<p>I seem to specialize in asking questions that are a little touchy so I apologize in advance if this is not info that should be shared. But, do Mt schools in general have a lot of merit awrds to offer and are they large enough to sway you to one school vs another perhaps more prestigious school? I understand that NYU is less charitable than other institutions which pushes it off our preferred list (off my list not necessarily my son's).</p>
<p>This depends a lot on the school. We too had no need (per FAFSA - not us) and many schools offered aid- some merit , some talent and some both. Some will make the offer before MT acceptance and others will not make a financial offer until MT acceptance is in hand. It is worth checking each school carefully for information.</p>
<p>You will find many varying NYU stories as well - some folks get offered aid and others do not (of my D and her 2 friends in 2007, all offered NYU admission to TISCH, there were 2 offers of $1000 and one offer of $8000. All good students, one Nationa lMerit). Tisch seems to have the least as I know of a good student who applied to Gallatin, who had 0 need (they are very wealthy) and she got a 20K offer. </p>
<p>Financial AId is a tough subject with so many variations. Good Luck!</p>
<p>MikksMom</p>
<p>I know that OCU offers merit aid based on SAT/ACT scores. The top award is $10,000 a year; I believe they call it the President's award. There are other awards also. The music school offers talent scholarships, but I don't believe you can get both the big merit AND talent awards. You might search their web site for the details, if interested in the school. I think all you have to do is have the scores--you don't have to make special application or anything to get it.</p>
<p>HI all - we just took our D to OCU for her first year. They offered her a place in the Acting BFA program. They are VERY generous with scholarships. </p>
<p>National Merit - Our kid happened to be a National Merit Finalist, and OCU just happens to offer a four-year full ride for those. She also had those merit based full ride offers from University of Oklahoma (they have a MT program) and I recall some Arizona schools and Florida schools also offer similar to National Merit. </p>
<p>Other merit scholarships in MT schools - Webster, Otterbien, Ithaca, and University of Miami offered her top academic scholarships (ranging from 10 - 28K/year.) So merit, in our experience, panned out far better than talent. HOWEVER, she didn't get in to the MT part of those schools, so she had to turn all those scholarships down. Texas Christian University, which has a BFA in MT, offered her 100,000 over four years, and it wasn't for National Merit...just off her application. (Great school, wonderful dean.)</p>
<p>The MT departments, it seemed, had less budget than the university as a whole. Those universities who want to raise their standing/rankings academically seem to offer these big awards. </p>
<p>NYU - 2 kids from our D's theater program got accepted, but I don't believe they were awarded anything. </p>
<p>D was accepted academically at Michigan, but they didn't have anything for her academically. (They said they just can't give much to out of state kids.)</p>
<p>I hope that helps.</p>
<p>Syracuse and University of the Arts also offer significant "merit" scholarships. Syracuse's, I think, are academic based while University of the Arts may be a combination of academic and talent. UArts seems to have a great number of such scholarships available, funded in part by $50,000,000 in endowments given to the school by one supporter alone over the last year (and there are others)!</p>
<p>D1 earned a Founders Scholarship at Syracuse (in Newhouse) at $12,000 a year, just based off her application... no extra application materials requested. It was quite a pleasant surprise for us since she hadn't completed any extra forms or applications for this. I'm not sure if that's their highest merit scholarship or not, but I do know there are two that are less than that.</p>
<p>D2 at Muhlenberg received three scholarships: one for talent, one for merit, and one for the honors program. I think they total around $16,000 a year. She was a national merit finalist - boy I wished they had something like OCU for those finalists, but I do believe it was factored into the amount of her merit scholarship. Again, no extra applications/forms, etc., other than the audition for the talent scholarship.</p>
<p>WCC has generous merit scholarships and so far is really living up to the potential D saw there last spring.</p>
<p>CCM has a merit scholarshop program across the enitre university. They give 10 or 11 full ride scholarships and then a several other levels below that. There is an academic acceptance- scores are not the sole way to be considered- the there is an on-campus competition. Everyone who qualifies to attend the competition and comes to campus receives a scholarship. This year I believe it was $2000/year. One of the member's of this board son received a full ride in MT ths year, as did a second CCM student in another area.</p>
<p>My S got a nice merit (not the presidents one), a very generous talent award and an endowment, for all four years. He was also offered two merit scholarships from Drake, but as he was accepted at his first choice, he did not do the audition at Drake, so we don't know how any talent awards would have gone. He also auditioned at Missouri State and was offered in State tuition as a merit award, they do not have talent awards in MT at all.</p>
<p>My D got a nice Merit Scholarship from Webster. She also got an additional scholarship for having attended Girls State. It wasn't the only reason she chose Webster but it certainly helped in making her decision (which turned out to be the perfect one).</p>
<p>Most schools offer what they call a "Presidential Scholarship" which is merit based. Talent scholarships are also available at some schools, but not very many. Many schools offer one or the other. Drake allowed my D to combine her merit and talent scholarships totaling over $18,000.
Our D was accepted academially at all but one of the schools she applied to. Most of them sent academic acceptance letters very early, accompanied by Presidential Scholarship offers. Most of the private schools offered more than the state schools. We did not send in the FASFA forms until February, so I believe that they were indeed based solely on academics, scores and level of difficulty in the HS curriculum.
Although our eldest D had a slightly better GPA and SAT's, our MT daughter received more in merit scholarship money. It is my belief that schools want to have a diverse student body geographically. MT D applied to more out of state, private schools than first D and we believe that it may have been a factor as well. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>BoCo also has some talent-based scholarship money. I don't know how many offers of this grant aid are made but S received what we thought was a generous non-need offer and he received it at the time of his official offer of admission.</p>
<p>Some schools do not let you know about their "financial package" until after they review your FASFA stuff. My oldest D was accepted at CMU for computer science. She received her acceptence in mid March, but did not hear about financial stuff for a couple more weeks. They based her scholarship offering on our perceived "ability to pay". In otherwords, our income. They did not care about how much our mortgage was or what my husbands income had been in the recent past. Each department has it's own pot and gives out X number of scholarships. If they really want you, you may get a huge break. You never know. Good luck! Oh, BTW, my brother-in-law lives in CA and he told us that becoming a "resident" is not as difficult as it is in other states. In state vs. out of state can be HUGE. If you are interested in CA, check it out!</p>
<p>S got a sizable talent scholarship at Illinois Wesleyan based on his audition. At IWU they will award either a talent or academic merit scholarship (whichever is greater) but they cannot be combined. (We are "no need" according to FAFSA and this was not taken into account when awarding talend scholarships).</p>
<p>People are naming this school and that school. From my own child's experience and what I know of others who have applied to a different set of schools, is that most of the BFA/BM programs offer merit aid of some sort. Posters are breaking down if the merit aid was on talent or academic merit. I am not sure I could begin to do that. Every school my D got merit aid at, didn't seem to necessarily break it down that way. Sometimes it said "Theater Scholarship" and other times there was an official "name" to the Scholarship. They were all merit scholarships. I am not sure I ever bothered or even knew what for. There was a scholarship at every single school....
These were:
NYU/Tisch
Carnegie Mellon (got the scholarship offer as part of the Priority Waitlist)
BOCO
Syracuse
Ithaca
Penn State
Emerson</p>
<p>Sorry to not delineate between talent or academic merit....but all gave significant scholarships (I would say that Penn State's was on the small side, however, compared to the others). I truly believe that a majority of BFA programs offer scholarships of some sort.</p>
<p>Also, for jacksdad, it is hard to know in advance the amount of scholarship your child will be offered and so you have to apply and see. Some of the scholarships my D got were what I do call quite substantial. I had no idea at the time that these were given and it was a pleasant surprise. She did not pick her school based on the amount of the scholarship however and we let her pick her favorite. As it turned out in the end, that happened to be her largest scholarship school (NYU/Tisch).</p>
<p>Having been on here awhile, I remember that Soozie's D is quite the exception and not the rule! (Just look at the list of exceptions! Wow!) Although my D had a very strong GPA, scores etc. she did not receive scholarships at all of the schools she applied to and the out of state public universities offered almost nothing. Her boyfriend had a 3.977 GPA, 2310 on the SAT & is a state ranked swimmer, but did not get scholarships everywhere either. It all depends on the major, the student, geography, and sometimes your income plays a part.</p>
<p>Sarahsmom...allow me to clarify that I was ONLY talking about scholarships at the BFA in MT programs....no other types of schools, majors, private/public, income, etc.</p>
<p>I also have another child in college who applied to colleges where the majority give NO merit aid no matter what. For instance, highly selective colleges and especially all the Ivy League schools, give NO merit aid. Those were the sorts of schools she applied to. She also had top credentials. But so does most anyone admitted to the schools to which she applied. No applicants received merit aid at the majority of schools on her list.</p>
<p>However, I found that most BFA programs offered some forms of scholarships in our experience with my D's BFA list and also with other schools I hear that others apply to for MT which were not on her list. </p>
<p>Having had my first child go through the elite or highly selective college admissions process, we assumed the no merit aid thing with D2 naively as that was what we were used to with D1's list. But all the BFA programs on my D's list in fact, did give merit aid. Very different process than the one older D went through. My older daughter gets scholarships, but they are strictly need based schools. We did learn that two schools on D1's list gave merit aid (we didn't realize it at the time) when she won it but the others clearly do not give any to anyone. I'm not counting the state U which offered her a free ride but that was not a school she was ever considering.</p>
<p>A comment for anyone whose child is applying to CMU - the school offers a presidential scholarship that is merit based, but you have to fill out the FAFSA anyway. CMU is also one of the few schools that is open about negotiating - if you get a better offer from another school, you can bring it to them and they will consider increasing your scholarship.</p>
<p>Just happened upon this thread and was pleasantly surprised to learn that kids are getting talent awards at the BFA programs listed. It is extremely unlikely that we'd qualify for need-based aid, but some of the institutions my s is applying to are quite pricey. Anyway, does anyone know of other types of scholarships for ACTING (not MT) talent, that is, ones not associated with a particular school? Or, is there somewhere to search for such scholarships, perhaps associated with a competition? Thanks for any info anyone might have!</p>
<p>Check out NFAA.org for information on their scholarship competition. The deadline for registering for this year may be getting close. There are many categories available, MT, acting, vocal performance, poetry, etc. If you do a search, there have been discussions on this forum on nfaa and kids who have received scholarships.</p>
<p>Good luck</p>