So you have your basic list:
$16K… Stony Brook (in state)
19K Stanford
20K MIT
Skip the ivys and LACs that don’t offer merit.
Add schools that offer some merit on top of FinAid.
UChicago
Harvey Mudd
Rice
Rochester
RPI
Brandeis
UIUC - offers some merit scholarsihps
Pitt
Northeastern
that is very helpful.
She could attend the University of Arizona for 15-20k due to merit scholarship. http://financialaid.arizona.edu/cost/freshmen
Could be a safety.
$20-22K is what you, the parents can afford. Right?
You may want to add ~$5K (more or less) in “self help”, which would push your limit to the high twenties.
If your NPC numbers are accurate, that should give you enough headroom to consider:
Your biggest challenge may be to identify in-between target schools that offer enough need-based or merit aid to be affordable, and that your D likes. You should have some very good options, though.
If your parental budget is $20-22k, then:
Affordable within parental budget:
$16k Stony Brook
$19k Stanford
$20k MIT
Affordable within parental budget plus student loan or work:
$25k Amherst
$26k … RPI, Haverford
$27k … UPenn
Affordable within parental budget plus student loan and work:
$28k… Columbia
$29K Williams, Smith
$30K…CMU, Chicago, Harvey Mud, Wellesley
Affordable only with enough merit scholarships (some do not offer merit scholarships, so that would mean outside merit scholarships, most of which are small), and considering each colleges’ policies on merit scholarships in relation to financial aid (often, “stacking” is limited to the expected student loan and work contribution of $4k to $10k).
$31k Dartmouth, Rice
$32k Cornell, Duke
$33k Caltech
$36k UUIC
$41k Georgia Tech
$45K Maryland
@ClassicRockerDad, do you know for sure that those schools all stack aid? Will they give the full need based aid and then reduce the family or student contribution by the merit aid amount? Many schools do NOT do that.
If you do that, you’ll skip schools like Amherst, Haverford, UPenn, and Columbia (which appear to be affordable). You’ll also skip Harvard, Princeton, and some of the other Ivies (which don’t offer merit, but which may offer net prices at least as low as Penn’s or even as low as MIT’s). You’ll skip 8 of the USNWR top ~30 research universities and many top ~30 LACs.
That may help you in some cases (e.g. if a ~$10K UChicago merit scholarship eliminates the need for any self help). However, for any school where merit does not “stack” (or offset loans), you’ll probably need close to a full tuition merit scholarship to wind up with a net price as low as what you appear to be getting from the best need-based aid alone. You probably won’t get that much from the kind of “reach” schools we’ve been citing (unless you bag an extremely competitive award such as Duke’s Robertson scholarship.)
For a student with very high stats in this income/asset bracket, IMO need-based aid alone is likely to deliver some of the lowest net prices for reach schools. Many of the most selective/prestigious colleges don’t even offer merit awards (except, in a few cases, in relatively low amounts or to a few exceptional candidates.) Safeties may require a different strategy (one focused on sticker price or merit), because less selective schools typically aren’t as generous with n-b aid.
Given her interests, I’d have her take a good look at Harvey Mudd if you can swing the finances.
Let us see what 2018 bring, thanks everyone it has been pretty helpful.
Good point. I do not know for sure, worth checking with the school and eliminating those that say no.
Regarding “stacking” merit scholarships with need-based grants…
thanks @ucbalumnus