High stats applicant looking for LAC's with possible merit aid

<p>After a year of giving my D college brochures to no avail, suddenly my rising senior has actually ASKED ME FOR SUGGESTIONS of LAC's to consider. She loves the Claremont consortium and plans to apply to Pomona, CMC and Scripps. She is considering majoring in chemistry but is pretty undecided so she needs to go somewhere with a broad liberal arts curriculum. We've run NPC's and don't expect to qualify for financial aid. So she would like to add more schools to her list where she may get merit aid. She has ruled out schools in the southeast and schools where it's really humid (e.g., Rice). This is a bit arbitrary I know, but there you go. She really doesn't want to go to a big university setting, and I agree she will be better off at a smaller LAC.</p>

<p>She has a 4.0 UW, 4.8 weighted GPA, 2340 SAT, SAT 2's are: Chemistry 800, Math 2 800, US History 770. She has taken 5 AP classes and gotten 5's on all the exams: Calc BC, Chemistry, US History, Statistics and World History. Her senior year courses will be Calc III, Physics Honors (school doesn't offer AP Physics), AP Bio II, AP Psychology, AP Gov/Econ, AP English Lit. Class rank hasn't come out yet but definitely in the top 5%. She has pretty good EC's (with more depth than breadth).</p>

<p>Her safeties are the honors colleges at our state universities. But she would really be happier at a LAC. Thanks for any suggestions!</p>

<p>Grinnell, Rhodes and Smith for good merit aid.
Not an LAC, but good with merit, Emory.
(Though Rhodes and Emory may be out of her geographic comfort
If you can get by without merit, as you would have to if your daughter chooses Pomona, then there are many more that might be good fits. </p>

<p>Denison and Macalester both offer a fair amount of merit aid. A good number of the women’s only LACs do as well. I would research merit at all of the Seven Sisters, in fact. Oxford@Emory is essentially a LAC and have a fair number of full-tuition scholarships. Richmond also has some full-tuition scholarships.</p>

<p>If she likes the Claremonts she might also like Occidental; it’s less selective but just as good and she may be eligible for some merit aid. Another small women’s college in CA is Mills College.</p>

<p>Another suggestion is Agnes Scott College, a small women’s college in Decatur, GA (just outside of Atlanta). They have very good merit scholarship options there; she would probably get their top Presidential scholarship (full ride) but at the very least Dean’s scholarship (value of tuition, IIRC). Oglethorpe University in Atlanta is also a small LAC - about the same size as each of the individual Claremont Colleges - that has a competitive full-tuition scholarship program called JEO scholars. I know they are both in the Southeast but she should check them out before she rules out an entire region of the country.</p>

<p>Other suggestions are Berry College (in Mt. Berry, GA); Trinity College (in CT), University of Puget Sound (WA), Clark University (MA), Ursinus College (PA), Bard College (NY), Juniata College and Allegheny (both in PA), Lewis & Clark College (OR), St. Olaf College (MN), and College of Wooster (OH).</p>

<p>Grinnell (IA) for sure. My peers who’ve been accepted say they give very good merit aid. I hear it’s sort of in the middle of nowhere, though, but your daughter might enjoy it academically. If your daughter is NMF there is some small auto aid, too.</p>

<p>The Seven Sisters, of which only really Smith (MA), Mount Holyoke (MA) and Bryn Mawr ¶ give merit scholarships. All are great, the first two are part of the 5 College Consortium, so she can take classes at UMass Amherst, Amherst, and Hampshire. At Bryn Mawr there’s the tri-college consortium with Haverford and Swarthmore. My favorite sister, which I don’t think gives merit aid, but whose app is free anyways is Wellesley (MA), where you cross register with schools like MIT, Olin and Babson.</p>

<p><a href=“USNews Top 100 Liberal Arts College - Merit v. Need Only - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/219357-usnews-top-100-liberal-arts-college-merit-v-need-only-p1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>^ Old, and possibly outdated, but seems relatively accurate. Wow, forgot about Washington and Lee (VA).</p>

<p>What kind of price limit are you looking at?</p>

<p>With out of state list prices much lower than those of the private LACs commonly mentioned here, Truman State, University of Minnesota - Morris, SUNY Geneseo, and UNC Asheville should be worth a look to compare their costs with your price limit.</p>

<p>For the chemistry major specifically, you can check the ACS approval list: <a href=“American Chemical Society”>American Chemical Society;

<p>She will be a National Merit semifinalist and expected finalist, well above our state cutoff. Forgot to mention that! Oxy is definitely on our list. We can manage full pay (e.g., Pomona) but would definitely welcome merit aid. I’ve already told her to look at Grinnell and Macalester. I know there are a lot of great LAC’s in the south but at the moment she is balking at those, so any in the Midwest or northeast would be most helpful. She has a mentor who is a Mt. Holyoke alum who is definitely promoting that as an option. Wellesley is another option but doesn’t offer merit aid.</p>

<p>Lafayette College and The University of Richmond are very good schools that can be generous with Merit Aid. </p>

<p><a href=“http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/”>http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/&lt;/a&gt; lists National Merit scholarships.</p>

<p>Your D would likely go to Ursinus for free.</p>

<p>What state are you folks in? Trinity has a scholarship especially for IL residents.</p>

<p>BTW, of the public LACs, really only New College of Florida has the post-grad acheivement rates characteristic of top LACs (relatively high percentage getting PhDs and in to elite professional schools).<br>
Really worth considering if you’re a FL resident (though I doubt it).</p>

<p>If you’re a CA resident, College of Creative Studies at UCSB seems really cool (and sort of like a LAC within a larger research university).</p>

<p>Oh yes, there are a bunch of LACs in PA and OH that I don’t know much about who give good merit aid. However, Wooster is suppose to be great according to people who went there.</p>

<p>New College of Florida does have some good out-of-state scholarships:
<a href=“http://www.ncf.edu/out-of-state-freshmen”>http://www.ncf.edu/out-of-state-freshmen&lt;/a&gt;
Total cost of attendance is shown here:
<a href=“Tuition & Fees Information - New College of Florida”>http://www.ncf.edu/tuition&lt;/a&gt;
After applying the scholarships, the cost could be quite reasonable.</p>

<p>Muhlenberg is good with merit aid. And she probably would get great aid (and maybe into the honors program) at Fordham which is not a LAC, but is very manageable and has small classes.</p>

<p>Kiplinger’s shows the percentage of students who get merit aid and the average awards in its list of 100 “best value” LACs. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=lib_arts&state_code[]=ALL&id[]=none”>http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=lib_arts&state_code[]=ALL&id[]=none&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Click-sort on column 9 (Avg non-need-based aid) or column 10 (% of non-need-based aid.</p>

<p>Possibilities (>$10K, >= 10%)
Oberlin, Kenyon, Grinnell
Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Smith (women only)</p>

<p>Mount Holyoke offers good merit aid, and its sciences are very strong!</p>

<p>That Kiplinger’s tool is great. Looking at schools that give big awards (average of 20K+) to more than 10% of the students, among those not mentioned yet, Scripps is on there as is Lafayette. A plus is that Lafayette is known for sciences and gets slightly more guys than girls applying (unlike most LACs these days), so being a girl may help when it comes to merit money.</p>

<p>Denison has free tuition for NMFs.</p>

<p>Mt Holyoke incorporates merit into the NPC. Not sure if there are also larger awards available.</p>

<p>My d was offered a full ride at Scripps (similar stats) and at Whittier (a safety, but a very nice safety) and Smith. She got substantial money from Oxy, although we also got FA, so I don’t remember what the breakdown was. Davidson is also one to consider. Colby, if she can take the cold.</p>