<p>Hi, thanks for taking the time to read this. I am currently a highschool sophmore interested in getting a head start on finding the best college I can reasonably afford. It would help, if I had an idea of what schools offer merit scholarships based upon Act and GPA close to my own. I took the Act for the second time, and improved my composite score from a 28 to a 30. My unweighteded GPA is a 3.74 with all advanced courses. I am the oldest child in my family, so I'm kind of the guinea pig when it comes to colleges and scholarships. Any help you could provide, such as specific schools with merit scholarships, would be greatly appreciated. </p>
<p>You will get more specific, helpful answers if you give more details. What is your home state? What is your intended major (if you have an idea, or at least several areas of interest)? </p>
<p>How far from home are you willing to go to college? Are you looking for a college campus that is in the middle of a large city, or is a remote campus okay? </p>
<p>Are you also planning to go to grad school? Have you had a financial conversation with your parents, and if so, how much $$ are they willing and able to contribute to your college expenses each year?</p>
<p>Are you looking for an Honors Program, do you want large or small student population on campus, are you looking for a certain group of folks…artsy/theater, nerdy/geeky, preppy, etc?</p>
<p>My Daughter (homeschooled in high school) chose to be the “big fish” in the smaller pond, and got a great merit aid scholarship at a smaller, lesser known liberal arts college (LAC) in the south. We looked at colleges where her ACT score was way above the college’s 75th percentile.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you in your search!</p>
<p>Okay thanks. So more info, I am planning to go to grad school (medical), I am looking for a relatively well known and respected undergraduate college, and my home state is alabama. I would prefer to go out of state but if the scholarships aren’t there then I don’t know what I’ll do. If the undergraduate school had a good med school attached that would also be great. I play varsity baseball for my highschool, so if the college had a team I could walk onto that would be great too. The size of the school wouldn’t matter, but I would like it to be in a city or in a large college town. This is all hypothetical though, I would most likely attend the school that offered the largest scholarship (if I get any) and is most respected.</p>
<p>I would look at Tulane. They offer some really good merit scholarships. But you will need to show a lot of interest in the school, visit, etc.</p>
<p>Have you tried the SuperMatch College search feature on College Confidential? Input your info and preferences and then check out the top 90% for their school merit scholarships. That is where I would start. If you can bring up your scores and have more leadership roles, you could consider larger scholarships such as Duke’s Robertson or Carolina’s Morehead-Cain. These are full rides, but are extremely competitive.</p>
<p>Many schools offer merit based on those criteria. Take a look at the common data set of the colleges you are interested in. You are more likely to get merit or selective scholarships if you are on the high end of their stats. Your GPA is pretty good as long as you have some rigorous coursework, ACT is decent but better if can pull it over 30. You have plenty of time to improve this score and likely to do so. </p>
<p>I am planning to retake the test for a third time my junior year, but I’m not sure if I can expect a large increase again . Before I took the test the second time, i preticipated in Kaplan’s act test prep and put in over 30 hrs of test prep. So yes, I am definitely going to try to bring my scores up but I don’t know how likely it is that I will. but yeah, I will try the search it might really be helpful. Thanks</p>
<p>Tulane’s going to max out about 30K for this candidate, leaving the OP with 30-35K/year.</p>
<p>Anything you can do to get the GPA and ACT up would be worthwhile. Right now, you’re a little low for merit that’s going to leave you below 20K in costs. Look to take up leadership positions in your ECs, too, but not at the cost of your GPA and ACT. The full tuition scholarships are going to people with ACTs 34 and above and GPAs of 3.9-4.0 with rigor.</p>
<p>Go to the Financial Aid forum and look at the pinned threads.</p>