If you’re interested in an LAC, we found excellent merit aid at: Luther, Augustana, Cornell College, Juniata, Westminster, and Ripon. Some of these are Colleges That Change Lives–which seems to be a great place to start looking. Sewanee gave some merit aid but not as much as the others. This was for my son who has an excellent GPA, 9 AP classes, but only so-so ACT scores. I got the sense that some colleges based merit aid more on a combination of ACT scores and GPA (this is where S excelled), and others focused more on ACT scores (where S did not receive much if any merit aid).
Thanks, everyone, for pointing out Colleges That Change Lives. I am aware of them. At this point, we have no idea if our son will like these type of schools. He may still be swayed by having sports teams on campus, etc. I know these schools do well by their students, though, so they are worth checking out!
You are in Illinois…and UIUC is large…and expensive. But don’t discount schools like Northern Illinois. Your student could,get merit aid there…and that school is less costly than UIUC anyway. There are smart students at every college in this country!
Lots of choices in PA as well…Mullenburg, Lehigh, Villanova, Lafayette. All nice schools.
What about Marist or Drew?
What about one of the SUNY campuses?
Santa Clara U is a smaller school near SF that provides merit awards for students that have good grades and test scores. They offer a number of 50% tuition merit awards. Our S applied there for engineering, but students can study other fields as well. USoCal also is generous with merit awards and gives a number of 50% tuition awards as well. It’s pretty large, but the programs and school’s within USC are smaller and more intimate.
I can’t stomach sending our son to Northern. I know having an open mind is a good thing but he’s a way better student than that. I’m not big on U of I either since almost all kids are from Illinois. My husband and I stuck close to home when we went to NU but we met friends from all over the world. No one on my entire freshman floor was from Illinois. We want the same for our kids. I’ve heard Lehigh and Villanova more than once and I’ll take a look! A diverse campus is important.
Generally speaking, merit aid is used to lure high stats kids that fall well above the 75th %ile among the schools’ accepted students and/or have something to contribute in terms of artistic talent, leadership, etc. In reality, it’s probably more often given to students that fall into the top 10 percent of the applicant pool, but that information isn’t available on the Common Data Sets. If a school indicates that their 25th-75th percentile on ACT scores is 28-32, your kid would need probably need to have an ACT score of 33-36 to score some merit.
As for Macalester vs. Carleton, the former gives merit (my nephew and a friend’s son both got $17K), the latter does not. Macalester might have a slightly more international vibe, and Carleton a slightly more academic one. Both are excellent schools.
University of San Diego is not nearly as highly ranked as some of the schools you are looking at; it’s also Catholic. (And having moved from the northeast to SoCal, I can appreciate not appreciating winters!
If your concern with Catholic schools is that they might be too conservative, you might want to think about looking at some of the Jesuit universities - the Jesuits offer great education while being very forward-thinking and open-minded. Students of all - and no - faiths attend Jesuit schools. There are some religion/theology requirements, but there’s usually a broad range of courses that can be taken to fill them. You can check the schools out here: http://www.ajcunet.edu/institutions/
The very top schools like BC or Georgetown offer little to no merit aid, but many of the remaining schools can be very generous to high-achieving students. My kids received offers from Loyola-MD, Fairfield, and Scranton that would be well within your range. Valparaiso (Lutheran), Centre, and Butler (both non-religious) were also very generous offers (both kids scored 32 on the ACT and were in the top 10% of their classes).
It’s so great to have all of this feedback.
Of course, our son’s scores will be a major part of where he can get merit. He’s taking free practice tests with Kaplan this summer for both the SAT and ACT. I’ll be curious to see which one he does better on. He took the ACT through NUMATS two months ago and, despite my suggestion that he fill in the blanks since there’s no penalty for guessing, he went as fast as he could while still being careful and made the decision to make no guesses towards the end. He purposely left 10 questions blank on each section. Ugh. Then, when he got his score, he used a chart in one of the ACT practice books to figure out the percentage of problems he got correct. (He could look at each score and see how many he got right and he knew how many questions he answered.) He hardly got any wrong. He’s taking Algebra II/Trig Honors as a freshman so he’s already had all of the math he needs. Now, he would just need to speed it up and practice a bit more. I would expect he’ll have pretty high scores considering he won’t take a test that counts for almost two years.
Homerdog, southern schools aren’t all debutantes and kids who dress for football games. My daughter is at Alabama (where, BTW, over 50% of the students are from OOS). There is a large Greek presence, and the Greek men dress for games, and many girls, Greek and non-Greek, wear sundresses to games (it can be hot and they tend to be cool). However, most students are NOT Greek, and you’ll find plenty of kids who are not dressed up at football games or around campus. My daughter isn’t Greek and has plenty of friends and a fine social life notwithstanding, and I’m not sure she knows any debutantes. We’re from Illinois also and my daughter hasn’t experienced any culture shock at all in the deep south. There are a lot of Illinois kids there. I know your son is looking for a smaller school than Alabama, but my point is that if Big Greek, Big Football Alabama isn’t all formal and debutante-ish, then other southern schools may not be either. And the southern schools are often generous with merit aid.
@“beth’s mom” Totally get it. And I’ve never been to Alabama! My experience was actually at Vanderbilt and UNC when I was looking as an 18-year old. Everyone seemed so different than me and I didn’t even end up applying. It makes sense that, at Alabama, there is more of a mix since it’s such a large school. Thanks for chiming in. 
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want him to meet all kinds of people as our neck of the woods is pretty sheltered. At the same time, I’d like him in a place where students collaborate and appreciate each others’ differences.
I understand. I went to law school at Virginia back in the early 80s and,coming from the Philadelphia area, I was in culture shock for the entire first semester. Times have changed!
Having a logical and practical game plan is key. Honing in on a few automatic scholarship schools and then taking a shot at competitive merit at 8-10 schools the end result should be good.
Now in your younger daughter’s case, her California dreaming might not be practical based on costs, no aid and needing major merit,
Agreed, @ClarinetDad16 , We don’t need major merit, though. We have the money to pay if it comes to that. Just prefer to not spend $70K since that seems just crazy for one year of school. Maybe we can find a good deal for our son and then we won’t mind spending more on number 2. I have heard, though, that Santa Clara might be a place for merit and I have two friends whose girls went to USC with half scholarships. One at a time!
From what I’ve read on this site, I wouldn’t count on a lot of merit from Santa Clara although they do offer some decent scholarships. Just not enough from my understanding to really count on it. If that is incorrect, I’d love to hear from someone because it otherwise sounds like a decent fit for our kid. USC has gotten so expensive, even half tuition there is going to be out of our price range.
Our guidance counselor today told me that a senior at our high school was chosen to interview for a scholarship at Santa Clara. The student is interested in engineering. She didn’t fill out any special forms; they chose her from her original application. She flew out to interview and ended up with a full ride.
Santa Clara does offer some good merit awards…but not very many…and they are very competitive.
@homerdog even if your daughter down the road was at the top of USC’s applicant pool and earned the 1/2 tuition scholarship - that net cost will still cost more than $50,000. By then considerably more.
You are seeking $15-25,000 merit awards for your older child. That is significant.
FYI, merit awards are often doled out to change outcomes. So if a school feels a kid is going to pick an Ivy, they can award merit to entice that student to pick their school.
Completely understand about southern schools. I think Vandy (I think has changed a lot since the 1980s), Emory and Tulane are different than Wake and UVA, just my sense in terms of encouraging my kid to apply (will apply to Emory, Tulane maybe). University of Miami also gives nice merit.
Some of the schools mentioned by others including Scranton and Villanova are predominantly Catholic, as is Fordham.
Did you run the NPC with two kids in school? That changes the formula a lot. Since he is young for his grade if you will get need based with two in school, maybe he may want to do a Gap year?
While I applaud your initiative the problem is the landscape may change alot. Once the word is out about a school and they have higher caliber applicants, they reduce their merit or require more competitive scores to get merit. So the school that would be a merit choice for him now may not be in two years.
Writing to give another perspective to the OP. It’s good to start thinking about this process now in terms of cost of attendance, even though your son is still a few years away from college. If anything, this will let you plan your financial future.
There are many, many colleges your son can attend that will have a net cost of attendance less than 45K/year. It’s hard to give advice about exact colleges to consider without having test scores and junior year GPA in hand. However, you can start looking at certain tiers of colleges in terms of admitted student GPAs and test scores.
In general terms, your son will need to be in the upper quarter of admitted students to receive significant merit aid. Here’s an example: http://www.rollins.edu/financial-aid/as-cps-financial-aid/scholarships/. CTCL schools can be an especially good deal for full-pay students with higher GPA/test scores.
I agree with others that stereotypes of regions in the US can cloud the college search process. You will find many posters on CC from the west, northeast, and upper midwest that can’t fathom the idea of their offspring attending college in the south. I echo what other posters in this thread have said about southern schools, however… the idea of schools in the south being all debutantes, guys in blazers, and closeted Klan members is a stereotype divorced from reality. Maybe this was more true in 1950 but not in current times.
If you choose to learn more about colleges in the south, you will find there are many excellent choices in the region that offer superb academics, often at a discount compared to colleges in the west or northeast. Some are in/very close to large cities (Emory, Trinity, Rollins, Eckerd, Rhodes), others are set in the woods for a nature-loving person (Sewanee), and some are in small town/city USA (Centre and Hendrix).
Best of luck on the search! It will be a fun ride!