As everyone knows, College is expensive and I am lucky enough to have a large college fund given to me through a family member. I just found out the exact amount of money and due to having so much, I will most likely get little to no financial aid. While I am incredibly thankful for the money I have, it can only cover so much and my family can not afford to cover the remaining cost of college. So, I am hoping to get any suggestions on good schools that might give me merit aid.
Being in a city is a must and I would prefer a medium sized school (but honestly, anywhere between 3,000-25,000 is ok). I would prefer to stay in the northeast/on the east coast but I am very flexible with that.
My stats are:
31 ACT
4.36 weighted GPA/ 3.94 unweighted
All AP/honors classes
Some academic and leadership awards
White female
Strong ECs
A lot of volunteer and work experience
How much have you go to spend per year on college? As you probably know, your stats aren’t going to garner you big merit. If you can define your actual budget it will prevent thread drift. Good schools don’t have to pay students to attend, so merit becomes much more competitive at schools considered desirable.
@TomSrOfBoston@DadTwoGirls@Sybylla I am a Massachusetts resident and I’m looking for around 7-10k in merit. Of course more is always better, but that is what I need if I don’t want too many loans.
7-10K in merit against what COA? You need to know how much you can pay, not how much merit you would like. High COA schools that give out merit willy nilly as a faux carrot will not work if they give you an unaffordable COA with 10K a yr merit.
@Sybylla I was basing my 10k per year off of high cost of attendance schools. I know private schools typically have a bigger endowment and give more money. I can pay around 30k and a lot of the rest is covered with my college fund/basic loans and hopefully some merit aid.
If you can actually pay 30K a yr, your choices are pretty limited. How much total do you have to play with? If you can pay 60K out of a 70K COA school that is very different. I am not sure you have a clear picture of your budget.
But, some schools start off costing $70k per year, so that 10k of merit gets you to $60k per year. If you are a Massachusetts resident and in the top 10% of your class you get a full tuition break at UMass and the annual cost there would then be not much over $20k per year. Somewhere in between McGill (not that far from Massachusetts) would vary according to your major but might be around C$45,000, or US$36,000 without any scholarship at all. It looks like you might have a shot at a presidential merit scholarship at UVM which would put the price a bit over $40k per year, but even with no scholarship at all UVM would still cost less than a $70,000 school with a $10,000 scholarship.
Thus the base price before scholarships is going to matter at least as much as the size of the scholarship.
From what you have said it seems likely that you could afford UMass Amherst with no debt at all, and quite likely with some money left over for graduate school. To me a school would have to be very strong indeed (pretty much Harvard or Stanford) to justify taking on any loan to go elsewhere. Of course, there are probably other schools that you could also handle without a loan.
As a general rule of thumb, you need to look at the Midwest and south to get good merit.
Are you interested in an LAC? That might narrow the field.
Urban LAC’s with good merit would include Macalester in Twin Cities; Trinity U in San Antonio; Rhodes in Memphis; Furman in Greenville; Denison outside of Columbus OH.
It would also help if you had a course of study you were interested in.
On the Kiplinger pages, click-sort on the 2 “non-need-based aid” columns to identify “best value” schools that grant relatively many/large merit scholarships. These aren’t exhaustive lists, but might help you frame expectations and identify a few good candidate schools.
Your 31 ACT may be a bit low to be very competitive for average-or-better awards from some of these schools. You might want to re-take the ACT (or try the SAT) after more practice. Regardless, the northeast isn’t the best search space for merit money.
Case Western Reserve might be a match. around 5000 undergrad with an additional 5000 graduate students. They normally give pretty good merit aid and are in Cleveland within University Circle which house the Cleveland Art Museum, Symphony and Botanical Gardens and a short train ride from the rest of Cleveland.
@DadTwoGirls , Tuition and Housing at UMA is nearly $30K instate and more for the honors college. Last I checked the “full tuition break” was about $1800. Without any financial aid, and UMA generally doesn’t give merit to instate, this student is looking at $25K at a minimum. Still affordable and still a good choice but for some families that $5K difference and the “full tuition break” is misleading.
@mb2005 Check out Emmanual (Boston), Assumption (Worcester), Providence College, University of Vermont. These would all be low matches and might provide merit. If we knew your potential major, that might be helpful.
stay away from any OOS publics. You won’t get merit there
Muhlenberg has great academics, school spirit, and is known to offer merit for stats like yours
Earlham is an amazing school academically–many of its grads go on for Ph.D.s and professional degrees. Has a wonderful sense of community and honor, small classes, an 800 acre campus, offers merit.
Since you’re female you should look at several of the women’s colleges. Many are part of consortia or have cross registration agreements with other schools so that you will be attending classes with men, if you choose, and the dorms allow men to stay overnight. Women’s colleges are some of the best schools in the country and they are reserved for women. Many also offer merit aid. Check out–
Wellesley (with cross reg at MIT) it offers merit and says on its website that if you’re accepted it will make sure that you can attend.
Mt. Holyoke–it has some really nice merit scholarships, the sciences are excellent as are the humanities. The campus is homey and not competitive feeling among the students. Part of the five-college consortium, so you can also take classes at Smith (another top school with merit), Hampshire college, Amherst (another top school) and UMass Amherst. Free buses take you to the various colleges in the gorgeous Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
Bryn Mawr. It offers merit and is part of a set of consortia that include other top schools such as Haverford (buses leave between these two campuses about ever 5 or so minutes, classes between the schools are coordinated so that you can easily schedule your classes, the schools coordinate departments so that Haverford has the studio art program, for example, while Bryn Mawr has the theater and geology programs, and the swimming pool for the Haverbros to swim in, etc.). This consortium also includes Swarthmore, another top school, and University of Pennsylvania. Bryn Mawr pays the train fare (an 11 mile ride) to Philly so that you can attend classes at UPenn. They also have nice degree programs among the campuses and social clubs that are shared by all of the schools.
Agnes Scott offers amazing education and merit. It offers cross registration with Emory.
Scripps is part of the consortium with the Claremont colleges, again some of the top schools in the country.
Mills in the San Francisco area offers a tuition break. It lowered its tuition to $28K this year. It offers cross registration at several schools, including an art school, but also at UBerkeley, again one of the top schools in the country. Barnard only offers need-based aid, but it’s is part of the Columbia U campus and network.
Juniata is a wonderful school that offers nearly everyone merit.
Oh one more thing – Hampshire offers merit for stats like yours. It’s a school that if you’re directed, you can do a lot in. Hampshire is known for asking the questions you’re not supposed to ask–and turning things upside down to look underneath. As a result many of its grads have gone on to change the status quo. The school is not for everyone, but if it excites you to do things in a different way, to TRY things new and to try new approaches, this might be the school for you. I’ve known many many successful people who have attended Hampshire college. What they have in common is to ask the question: why? or How do we really know? or Why not?
Hampshire can lead (and has led) to top grad school options for people. But again, this model works best if you’re a self-starter, and self-directed–who wants to change the status quo.
This is not true. A number of public universities, including some very good schools, give merit awards, often substantial, to OOS students. Off the top of my head I’ll list: Temple, Pitt, Ohio State, U Cincinnati, Ohio U, U Delaware, U Maryland, U South Carolina, U Alabama, U Minnesota, U Kansas, U Oklahoma.
A 31 ACT and strong GPA would be sufficient for merit at many (not all) of these schools. They may not be good fits for this student due to location and size, but they may be helpful to others reading this thread.
Does “in the city” mean in the city or close to a city. Also, define city. Someone mentioned Syracuse. Good school and lots of merit aid available for your stats, but Syracuse is not NYC or Boston or Philly or DC or Atlanta or Charlotte. How important is that?
@college_query excellent to know that about Wellesley. I misinterpreted the award that a friend’s daughter got, then. After she’d been offered a substantial package at Wellesley, she discussed with them further (won’t disclose the content of her additional info) and they immediately handed her more funds–enough for her to attend. The parent described this as merit, but it probably was additional aid. I was impressed with the speed of the process and the fact that they seemed true to their word, that they made sure that she could attend.
The conversation went something like –
Me: But they don’t give merit
Him: That’s not what they told us!
And then proceeded with his story, as described loosely above.