. Therefore, merit aid is rare to non-existent at elite schools like the Ivies and Stanford. The exception would be for athletic scholarship, such as if she were a top 10 in the country xc runner or Footlocker Champion or runner-up.</p>

<p>yeah it’s all need-based, but I think they’re quite generous, even for middle/upper-middle class families. everyone I know who was accepted, myself included, was offered a good deal more than we’d expected.</p>