<p>Can anyone offer insight on the stats needed to receive merit aid from Bucknell?</p>
<p>here you go:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bucknell.edu/x571.xml[/url]”>http://www.bucknell.edu/x571.xml</a></p>
<p>Both my daughters received dean’s scholarship (10,000/yr). Stats around 2200 SAT, within top 5 rank, very involved in their high school. D1 has a music scholarship for non-majors in addition (2500/yr with free lessons/band). Hope this helps.</p>
<p>What did your daughter have to do to get the non-majors music scholarship? Did she seek it out and apply for it? Was she asked to apply? Was it just offered? What were her music “credentials”?</p>
<p>There was an application for the music scholarship for non majors that is submitted online separate from the common application. The application was under financial aid/types of scholarships. She submitted the application on line and then followed the instructions to send in a CD tape of her playing only the clarinet. With her admit letter was a letter that she was offered the scholarships. She played in the H.S. band (clarinet), jazz band (saxophone), symphony orchestra and the pit orchestra. She was co-concert master for clarinet and got a recommendation from her band director. That’s all and she’s still playing and loves it. If the application still exists it was a great find. When we noticed it, we looked at all the schools she applied to and looked under scholarships to see where she could get extra scholarship money but Bucknell’s was the only one we could find. Good luck.</p>
<p>Two of my kids applied there, and frankly, we found their merit aid stingy as compared to offers from other schools. Bucknell’s merit aid, in our case, was far behind that offered by schools like Lafayette, Colgate, Mt. Holyoke, and URochester. All 4 made generous offers of merit aid. When we contacted them (one child was interested in Bucknell), they kinda copped an attitude, like Bucknell was so awesome we should be willing to pay anything to attend there!!</p>
<p>Granted, it’s a very good school, but their opinion of themselves is a little bit inflated. After all, the 4 schools I mentioned are not slouches by any means.</p>
<p>I have to say, I’m always amazed when I read these threads about how colleges owe it to kids to give them scholarships. Bucknell could fill its freshman class three times over with the number of applications it receives and not see the quality of the class suffer. We have a daugher who went to a really competitive high school, had an excellent GPA and great SATs and could have gone to almost any college she wanted to; but she loved Bucknell, chose to go there and has been really happy. My wife and I just accepted that and have chosen work very hard to pay full tuition now for three years–and haven’t given it a second thought. While we understand that we’re fortunate and that there are families that really need/deserve help, we also find it really offensive to hear about the games people play, pitting schools against each other, and complaining when a school doesn’t think their child is special. At any school, there are large numbers of parents paying full freight to put their really talented kids through these really expensive schools. Just to turn it around for a second, why do you think you deserve special treatment over the rest of us? Are you working as hard as we are? Why is your child more deserving than ours?</p>
<p>nsdad:</p>
<p>Why do you think it’s called MERIT aid? Because someone DESERVES it for being an excellent student. They are rewards for hard work. </p>
<p>Frankly, your attitude is elitist and condescending. We non-afflulent folks should slink away to third rate colleges, so the children of the privileged need not mix with the great unwashed?</p>
<p>You’d fit in with the 1920’s and 1930’s, when Jews, Blacks, and Catholics had a snowballs chance in hell of getting into certain schools. </p>
<p>Too many wealthy people have the attitude “I’ve got mine–so to hell with everyone else”</p>
<p>Rant over</p>
<p>You didn’t answer my last three questions.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between merit and entitlement. I didn’t say we were affluent. Faced with more lucrative offers from other schools, we chose instead to have my wife go back to work and take out loans to pay Bucknell’s tuition, because having our very “deserving” daughter go to the school of her choice was most important to us, even if it meant financial sacrifice on our part. We never once chose to denigrate Bucknell because they were too “stingy” and couldn’t see the fabulousness of our child. They made a decision based on the quality of their applicant pool and what was right for the school and we chose to accept that and pay more to have our child go there. As you note, your kids had other excellent choices with better merit aid and you made your decisions based on different criteria. I agree that your children deserve to be accepted to these schools based on their academic performance but not that they’re entitled to scholarships because of their performance any more than any other kid with equal or superior performance is, regardless of financial circumstances. That’s the definition of merit.</p>
<p>nsdad–</p>
<p>I NEVER SAID MY CHILDREN DESERVE “SPECIAL” TREATMENT. Just befuddled how the SAME child with the SAME qualifications can get such different fin. aid offers from similar schools.</p>
<p>With three kids, I cannot afford 100K of debt per child, being truly middle class (a teacher). By your logic, my kids should take their place at state college and not strive to attend the best. We should “know our place”, according to your thinking.</p>
<p>MADad - As a student at Bucknell, i know that the financial aid process can be frustrating because of how random it is sometimes. I applied to a number of schools that were considered “equally ranked” but received vastly different financial aid packages. </p>
<p>That being said, I don’t know where you got the idea that nsdad was saying your children should “know their place” and attend a state college. I think he was simply saying that merit based aid is really competitive at a lot of schools and that everyone uses different criteria when they are evaluating what colleges to send their kids to.</p>
<p>Anyways, all of the schools you mentioned are fantastic, and I’m sure your son/daughter will be really happy wherever they end up!</p>
<p>all colleges aren’t looking for the SAME students. some value some things more than others, hence, different merit awards.<br>
i’m one of those who received more merit at bucknell than other schools i applied to.</p>