I have not read through this but from what I know and have seen. Rose Hulman will be either half to full scholarship depending on how many they have. Very small but good school. I will throw out North Carolina state with at least half scholarship. Michigan State can be interesting since she could get a half to full scholarship with research and study abroad guarantees (if their still doing these due to the scandal) and its a really great school.
Iowa State is great for engineering BTW with good scholarships. If she applied today. She will be accepted by next week and nice to have one in the bag. They get really good internships /jobs after BTW.
Miami of Ohio and University of Alabama are givens due to their merit structures.
I know it’s not what you want to hear but hard to get merit at your targets.
Question about this - my (naive) belief is that the counselor writes one letter of recommendation, and that is electronically delivered by the registrar to whatever schools the student applies to. Thus it doesn’t matter to the counselor if it’s for one school or for 30. Is that not the case?
I think the women’s team have been national champs several times.
Thanks - we are all too familiar with the trials and tribulations of flying standby. Just a month ago, we arrived at LAX at 5 AM, only to finally make a flight out at 4 pm. And I have lots of frequent flyer miles for flights where flying standby would be in issue. We already deal with that for her flights between So Cal and her prep school in Massachusetts.
Not coming home for Thanksgiving is not an issue. She already missed last Thanksgiving due to field hockey playoffs extending through the weekend and then having to be back for her club hockey team in the state playoffs by Friday. Personally I think she’d love to have to opportunity to be one of only a few students on campus for the whole week of Thanksgiving. She’s definitely not a normal high school student!
Is that not the case?<<<<<<<<<<
No, and the school may well refuse to do above x number of LORs. Certainly they can and do charge once it gets nuts. Understand just how uncommon the common app is. Haven’t you actually completed any applications yet?
Typically, athletic recruits can get a financial preread through the coach. If your D is still intrested in Middlebury and so is coach, as them to get you one.
The guidance counselor will write the main rec as required by most schools for the INITIAL application. The counselor can’t submit that same rec when the college starts asking for more essays and recs for competitive scholarships.
My limited experience: Son ‘19 was offered a scholarship as an OOS student at a public U. In order to be eligible for any additional scholarships, he had to write three extra essays (on top of the three he already had written for that school for his initial app) AND get another counselor rec. (There were options to get even MORE scholarships, but he was fed up by then with writing supplements.) Anyway, he completed that stuff, and then heard nothing, well past the time he should have been informed if he would be getting any more merit scholarships.
He eventually emailed his regional AO and asked if all the scholarships had already been distributed. Lo and behold, several days later, an offer of more money arrived via snail mail. The award also basically pleaded with my son to please inform them ASAP if he wasn’t going to attend, because they would offer the money to another student.
Clearly my son wasn’t at the top of their list, though his total scholarships from that college were pretty nice in the end. I suspect if another kid before him had deposited, he wouldn’t have been offered that extra money.
Meant to emphasize though that counselors and teachers are not going to write unlimited recs. They have a ton of other students to work with too, not just your D.
“my (naive) belief is that the counselor writes one letter of recommendation, and that is electronically delivered by the registrar to whatever schools the student applies to. Thus it doesn’t matter to the counselor if it’s for one school or for 30. Is that not the case?”
Our scholarship experience was that there was a specific extra form to be completed by a teacher, asking for a rating of the student on various parameters of interest to the college and to provide examples of how the student was outstanding. It was quite different from the standard recommendation.
Also many competitive scholarships (eg UVA Jefferson) require the school to nominate a student, you need to ask early since they may only be allowed to nominate one student.
We also found our school counselors to be less than diligent in ensuring everything was submitted, in one case they didn’t bother to read what one specific non common app school asked to be submitted and in another case they missed the deadline for nomination for a competitive scholarship. Hopefully at a private school this is less of an issue than at a public school where one counselor has hundreds of students to deal with, but you still need to keep on top of the situation.
Your daughter goes to a Massachusetts prep school? Surely their colleg advising is good. Let them help!
So just had a senior at Rose Hulman as a patient today. She’s is in Biomedical engineering. Loves the school. Loves the connections. It’s very small. She was accepted to University of Michigan for engineering and choose Rose instead
She said lots of her class were accepted at other known engineering colleges but just like the small closed net school. She has already been offered a job.
FYI.
Funny you should mention that one - my daughter was nominated by her school for the UVA Jefferson scholarship. After reading about it though, it sounds your odds are just about the same as applying cold to other schools’ full ride scholarships. Only about 40 out of nearly 2000 who are nominated win the Jefferson scholarship.
This was several years ago, but my D got full tuition from University of Pittsburgh. Room, board, fees were around $12,000.
U Alabama gives a very generous award for NMF, definitely have her apply there.
Yes, it is. But it seems like they approach it from a different perspective. About 70% of the students that attend receive no financial aid, meaning that their parents are footing the entire $60K annual tuition. Thus, for the majority of the kids, the concern is just getting into a college, and then mommy & daddy will easily pay the tuition. If that were our case, then yes, we’d only be applying to maybe 6 or 7 schools. Same as if our income was < $70K per year - she’d get a need-based full ride to her schools of choice.
But our daughter’s case (some people use the acronym “DD”, I read that as “dumb daughter”?) is very unique - we have to rely on merit aid, and she is in a position where she has a good chance of winning a full tuition scholarship. She doesn’t care much about the actual school she attends, as long as they have a good engineering program, have classrooms, a place to sleep, and food to eat. Oh and just not in New York City (the only city she doesn’t like), and for us not UC Berkeley. Other than that the sky’s the limit.
I hear what people are saying, and we might change our minds, but it still seems like casting the net far and wide has the best chance of success.
Your DD is not unique in having high stats/higher earner parents without the ability or desire to be full pay , hunting big merit aid. Please disavow yourself of that. I would say that your DD isn’t able to leverage special help at her school because you are not poor, right? You could pay more than your budget.
Plenty of wealthy parents are doing what you are doing. Looking for top schools with big merit money. Not really wanting to hear that great schools do give away money but don’t have the wow factor.
If your income was less than 70K per year it’s doubtful you would have been flying her across the country for prep school or had her competing in that level of hockey either. Choices were made to spend a lot on her pre-college rather than save which is why you’re in this situation.
@KevinFromOC Take it from someone who played the big merit game relatively recently, casting a wide net means something very different from what you’re planning. We were in the hunt for a full ride. My D is a URM and had excellent stats like your D. She applied to 1 full tuition auto merit school that she would have been happy to attend (actually ended up her #2 choice after she won their competitive full ride). Then we added 15 more schools that offered competitive full rides. Applying to the college, honors programs/colleges, and scholarships for each was a lot of work for both us and the counselors and teachers who supported her applications. Then there was all the networking, interviews, and travel required to compete. It was a very hectic senior year and she even lost out on some senior privileges because she missed so much school. It paid off in the end and she had 7 great full ride options and a number of full tuition plus options. She lost out on some because she was burned out from the process. With strong applications and properly targeted applications, your D does not need more than 15 or so schools and should not apply to any school that wouldn’t be affordable if she won the big scholarship. Your daughter sounds as flexible as mine, so do yourselves both a favor and really focus your list to win big and don’t waste effort on those that can’t possibly pay off.
Check out Cooper Union in NYC, small, definitely different vibe but all students offered 1/2 tuition merit scholarship, many top applicants receive up to full tuition.
Single mom of Texas high school jr D, top 1% of her class, 1590 SAT, high rigor, not an athlete, who also plans to major in engineering, most likely electrical. EFC 30-35K, totally NOT affordable. I think I can pay 12-15K a year. She is focusing/prepping for NMF and schools that give auto merit for NMF such as Bama, University of Florida, University of Central Florida, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech. ONLY applying to schools that will be affordable. May apply to a couple competitive scholarships such as University of Tulsa. No more than 8-9 schools.
Student missed the NMSF threshold by one point, and Alabama’s automatic Presidential scholarship for her stats do not bring the net price down to $20k unless she retakes the ACT and gets a 36 for the Presidential Elite scholarship. Note: the Presidential scholarship there is no longer value of full tuition like it was in the past; it is now a dollar amount that is thousands of dollars less than full tuition (which may increase later).
Not sure it is worth my time replying since so much of my response just repeats other posters. My first comment is that your Dd (darling daughter, not dumb…oh my goodness) is not in a unique position at all. 1000s of tippy top competitive kids live in families whose college applications are controlled by cost. (And agree 100% that it is magical unicorn thinking that meets need/non-merit schools are going to be affordable just bc accepted.) Top kids with financial restrictions most definitely pursue merit and if a scholarship is competitive, consider it on par with admissions to the most selective schools out there. Winners of competitive scholarships typically bring far more to their applications than grades, test scores, and school related activities.
To add a dose of reality to this conversation, competition for scholarships is national/international. It is worth noting that students taking multivariable, diffEQ, linear alg, etc are really not knock out of the park exceptional, stand out kids who automatically earn a spot for interview weekend. (They are actually way more common than you think. As the parent of a child who was there plus multiple 300 level physics classes and was still not at all unique, I’m just trying to share real world experience.) Competitive scholarships are far more nuanced than checking off test scores/classes,etc. Instead of increasing applications, time spent understanding what type of applicant is being sought (community-changer, volunteer, leadership, etc) and concentrating on putting 100% effort into the applications that match the student’s strength will definitely lead to more $$ than throwing applications blindly at a college dart board.
If your student needs to stay under $15,000, find 3 automatic scholarship schools that she would be happy to attend and apply to those first. Then pick maybe 8 competitive scholarship schools that value long-term sports/focused-activity commitment in their awarding of scholarships. Essays for competitive scholarships are incredibly time consuming. There is no way a student can generate that many essays that convey sincere desire for that specific program for 20+ schools. Those extremely competitive students who do put in their all into an individual application…committees can and will note which student is which.
Fwiw, I have 2 kids who have attended on either full or close to full scholarships. Both of them were selected for small number of slots in programs with perks at their respective Us (40 students for 1, 20 for the other). Both brought unique experiences into their applications (1 had a lot of research experience as a high school student and the other had multiple regional/national/ international awards and represented the US in an international Olympiad.) Both of them faced rejections from competitive scholarships, not even making it to interview weekend stage at a few. Nothing is a given.
Fwiw, my kids have all ended up attending lower ranked schools and have had great peer groups of equally talented, academically focused kids. As another fwiw, my oldest ds (not one of the 2 mentioned above) is a chemE. If a students attends an ABET program, maintains a high GPA, participates in UG research, seeks out co-op/internship opportunities, the name on the diploma won’t matter anywhere near as much as the CV.