University of Richmond seems great, but out of our price range. I orginally eliminated JMU because it is further from us than Virginia Tech (but not far enough to be “interesting”) and has fewer neuroscience options. It does have a lot going for it in general.
At many colleges, the awarding of merit scholarships and their amounts is rather opaque, and could change from year to year. At such colleges with merit scholarship opacity, it is best to assume that a needed merit scholarship is a reach, even if admission is likely or safety.
That is a really great point! Sometimes I feel like her to-consider list is quite tilted toward more likely schools, but if you factor in needing merit aid or wanting to be in an honors college, etc. many might not be as likely as they first appear.
Following your thread as I have a HS junior who has similar stats and goal as yours but mine is a boy. We have very similar list. Just replace your NC schools with NJ schools (Rutgers 3+3 BS/PA and TCNJ BS/DTP program) as we are in NJ. Other than that, we are also eyeing on RIT, Drexel and Quinnipiac. We visited Chapel Hill last year on the road trip and I like it a lot. However, it’s almost impossible for us to get in as OOS.
I have a Rutgers and TCNJ graduate, plus a UDel graduate who is at BU for dpt (Scranton and Quinnipiac were on the short list). While she absolutely loved UDel, she was ready for a change of scenery in spite of how great the UDel dpt program is. I felt for sure she’d stay. She also got into seton hall and Rutgers, but loved Boston (bu gave merit, NEU did not).
Has your daughter always determined for DTP? We are still debating between PA and DTP. UDel was recommended to us as well. It has pre-PA program which looks pretty good.
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Yes, she thought about PA too, but prefers less messy biology. She did a lot of PT shadowing in high school (she also spent a lot of time getting PT as a dancer/runner/scoliosis.
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Although I usually agree with @blossom most of the time, this is one where I disagree. I think that looking at the Common Data set (which is what Dataverse in the merit aid link I referred to above uses to gather its data), it’s a pretty decent indicator when the percentages are so high.
Let’s assume that a school has 200 entering students without need and this is how they divide up their merit aid:
- 10 students at $70,000 (total $700k)
- 180 students at $1,000 (total $180k)
- 10 students receive nothing
That would mean that 95% students without need received merit aid and their average merit aid package would be $4,631.58 ($880k/190 students). But if 95% of students are receiving an average of $25k, that really means that students are getting some significant packages, even if some are $10k and others are $40k.
This is the merit aid as discount philosophy. Many schools that are not the Top X realize that they don’t have a sufficient pool of full-pay candidates who are willing to do full-pay if a school is not a certain level of prestige (with the level varying by family). If a school costs $70k, there may be families willing to pay $50k, or $40k, or $30k. The school would rather get $30-50k for those students rather than not get those students at all. Plus, when families receive a merit aid award, they view it as love from the school, which makes them more inclined to attend. So why don’t schools just lower their sticker prices? Some have started to have tuition resets, but there are families who wonder, why does this school cost $40k sticker while this other school costs $65k? The $65k one which is giving me $25k in merit aid must be better, so that’s where I’ll go, even though both schools are coming out as $40k.
I think the above holds true for schools where 90+% of students without need receive merit aid. For schools where 25% or less of students without need receive merit aid, I think it is really merit aid. And for the merit aid as discount philosophy, the better the student (in relation to the applicant pool) the bigger the discount, so the relative merits of one applicant compared to another do come in to play.
Average packages are not helpful for the typical family looking for merit. Yes, SOME merit is better than no merit. But unless those 190 students in your example are happy to be full pay (and 10 of them are) with the 1K discount providing a nice psychological boost (like me with my 20% off coupon at Bed Bath, even though I know the stuff is marked up an extra 20% from the git-go) this is not a useful decision-making metric.
It doesn’t matter if it’s “really” merit aid or not. Call it whatever. But a modest concession off the sticker price is just not meaningful to thousands of families who cannot afford sticker price.
@blossom @AustenNut I continue looking at Connecticut College to try to understand this concept better. Their website states that merit scholarships range from 15K to 34K and provide a list of named awards without any associated numbers.
For 89% to get an average of $24,817 with a max award of 34K, the most unbalanced it could be is that about half of the 89% get the minimum 15K and the other half get 34K. The best case for an mid-range recipient would be if very few got the highest award, pushing a typical applicant closer to 24K. If some of the individual scholarships stacked so that individual applicants are eligible for more than 34K, it would drive up the % of applicants who got the minimum 15K.
Obviously none of this stuff is guaranteed to be the same from year to year and a lot of colleges are even more opaque than this one, but it’s interesting to look at. If D ends up wanting to apply we could view it as a reach and see if it still makes sense to apply in the context of other places she is interested in.
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@beishan @Mjkacmom It is great to hear from other people who are in a similar boat or further along in the process. I am worried about pushing D toward a combined program if she doesn’t know for sure, but it also seems like a guaranteed pathway would make the future so much less stressful for her.
RIT looks so interesting, and they seem really committed to having art education/opportunities. I loved what I saw of Drexel but for some reason it just came off as kind of intense for D. If she really commits to the idea of PA we can reconsider.
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Trust me, my daughter really struggled with direct admit programs vs. applying to dpt programs! She did end up getting accepted at everyone she applied to, she kept her gpa up (although the early chemistry courses were brutal).
So she did not go for direct admitted? It’s a tough call. My son has not decided either. We just try to lay the blue print in advance to discuss all the possibilities at this moment. Maybe he will have different thoughts after he gets in college.
I like GAP from Pitts but it seems very competitive. However, if you can get in, I think they won’t stop you if you decide not to go into PA or DTP program later on. It’s definitely harder to get in than getting out of GAP.
Drexel “campus” is not very attractive to us but academic seems very solid. PA exam passing rate is very good. RIT has very good engineering, game design and imaging science program. Best of all is their co-op. Same as Drexel, both are all famous on co-op. In case the child does not want to go on PA or medical route later on, co-op is good for career planning.
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So does Pitt…arguably one of the most beautiful chapels on any college campus. Clearly….the size of the chapel has nothing to do with religious affiliation.
Many colleges started affiliated with religious groups (Boston University, for example) but no longer are affiliated. But have beautiful chapels.
That’s because Conn College gives few merit awards. Mostly need based aid. At least that is what we understand is happening there.
As a source for ideas, this list from U.S. News might be worth a look: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/undergrad-research-programs.
First time I’ve poked around in a common data set, but it looks like from the 508 degree seeking students, 251 were determined to have need and need-based aid was given to all of them. 257 students did not have need, and merit based aid was granted to 229 of them (89%), averaging 24,817.
Maybe the students who are offered merit aid as part of their package are more likely to attend, and many more are accepted without aid and choose not to attend, thereby never making it into the CDS.
I didn’t mean to single Conn College out, it was the top of a list of possibilities and I was trying to understand more about what the numbers could mean. I understand nothing at all is guaranteed about the process, but it seems like in this particular case it might be worth the free application if it otherwise seems to be a good fit. In a case where only 25% of accepted students get a merit award and it averages 4K, I would likely make a different choice, so it’s going to have to go on a case by case basis.
I’ve only done one other example since then, Lake Forest. The college’s net price calculator had questions about GPA and SAT, and estimated merit was included in the results.
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I have run across that list before and so many dream schools on that list! Many are too reach-y or expensive for us, but still have a few on her list to consider.
RIT was one of my senior’s top picks for a direct-entry PA program! She loved the tour, and the curriculum practically requires you to pursue art at some level during PA schooling - the school is really pushing art and sciences.
In general, be sure as you’re learning about programs that you focus on “direct-entry” or “direct-admit” for PA. Read the details as to what’s required to continue into the grad portion of the program, not all programs are the same! We’re still waiting to see where she ends up next year - she has been admitted to a few PA programs each of which came with amazing merit offers (dig deep for details, or call and ask, but it appears many PA programs offer 50% scholarships). She also got into a few direct-admit nursing programs with the idea of becoming a Nurse Practitioner (incl Pitt, PennWest Edinboro, and PSU-Erie, PSU came with a scholarship too). At the moment, she’s committed to a PA program, and has put nursing aside.
RIT is the only school she hasn’t heard back from. A few more hints - if you apply to Pitt or PennWest, do so as early as possible, like Aug/Sept - they do rolling admissions, so it’s easier to get in the sooner you apply, and you get a response more quickly. It feels good to have that acceptance in hand while waiting on PA program interviews and responses which take longer than traditional admission processes.
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