Instate for Pitt, very hard to get the higher merit. You need top grades, scores and class rank to have a chance. Best chance might be Nordenberg leadership scholarship.
Merit landscape is changing, Temple merit is now competitive, UA requires higher scores and doesn’t cover full tuition anymore. Ohio State is supposed to reduce merit and focus more on need based aid. U Ky as well.
Re UPitt in-state – D17 had 33 ACT, 34 superscore, – but his private school does not rank and does not weight GPA. . He was offered no merit at all from UPItt and was not even admitted to honors. He did, however, get great merit package from (nextdoor) CMU.
I am fairly certain that UPitt’s merit scholarships are no longer automatic – it seems to be sort of like CMU – how badly they want the person determines the package.
When we visited Pitt, we were told that the minimum SAT for merit money was about 1480.
I thought CMU had no merit money
I don’t think Pitt’s merit was ever automatic, if you mean once you reach certain stats, you receive it. There are minimum criteria, and then a committee chooses the merit recipients.
Temple merit used to be automatic until this year. If you read through the Temple admissions thread, the students receiving full tuition had stats above 33 ACT as well I believe.
UA merit is automatic, but required stats are higher now. And the Presidential is capped at $25,000 a year now, not full tuition.
So CMU scholarship includes consideration of financial need. Meh.
@psycholing --are you sure that wasn’t need based aid?
@psycholing , that’s interesting info. I had gone to A CMU regional session where the AD said there was no merit aid, period, and need based aid depended on how promising a student you were…Though of course, that was sometime in 2013 or 2014, when my older student was looking
@Iwonderwhere derwhere The CMU Presidential scholarship is not need based in the sense that regardless of need in subsequent years, the scholarship funds still apply. So even if my son inherited a million dollars next year, he would still get the presidential scholarship. for 4 years (Yes, I checked). I understand that they use the presidential fund to make CMU competitive with other top institutions that have generous need-based aid (such as Harvard, Princeton, etc.) – in other words it is for families on the high end of the middle class bubble – you have to be CLOSE to having some level of need (let’s say under 200k a year for a family of 4) to be considered. So I don’t think a 500k-year family would get Presidential, but it is not need based as that category is classically defined.
In our case, once we sent some financial clarifications, they increased the separate need based aid, but did not revise the Presidential scholarship.
Case Western offered my son a generous package and has a very strong comp sci/engineering program.
generous package<<<<<<<<<
I really think it would be helpful to quantify that. How much of the COA do you call generous?
@psycholing from CMU’s page:
http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/grants-scholarships
@motherofdragons As I have already explained, all one needs is some level of need, no matter how small, to be eligible for presidential. One does need to fill out the FAFSA in the application year. In subsequent years, student is awarded the allotted funds regardless of need (I.e. like a merit scholarship.) So it is useful for families like us who have 2 kids in college now, but won’t have 2 kids in college in future years.
Here is the descriptive quote:
Presidential Scholarship
The Carnegie Mellon Presidential Scholarship Program was established in 2014 to attract exceptionally gifted prospective students and to address financial barriers in supporting these students’ desire to attend Carnegie Mellon University. This prestigious program provides both financial support and high-level recognition for this exceptional group of students. For more information about the Presidential Scholarship and past winners, please visit the Presidential Fellowship & Scholarship website.
So to be clear – if the family is eligible to no need based aid whatsoever, under any circumstances, then the presidential is out. Otherwise it is still in contention.
Under my definition, need-based scholarships are not based on merit, and they vary year to year based on level of need.
So under my definition this is clearly a merit scholarship! You are free to disagree with my definition, and create your own.
Also see:
Carnegie Scholarship
Carnegie Mellon awards the Carnegie Scholarship to qualified incoming first-year students. Carnegie Scholarships are awarded to academically and artistically talented middle income students who qualify for little to no need-based financial aid.
The Carnegie Scholarship is renewable for 8 semesters of undergraduate education (10 semesters for students in the School of Architecture), if satisfactory academic performance is maintained (you must maintain a cumulative 2.0 QPA) and Carnegie Mellon tuition is assessed.
some level of need<<<<<<
FAFSA defined only? Not CSS profile?
Basically it was my understanding that CMU does preferred packaging. You can also get a detailed pre-read for FA and they supposedly will tell you what that package will be if accepted. My D decided not to apply so I don’t have actual results to report.
They want the CSS for CMU
@psycholing If need is considered at all, it’s not a merit only scholarship, imo. That would not have helped our family. We wanted scholarships that require no financial consideration at all.
These threads always get derailed, right? By anecdote? Where is the thread on slightly reachy schools with a decent amount of almost full tuition scholarships that are available for OOS students too, if public. Or the 20K and under reach with merit school. Something like that LOL. Or the Unicorn thread.
On this thread CMU and CW are cited LOL. No wonder people lose their minds.