<p>Hi </p>
<p>Does Grinnell offer a lot of merit aid? I saw that the average act score was a 31, so is it very competitive to get a full scholarship here?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance</p>
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<p>Full scholarships are competitive anywhere. For the most part, if a student receives a full scholarship, they are one of the top handful of students at the school. Relative to other schools, Grinnell is generous with merit aid.</p>
<p>babuskagirl,</p>
<p>Grinnell does tend to be fairly generous with their merit aid; this is really because they can afford to be because of their massive endowment. It is very rare, however, that students will get full scholarships. Typically, top merit scholarships range from $12,000 a year to half-tuition. They are fairly generous with these scholarships, though you do have to be quite distinguished academically for such high-amount awards---just getting their average ACT score of a 31 certainly won't generally warrant your being offered a large scholarship, or any merit aid for that matter. If you are very impressive though, you have nothing to worry about. Grinnell is a generous institution. And if you qualify, don't forget the need-based aid as well as the loans.</p>
<p>I have a 6.3/7 GPA at a competitive private school where I'm working towards a bilingual (English/French) IB Diploma. My SAT I score is 2270/2400 or 1560/1600; SAT IIs are 800 (French), 750 (Literature), 700 (Math IIC), 680 (Biology-M, retaking), and 650 (Chemistry, retaking). However, although I've lived in the US for five years, I'm not a US citizen or permanent resident. Based on that, do you think I would qualify for merit aid? I'll be applying for need-based aid as well, but any additional scholarship would help immensely.</p>
<p>Also, does being from MA help merit aid. I know MA usually hurts your chances but I have heard that b/c grinnell is in mid-west, they get less New England kids. Otherwise, I am basically an avg applicant I think. Also, how is the financial aid?</p>
<p>Our daughter is in the Grinnell class of 2009. Her weighted high school GPA was over 4.0 (she took 9 or 10 AP classes); she got a 32 on the ACT; and she had a pretty impressive if not spectacular record of extracurricular activities. We live in the Northeast.</p>
<p>She got into both Carleton and Grinnell, with Carleton offering no money and Grinnell offering $12,000 a year in merit aid. She liked Grinnell better anyway, even without the money, so she chose to go there. </p>
<p>Grinnell has historically limited merit aid to no more than one-half tuition. Starting with the class of 2010, Grinnell has made a policy decision to give less merit aid than it has in the past and to raise tuition to bring it in line with what it considers its peer schools in the midwest (Carleton, Oberlin, and Macalester). Grinnell also recently dropped its need-blind admissions policy for foreign applicants. For each of these reasons, Grinnell will become less of a bargain than it has been in the past.</p>
<p>The maximum amount for the Grinnell Trustee Honor Scholarship has remained fixed at $15,000 per year at least since the 2003-2004 academic year as well as the $2,000 per year college-sponsored National Merit Scholarship. For the 2003-2004 academic year when tuition/room/board was $31,000, a National Merit finalist who received the maximum Trustee Honor Scholarship would have a cost of attendance of $14,000 per year. For the 2006-2007 academic year, a NMS finalist who received the maximum Grinnell Trustee Honor Scholarship would have a cost of attendance of $20,000 since the current tuition/room/board is almost $37,000. </p>
<p>Grinnell is still one of few schools that promise to meet 100% of the demonstrated need of US students but merit aid appears to be covering an increasingly smaller percentage of total costs each year. Grinnell was a bit of a financial stretch in 2003-2004 and our family's out of pocket cost have significantly increased each year. I doubt that our student would have chosen Grinnell for the class entering in the fall of 2007 if their merit aid would remain fixed at 2003-2004 levels and the tuition increases $5,000 - $8,000 to keep up with Carleton, Oberlin, and Macalester. </p>
<p>My guess is that fewer middle-income students will attend Grinnell in the future. Students from low income families for whom Grinnell will pickup most of the tab and students from rich families who get little or no grant money from schools like Carleton but will get $10,000 - $17,000 per year in grants from Grinnell and the $20,000 - $25,000 per year out of pocket costs are no problem will constitute a larger percentage of the student body. The income distribution for Grinnell families will become an inverted bell-shaped curve with mainly students from low income and high income families attending. </p>
<p>Parent2009 - Sounds like you may have attended the presentation at Grinnell's Family Weekend since some of the specifics you mentioned in your post were part of President Osgood's talk on the state of Grinnell.</p>
<p>I didn't attend Parents Weekend but my daughter clues me in plus everything in my post is on Grinnell's website. They're pretty open about their plan. Basically what they want is for people who can afford it to pay full freight while increasing the financial aid budget for those who can't. The University of Richmond, another highly endowed school with below market tuition, just did the same thing that Grinnell will -- raised tuition to the level of its competitors -- and it saw a pretty pronounced drop in the quantity and quality of its applications as a result. What Grinnell is banking on, in my view, is that its reputation and name recognition has improved in the past ten years to the point where it doesn't have to buy its best students.</p>
<p>We fall into the category of a family that didn't need the money but took it rather than pay nearly twice as much for Carleton. If both schools cost the same (or even close to it) it would have been a much more difficult decision.</p>
<p>I think Grinnell may have to continue "buying" students for some time. Their reputation is very strong -- but a lot of people can't get past the location. Which is unfortunate. It's no more isolated than many LACs. I think their intentions are in the right place, but hope they're flexible enough to pull back if the quality of student starts to slip.</p>
<p>Our daughter (present hs jr) visited Grinnell this summer with her aunt and cousin. She fell in love with it. However, the conversation here scares me off. We are clear middle income folks. She has a 4.125 on a 4.0 in an honors curriculum, has one AP class 4 qualifying score so far, a 92% on her 1st PSAT and a good array of extracurriculars. But it sounds like that may not really help much. Or am I picking up that merit will decrease, but need based will increase?</p>
<p>Deloar - Grinnell promises to meet 100% of demonstrated need using the Expected Family Contribution formula. Thus, as its tuition increases need-based aid will increase. Grinnell generally offers much better merit aid than other similar private liberal arts colleges such as Carleton, Macalester, Oberlin, or Earlham. Also, Grinnell offers some low-interest, interest-deferred, institutional loans. Make sure your daughter also explores outside schorlarship opportunites which she could use to supplement any merit based aid offered by Grinnell. My recommendation is to encourage your daughter to apply to those schools that she feels would be good matches for her in terms of a good academic and social fit, but wait until the financial aid award letters to make a decision whether some of the schools might actually be too costly. Make sure that she applies to some schools where she is likely to get substantial merit aid or the costs are affordable without substantial merit aid, which I would call a "financial" safety school. Don't write-off Grinnell as "too expensive" just yet. It is probably still one of the best bargains in top tier private liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>Thanks for the encouragement on Grinnell and the general advice.</p>