<p>My daughter has a 31 ACT and 3.9 unweighted GPA. By the end of senior year she will have 11 AP's and was in band all 4 years, started 2 clubs community service oriented and has been top 10 in her large over 600 class. Is there any chance for merit. She loves Tulane but at 60,000+ we are going to need some merit. I don't think we will qualify for much financial but still can not see spending more than a quarter of salary on tuition. Please advise!!!</p>
<p>Predicting merit aid isn’t quite as easy as it used to be, but I would think those stats and strength of schedule will most likely result in excellent merit aid. Not the top award probably, but one of the next two levels. In other words in the mid $2X,000 range. My best guess anyway.</p>
<p>Thank you! I hope!!!</p>
<p>@sofia1 - I hope as well! Let us know as soon as you hear. Shouldn’t be too long.</p>
<p>Tell her to apply for the community service scholarship and other scholarships not associated with Tulane. There are tons of scholarships out there and she can use those with anything she gets from Tulane.</p>
<p>Hello, very excited!!! She got her award today as a distinguished scholar. She will be receiving 27,000! She will be applying for community service award as well. Thank you for your help!!!</p>
<p>And once again we have a winner. Both you and me. Well, mostly you, I just have the satisfaction of having predicted well. You have the money. LOL. Congrats.</p>
<p>Could you tell me please how long after she applied did she received her merit letter? And how did she get in? Mail? email? My S got accepted already. Thanks for your help</p>
<p>I’ve read that people have been receiving their merit awards by mail about a week after their acceptance shows up on Gibson.</p>
<p>A week is average, I think. I have seen as little as two days, and as long as two weeks.</p>
<p>Here’s how I swagged the merit aid when my kid was applying a few years back.</p>
<p>The most recent data from the Kiplinger Magazine database (which gets its data from the Common Data Set on the school website) is that 39% of TU students (i.e. kids who enrolled/attend) without need get merit aid awards. The average merit award is $21k. And the reason schools do merit aid is so that smart kids will enroll and raise the averages. </p>
<p>Looking at that 39% number told me that you get into the merit money zone as you move above the average stats and start to close in on the 75th percentile for TU’s published admissions stats. It is easiest to swag this based on test scores.</p>
<p>TU’s 25-75% percentile range for ACT is 29-32. So assume the 50th percentile is 30.5. So the money zone starts at 31 and increases from there. Although you also have to bake in grades and other factors that can have some influence. FC always says that it is a bit less formulaic/predictable now than it was in the past. </p>
<p>I seem to recall that when you do Tulane’s NPC they ask for GPA, SAT, class rank and then give you a projected $ for merit. something like: you may qualify for ___ in merit aid. I don’t want to do the NPC again to see if I am remembering things correctly, though. I apologize in advance if I am misremembering. Anyone see this on Tulane’s NPC? </p>
<p>Daughter hasn’t heard about her EA application, yet…</p>