Hello,
I was wondering about liberal arts colleges that would provide significant merit aid. I am a junior with a 3.9+ GPA, a 2300 SAT, I’m getting a scientific paper published, I play an instrument at a high level, and I have several prestigious awards. Earlier, I had considered myself as Ivy-bound, but in the past few months, I’ve realized a few things:
I really like small liberal arts colleges. One that caught my eye was Reed College.
My income bracket is too high for any need-based aid, and although I am blessed with parents who are willing to cover all my education costs, there’s no way I could make them pay 200,000 for an education with a clear conscience.
As for preferences other than this, I don’t really have too many. I would like to go to a more prestigious institute if possible, as I plan on attending medical school after graduation, and I would also prefer to go to school in a college town, but these aren’t concrete criteria for me.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Take a look at Grinnell’s merit-based Trustee Scholarship-up to $12k p.a., I believe. Excellent sciences and palatial facilities. S’s now in medical school.
What did you like about Reed? Too bad Reed does not have merit aid. Earlham should be good in terms of getting merit aid. But you could probably do better. I know that Bard has merit scholarships specifically for future scientists.
Besides the LACs mentioned, so do Macalester, Richmond, W&L, Depauw, and Bard (for certain majors). Macalester has some health-something shadowing program that may be helpful.
Oberlin and Kenyon offer a fair amount of merit money now as well.
You will likely get a good amount from Lawrence and Beloit.
New College of Florida will be pretty cheap.
I see similarities between schools like Oberlin, Lawrence, and NCF with Reed.
Massive loans for someone entering med school does not make sense.
Agree that you do not need to go to a prestigious undergrad to get in to med school. That seems like a particularly poor reason to want a prestigious understand. If you had said “prestige matters because I want to work on Wall Street”, your logic would follow better.
Prestige has almost no effect on your chances of attending medical school. Plus, prestigious colleges are precisely the ones least likely to offer merit aid.
Lafayette College has the Marquis Scholarship and Marquis Fellowship which are both quite significant, Hobart & William Smith can provide significant significant merit aid, the University of Richmond has a number of merit aid scholarships. I am sure there are many options out there for you.
Look at this website: http://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml If you go to the heading “Merit Aid,” click the box for “Include Only Students Without Financial Need.” You can generate lists of schools showing the percentage of students who receive merit aid (although not necessarily the amounts of the merit aid).
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I would like to go to a more prestigious institute if possible, as I plan on attending medical school after graduation,
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Med schools do NOT care about “prestigious” undergrads…at all…most of their students come from state publics…lol. My own son is in med school and he went to our state flagship.
I applied to a lot of small LACs and I was offered merit awards from Kenyon, Grinnell, and Smith. If you’re female, definitely look into Smith and Mount Holyoke - both offer significant merit aid. Again if you’re female you would be a good candidate for Smith’s STRIDE program (the merit award/research opportunity that was a big part of my decision to attend Smith). In your first and sophomore year you are paired with a faculty member to assist with their research and you get a stipend in addition to the tuition award. You mentioned that you’re interested in science and med-school bound; many STRIDE scholars work with professors in their labs, so you might be interested in this.