Was hoping someone could offer “real world” advice regarding merit based scholarships for my son. He has a weighted GPA of 4.3 and an ACT of 33. Several AP classed and 1818 classes. He is interested in Finance/Actuarial Science. Would he qualify for scholarship money from the school or possibly the business school? Thanks to anyone who may offer advice. JC
Yes, your son will likely see merit money. But, for the larger awards (e.g, Ignatian), I believe LUC uses unweighted GPA (if you don’t have that, calculate it yourself, core courses only, on a 4.0 scale) https://www.luc.edu/undergrad/featurecontent/canvases/costandvalue/
Run LUC’s NPC, IIRC it includes projected merit awards. https://www.luc.edu/undergrad/tuitionandfinancialaid/netpricecalculator/
What do you want/need your annual net costs to be?
It’s been awhile since we looked at LUC with a little higher ACT. The awards then were nice, but still left us with a lot to pay.
What are your financial safety schools? With your student’s stats, he could get free or near free tuition at some schools.
Thanks for the feedback! Looks like all in the cost for 2020 is over $60,000/yr. 
Even with a substantial scholarship offer this would probably be out of reach. At this price it doesnt look like a good value relative to other state school options.
@colmani, it’s become more and more difficult to get substantial merit money. Hard to beat your own state U. I know that’s the case in NY
What are you willing and able to pay for college?
We are looking to stay under 25k per year. There seems to be several good options even less expensive at our surrounding states.Our flagship state school would be essentially tuition free with only room and board to pay. Beginning to believe that will be our best option. Especially if accepted into the honors college.
Trying to determine if its even worth the drive to Chicago to go visit at this point…
Is it possible, given merit awards there, that expense is doable? The NPC for one of local catholic schools shoes half tuition in merit as pretty much guaranteed but two of my kids got full tuition awards from them. The NPC is supposed to show only what is pretty much guaranteed. I suspect some put in an average, which is useless, IMO. If there is virtually no way that son can get get enough merit to come close to budget, then, yes, waste of time. But if there are a number of awards that his stats make him eligible for ( not for just a handful of awards), then give it a go.
Google Tuition free scholarships to see what comes up. I’ve found a number of them. It’s the frigging room and board that throws things out of range, even here in our state where it is eminently possible for a lot of kids to get most of tuition covered. Room and board is high here