High value merit awards given junior year (thread for rising or current juniors)

Paying for College
1

Just thought this would be valuable as it isn’t on most people’s radar.

Some schools have merit awards that are awarded JUNIOR year that carry a fairly high value. Your GC will need to send in nominations and many are not aware of all the awards out there. Often all it takes is letting them know that the award exists and that you are interested for them to send in the paperwork. Note: these awards are given before the college application process begins. They do not guarantee admission. The student must still apply and be accepted by the institution granting the award. These awards are usually not stackable with institutional merit.

I am not familiar with everything out there, but I know my son was awarded the RPI Medal which is a $120,000 merit award for top math and science students. While he wasn’t interested in RPI, this award would be great for a kid that had RPI as a first choice, was thinking about EDing, but knew they needed merit to get the price down.
https://admissions.rpi.edu/aid/scholarships-and-grants/rensselaer-medal

Others that I am aware of are:
RIT: $76,000. High School Awards. Awards for computing, science and math, art and design, business and leadership, humanities and social sciences, women in STEM
https://www.rit.edu/admissions/hsawards

University of Rochester: $20,000. Science and math, addressing social issues, leadership, innovation/information technology.
https://admissions.rochester.edu/high-school-awards/

St. Michael’s Book Award: 17k-full tuition/year. https://www.smcvt.edu/admission-aid/financial-aid/scholarships-loans-grants-and-work-study/academic-scholarships/

Wells College 21st Century Leadership Award. 10k/year
https://admissions.wells.edu/21st-century-leadership-award/

St. Lawrence Book Award: 1K/year.

St. Bonaventure Bonnie Scholarship/High School Junior Scholarship: 20K/year

Please add to this list any others that you are aware of.

2

Seems like high school teachers and counselors may want to be strategic with awarding the RPI medal, since the best use would be to award it to the top math and science student who has significant interest in RPI (and preferably one for whom the associated scholarship would affect whether it is affordable). Awarding it to a student who has no interest in RPI would not be all that useful.

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Our kids teachers/counselors made sure that any nomination for the RPI award had it as either their top choice or “I wish we could afford it” choice!

4

From RPI’s perspective, it probably is useful as a recruiting tool. If it encourages a kid to take a look or even submit an application, it is worth it for them. Truthfully, qualified students probably would get equal or better merit than the award so those with interest are going to still be motivated to apply. I think the kids it really is valuable for are those that want to ED but need to be assured of merit.

Our (private) school submits every year. They submit the kid with the best science and math scores.

Our local public school doesn’t submit and I think it’s such a waste. I’ve been informing students that I know would qualify to give their guidance counselors the information. It might be readily available, but our counselors are notoriously lazy.