Merit scholarships at UMTC

Talking to the UMinn scholarship counselor, he mentioned that there will be more scholarships available for the sophomores. mainly departmental scholarships. Does anyone know if these are dependable. We are seriously considering UMinn and our S does have the standard $10K merit award. Given the rapid tuition increases it would be good to have something to offset them

The OOS tuition increases aren’t as steep once a student matriculates. That is, an OOS student who starts in Fall 2018 won’t pay the same tuition for 2019-2020 as an OOS freshman just entering in Fall 2019. There will still be an increase, just not quite the same magnitude.

This is what was to me, also, by the chair of undergrad mechanical engineering.

Right, tuition has gone up just over 5% for returning students, much lower than the 10-15% for new incoming students. Plus fees and housing have also increased closer to 5% a year. Still high compared to some schools that have frozen tuition or kept increases pegged to inflation, but not nearly as bad as the ~15% tuition jump for incoming freshman only.

Honestly with the extreme non-resident tuition increases, my daughter would probably not have been able to attend without the merit scholarships she was awarded that were just enough to make it work. She picked UMN-TC over all her other offers, including UIUC that was by far the least expensive (though for a base tuition major that was not as interesting to her). Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences is an excellent and relatively selective program and we are very happy for her.

So I spoke with an admissions officer this morning about merit aid and honors college selection for the College of Design. The AO stated that the criteria they are working with was 32 and better for ACT, and top 5% of high school class. She put my Ds application back through for a review, but I am not hopeful. Her highschool does not rank, and she is in a class of around 1000 students. Kind of a crazy question, but is rank based on unweighted or weighted GPA at other schools? Anywhooo, keep your fingers crossed for us, we need that merit aid, as @illinoisx3 mentioned for his daugher, to make it all work.

I just read this a minute ago when I logged into my son’s account to make sure his grant was there. Yes, they do give out more grants. No, I have no idea how many.

@mwmomtwins - I think you are wise to push back. For my son’s school, they have both weighted and unweighted rank. He put the higher rank on his application. Good luck and please post back here regardless of what happens.

So the final outcome is no merit aid for my Daughter. The admissions officer I spoke with this morning said there just aren’t any funds left for OOS students for College of Design, even though her stats were in line with their criteria. It’s very frustrating as her application was in by 10/20. Nothing we can do now but decide if the price tag is worth it or move on. It is very hard when your kid has worked so hard, and finally fell in love with a school but is walking away from significant grants/scholarships at other schools. I wish you all the best and appreciate this place to vent and offer support through this crazy process!

We (daughter), too, pushed back and they reconsidered offering $3700 which was not even close to other Big 10 schools. Daughter had to walk away and that was very difficult as UMN was her first choice.

Sorry to hear that. The whole process can be rather arbitrary and subjective. Objective stats certainly are important with admissions, but letters, essays, EC and demographics/hooks seem overweighted when it comes to merit awards. From my experience, this is far more skewed at private schools. Two kids in two years and this silly game is finally over for a while. Will know a little better for number three, perhaps.

@whaaa2022 @netopspin just saw this thread and thought it might help you make the decision if you have not done so already. My son is currently junior at CSE, OOS and AFROTC scholarship as well. We had the same questions you have, and the answers from OneStop were confusing.

All scholarships are stackable, including need-based financial aid (like Pell grant) if applicable. AF will pay all instate tuition and fees. All scholarships and financial aid are applied against any other charges on the bill, like R&B, books etc. If the amount of scholarships/financial aid exceeds all charges on the bill, your kid will be issued a refund.

Hope this helps!

Just found out DS was awarded a $1k National Merit Scholarship that he had to accept in the NM site. The acceptance date was May 15, and we had no other notice of the award until now. Saw the info being shared on the NM scholarship thread on this forum so had my son check the NM portal site…he just wrote back saying he accepted the $1k award. We moved recently and have had some issues with USPS forwarding mail so maybe they sent a letter. We’ll have to see how it shows up in his financial aid package at UM but it should be on top of his other scholarships. Just wanted to share as we would’ve never thought to check the NM site for an award notice.

@whaaa2022, our S received the same and accepted it for UMN. I am sure it can to stacked with the other awards. We received a letter from NMSC about it. May be it is delayed since you recently moved.

Total surprise last week! My daughter opened an envelop from UMN to find two merit scholarships totalling $16000 per year for 4 years. I cannot express the relief I have, but also am curious to the timing. She attended orientation the week before. If y’all remember, I posted about speaking with admissions after the April 1 “deadline” and getting no merit, even though she had all the stats they said were needed for OOS merit scholarships. I wonder if their yield for OOS really dropped, due to the increase in tuition and no longer offering the tuition waiver for OOS students. Anyway, there is hope, even long after, and we are very happy :)) :))

@mwmomtwins or they realized that they messed up and she was supposed to get merit in the first place. Congrats to her!

Congratulations to you and your daughter @mwmomtwins