Looking for advice in Merit aid for a top 1% student

Paying for College
1241

I can’t agree with this.

Many of those kids are very strong applicants and who wants to be full pay if they don’t have to? A $25K/year merit scholarship is not chump change, and most folks don’t typically want to cavalierly throw away $100K without blinking an eye if they don’t have to.

The boarding schools would do their current and future students a disservice if they aren’t up on many aspects of college admission. Word gets out quickly about stuff like that. And many of these counselors have personal relationships with many of the admissions folks at many of the top colleges. Additionally, boarding school college counselors have many avenues for information (the IECA, HECA, NACAC and regional college admission counselors forums), and yes, many read cc too!

1242

“ I can’t agree with this.

Many of those kids are very strong applicants and who wants to be full pay if they don’t have to? A $25K/year merit scholarship is not chump change, and most folks don’t typically want to cavalierly throw away $100K without blinking an eye if they don’t have to.”

I’m sure boarding school GCs are fully aware of the partial merit available at say Macalester or Grinnell. And the full rides at UVA, Duke etc (we already know OP’s D was her school’s Jefferson scholarship nominee). But do you really think they have any meaningful number of students going after big dollar merit at Utah or Kentucky (which is what OP’s D is looking at)? Or that those counselors have “personal relationships with many of the admissions folks” at Utah or Kentucky?

As an example, the breakdown of the 30 full ride scholarship recipients at Utah is two-thirds instate, and only 1-4 per year from east of the Mississippi. I’d be surprised if they’d received more than a couple of applications from all East coast boarding schools combined in the last ten years, it’s not even that well known in California.

1243

@Twoin18 - No one knows all the scholarships available at all the schools. And of course culling information from hundreds of thousands of posters here is going to net more info (some good, some not so good). And sure, this site gets regional information from posters of all regions. But I would be disinclined to assume that a good private/boarding school college counselor isn’t going to know where/how to find this information or where/how to direct the applicant to find this information.

As I said, the school counselors have access to professional forums where they can ask these questions, and get very helpful information from other counselors nationally and internationally. A good private/boarding school counselor will listen to the students’ needs and priorities and help them find good options.

  • Adding: I believe the OP’s dau applied to Utah but not Kentucky. And if she was interested in Creative Writing, Utah would be a great choice over many other schools, but not Chemical Engineering. There are many better, affordable options on the list for Chem E.
1244

And as for familiarity with college admissions staff, I said

not necessarily the large state U’s with rankings in a 13 way tie for spot 104 on USNews rankings (Utah), or a 7 way tie for 132 (Kentucky). That said, the **smaller **schools at these rankings do tour the country, and connect with counselors all over the country. Had this happen with another school ranked 132 (U Dayton), at an intimate breakfast with the reps from U Dayton, U Cincinnati and Miami Ohio. These reps will visit the boarding schools, so it is not difficult to have a personal relationship with counselors at these schools.

1245

I’m not sure why posters are debating boarding school counselor capabilities. OP already said in post #1226 that their counselor was less than helpful. As in any profession there is a wide range of competency among GCs, even at boarding schools.

1246

Or more likely, OP did not like the advice the counselor offered and turned to CC instead. That is fine, but no reason to participate then for me.

1247

Agree with @roycroftmom. Many (most?) posters, even those using private educational/college consultants (obviously) post and query here. It kinda goes without say. The population on CC tends to be those seeking as much info from as many sources as possible to help them with this process.

And I do wonder what information OP’s daughter is asking for and getting directly from the school’s college counselor.

1248

I think the reason that some are frustrated with this situation is that OP hasn’t been transparent with his college plan. He mapped out why he needed hefty merit (including no college hockey recruitment at schools of choice, then there was NMS disappointment) but clearly wants prestige for his daughter. In some ways, I can’t blame him — it would be nice for her Cinderella high school story to have a storybook ending. He has never really answered how they can make this work financially though. What has bothered me most is that his daughter is working like mad to finish senior year and she has ended up doing 50+ essays to cast a much broader than necessary net if this is about merit. She doesn’t care where she goes to school so I don’t believe she is driving this. These choices haven’t been about fit, because she doesn’t seem to have any preferences, which seems very sad. If through this process he has determined prestige trumps practicality, he should say so. I also wish more had been done to try to determine what his daughter wants in a college.

1 Like
1249

MODERATOR’S NOTE: This thread is getting repetitive so I am closing it.

1250

MODERATOR’S NOTE: Reopening for now.

1251

@KevinFromOC… OK… What’s the update?

@MaineLonghorn was kind enough to reopen the thread. (she’s the best ?)

1252

I was just about to open a new “part 2” thread, which could have put me at the risk of being thrown into CC jail, and then I saw that this one had been reopened! Woo Hoo!

I’m hoping to continue the spirit of the previous discussion for 2 reasons :

(1) I’d like all the work my daughter and I have done trying to maximize merit aid to be useful to future students in similar situations; thus I’d like to continue to post updates on merit and financial aid awards from the various colleges she’s applied to and any surprises we might encounter.

(2) There was tons of great advice previously in this thread, and I imagine there will still be tons of great advice as she gets offers, is invited to travel schools to compete for the big scholarships, and as we deal with having to decline and/or refine offers. I’d like to continue to tap into all of the knowledge here not only for our own selfish benefit, but also, as with #1 above, I’d like for others to also be able to see this advice in hopes that it might help them too!

So, a few updates :

She has 3 big events coming up, all within the span of 2 1/2 weeks, and potentially one more a little later.

She was invited to the Miami Presidential Fellows Program Feb 15-16 to compete for a full ride. She has to miss a big hockey game which is also the Senior Day game (where they celebrate the graduating seniors on the team). She had been looking forward to that game all season, but it’s a comparatively small sacrifice to have to miss it.

And just last week she was just admitted early to USC and invited to interview for a Mork or Trustee full tuition scholarship or a Presidential half tuition scholarship - so she flies back home the following weekend for the Feb 24 “Explore USC” day. She seemed very excited about USC - but she would have to win a full tuition scholarship to make it a possibility…

Then the following weekend, Feb 29-March 2, she’s off to South Carolina for their Top Scholars competition, which guarantees her at least full tuition and where she might even get a full ride.

She also submitted her video essay to Rose Hulman in hopes of being selected to come interview later in March for a full room & board scholarship - she has already been given a full tuition scholarship from them. We should hear about that one sometime this week.

Needless to say these are 4 outstanding schools and we’re really hoping that she gets one of these big awards! We are both researching to try to figure out what to expect. There’s a couple older threads here on CC that look promising…

In another area, it looks like a few offers from other schools seem pretty final - including Colorado School of Mines, Michigan State, and WPI. She chose not to submit the CSOM full tuition Harvey essay, for 3 reasons - (1) She already had 3 of these amazing opportunities lined up, (2) the odds seemed pretty slim, and (3) the essay topic didn’t fit her situation well and based on it it looked like they were looking for a different type of student. Likewise, as discussed earlier in this thread, she chose not to go to the Michigan State Alumni Distinguished Scholarship competition.

So, while the merit scholarships from all 3 of these schools were indeed generous, unfortunately they leave too big of a bill for us to swallow, especially when there are more affordable offers on the table. Letting them know sooner rather than later seems to be the right thing to do. I read several CC threads on the topic, and the advice seemed mixed. I’m thinking its best for her to officially let these schools know she won’t be attending even though she still doesn’t know what school she will attend.

In the meantime, she’s been admitted to Clarkson and just submitted their honors application and essay, and is now busy with ASU Barrett scholarships. We’re trying to decide on whether or not to pursue the Utah Eccles application and its essay which would come next. At some point soon we hope to look at outside scholarships, even though we’ve probably missed the deadline for several, as they could help quite a bit paired with a full tuition scholarship.

Anyway, that seems like plenty to digest for now!

1253

So glad you came back with updates! In addition to helping future students as referenced above, there are a lot of us out here who were following the thread and who want to know how this all plays out! Congrats to your D on those 3 terrific interview opportunities. Keep those updates coming.

1254

Congrats on the acceptances so far and on the scholarship interviews. That’s great news!

1255

Good luck to your D with her scholarship interviews. I really appreciate you circling back. This thread is bound to be helpful to so many families!

1256

@KevinFromOC I am sad she will miss her senior night. My son just had his. He has skated with most of those kids for 13 years and they are like brothers. Your daughter has to be commended for how much she sacrifices…being both a top notch athlete and star student means you don’t get the full experience of either.

1257

Any updates?

1258

Yes, it’s about update time…

We were just at the Presidential Fellows Program at Miami this past weekend. They did a fantastic job putting it on, paying attention to even the smallest details. There were about 60 students, every one of which seemed amazing. They said the average ACT score of all the students was 35.

It sounds like about 20 will be awarded the full ride scholarship, and they will also name alternates who will be given the award if some of the original 20 decline. I have no idea what criteria they will use for selection and can’t imagine having to choose between these brilliant kids, but I’d give her an equal shot with everyone else, which means she has about a 33% chance of winning one.
She also met with the Women’s ACHA D1 hockey recruiter there, and he seemed very interested in her and even though they have 2 goalies on the team he strongly implied they would make roster room to carry 3 goalies if she were to attend. So all in all a very positive experience at Miami.

This coming Monday is the Explore USC event where she will interview for their full or half tuition scholarships. I think the odds of her getting the full tuition scholarship are pretty low (maybe 15%?), but you never know. Even with that, room & board is $16K so it would be a mighty tough decision between that or a full ride at one of the other schools (wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem to have?). She seems like she is very excited at the possibility of USC.

The following weekend is the South Carolina Top Scholars competition, where it sounds like 25 out of the 45 students selected are given full rides (the remaining 20 are given full tuition), so her chances there seem pretty good.

And from her video essay submission she was selected by Rose Hulman as a Circle of Distinction finalist, which is March 13-14. If she wins that award, that would bump her full tuition scholarship to a full ride. I believe this is the first year RHIT has done this, so we have no idea what to expect or how many finalists there might be.

She did apply for more ASU scholarships, which if she wins would put her somewhere in-between full-tuition and a full ride there.

So needless to say, these are currently the top 5 schools in the running - Miami, USC, South Carolina, Rose Hulman, and ASU.

We still don’t have the complete picture yet for Alabama or Clarkson, so they are still in the mix.

Given these selections, she decided NOT to apply for Utah’s Eccles full ride Scholarship. And it looks like she was NOT chosen to compete for Pitt’s Chancellors Scholarship, which probably also puts them out of the running. Other schools that she will most likely be declining are Colorado School of Mines, Michigan State, and WPI.

In the meantime, she has also been accepted to RIT and Vanderbilt.

Still waiting to hear from Northeastern, Stevens, UCI, UCLA, UCSD, Rice, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and RPI. I’m not expecting enough aid from any of those schools to make them financially viable options, but I’ll leave open the possibility of being pleasantly surprised by one of them! If one of these top schools does come through, it could be a game changer…

I don’t think I mentioned it earlier, but our FAFSA EFC was right around $22K, which included our other daughter attending college. There’s still a good chance that will not happen, in which case I would expect our EFC to nearly double. Either way, it looks like we will be solely reliant on merit aid instead of financial aid (with the remote chance of Princeton coming through as an exception)

RIT’s financial award letter was interesting. She was awarded a Presidential merit scholarship of $19K per year. A couple weeks later she received her complete financial award letter in which she was also given a grant of about $8K (which I assume is need based financial aid), which brought the COA down to around $32K. Then she was offered loans of about $6K, bringing their COA to about $26K. So this is a case where I think if she were an average student that was barely accepted to RIT, she would have gotten no merit aid and her need based grant would have been around $27K (instead of $8K) with the same loan offers of $6K, meaning the bottom line COA would still be $26K. Thus her merit aid would make absolutely no difference in our COA. And they didn’t even replace the loans with the merit aid. I still don’t fully understand how merit aid and need-based aid mix, but this example was pretty interesting.

As an aside, it is still inconceivable to me that schools include loan offers as part of their financial aid “award” and reduce their stated COA by the loan amount. That would be like a car dealership claiming that a new $50K car is really only $30K because they will offer you a $20K loan. But that’s another thread altogether.

So that’s where she currently stands. It will be an interesting month of March!

1259

Wow! Great update!

How do you know about the Vanderbilt acceptance? Did she hear something about one of their big scholarships?

1260

I was wondering about Vandy as well.

Congrats! Great options are shaping up.