<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>What schools do people like for their ability to give out merit-based scholarships to middle-income families that would qualify for little or no need-based aid?</p>
<p>I have heard of schools such as Franklin and Marshall, Hamilton, Layfayette, and Whitman among others.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any other ideas.</p>
<p>S accepted ED at Boston University, received half-tuition ($15K) merit scholarship.</p>
<p>You can't start this search by looking at a list of colleges. Virtually ALL colleges except for IVY league, Stanford, and MIT give out merit aid. You have to start by looking at yourself. Then look for colleges one tier below where someone like you would normally end up, ie, where you would be in the top of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>Look in the College Discussion Archive for Best Merit Awards from Where in the parents forum. It lists colleges that gave the best merit awards last year.</p>
<p>I agree with the advice given, but you need to check the websites of the schools you are considering. When we went through this process last year many schools had early deadlines to qualify for merit scholarships. For example, Boston College required that you apply EA, Villanova had a November 1st deadline, Fairfield U had a December 1st requirement. Some schools that consider themselves ivy equivalents, such as Wesleyan, Williams, Tufts, don't feel they need to entice applicants with merit money. There are other schools that are very stingy with merit money and that is most likely because they have a large base of applicants to choose from.<br>
There are plenty of other schools though, especially those seeking to bolster their honors program that will gladly give merit scholarships to promising students with stellar stats. If you happen to be a National Merit Semi-finalist you will get lots of offers for free rides or generous scholarships. Good luck in your quest and take heart - there is a school that's right for you.</p>
<p>Lots of schools don't give out merit aid. My daughters school Reed and her cousins school Colgate for two. Both these schools meet 100% of need and in one of my nieces case, she has no loans only grants, on top of that also scholarships for room and board.( Her sister has a slightly less attractive package from Colgate, with loans)
Now if your EFC is so high that you aren't eligible for any aid, you may have a harder time, our experience has been most merit aid also has some need attached. Other schools have merit scholarships with no need, but those often aren't as generous in our experience, at least at the schools where we were looking.
Aid was not a top criteria. We looked at the school first, but there are threads where schools that give aid to NMS and others are mentioned.
An honors program within your local university is often a great option. Local schools want to attract and keep top students and one way they do that is by offering tuition for 4 years to participate in the honors proograms.</p>
<p>In my state (NJ) many of the state colleges and universities offer full tuition scholarships to top high school students to entice them to stay in state. Rutgers gives it for SAT of 1500, others offer it to the Bloustein distinguished scholars at each high school. I would guess that many other states have merit aid for in-state students.
It was our experience that the "USNWR top schools" didn't offer much in the way of merit aid, but other universities and LAC's had very generous offers, the higher your SAT and GPA, the more money you got. All 3 of my kids ended up out of state with very nice merit awards.</p>