Merit scholarships info

Paying for College
1

<p>Can anyone recommend a good source of information about merit or competitive scholarships for my daughter who is a 99+ percentile-type student interested in computer science, math, science, possibly engineering, also likes history. She has straight As, 9 APs all 5s, nearly perfect PSATs/SATs, and has been very successful in a few college classes. </p>

<p>The vast majority of scholarships I've seen require particular affiliations, ethnicities, residence areas, or parental employment, etc, and I'm hoping to find a site that has a really good way to search so I don't spend a lot of time sifting through the thousands of scholarships she isn't eligible for.</p>

2

<p>The vast majority of four year scholarships are given by the college the student will attend. Look at the stickied threads at the top of this forum for some good colleges to apply to.</p>

3

<p>I wouldn’t bother with private scholarships because most of those are only for ONE year…frosh year. They don’t really help pay for 4 years of college.</p>

<p>As mentioned above…the best and biggest scholarships, typically for all four years, are from the colleges themselves.</p>

<p>What is your situation? Will you likely have an unaffordable EFC? How much can you spend each year on college?</p>

4

<p>Yes, agree that almost all scholarship money actually comes from the colleges. And searching through the websites is a pain! Also, note that most of the scholarships you find through those are just for one year/one time awards. Scholarships given through colleges are usually for all four years. that said, I can think of a few specific places for you to look:</p>

<p>If she is involved in FIRST robotics, FIRST provides a list that is pretty easy to search. </p>

<p>SMART scholarships (though the Dept of Defense) might be something she would want to look at. </p>

<p>My D applied for an NCWIT scholarship last year (didn’t get it, but CS is not really her area of focus, so I wasn’t too surprised). Here is a link to the scholarship page on their website, although the one she applied for actually isn’t here. It might have been from a local chapter, her calculus teacher told her about it.</p>

<p>[NCWIT</a> : Award : Scholarships](<a href=“http://ww2.ncwit.org/award/award.scholarships.php]NCWIT”>http://ww2.ncwit.org/award/award.scholarships.php)</p>

<p>Here is a link to a few more women in STEM scholarships, too. Some aren’t applicable, but there might be a couple on this list to look at.</p>

<p>[9</a> College Scholarships for Women in STEM - STEM Education (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/stem-education/2011/12/13/9-college-scholarships-for-women-in-stem]9”>http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/stem-education/2011/12/13/9-college-scholarships-for-women-in-stem)</p>

5

<p>mathyone…What type of schools is your D interested in attending? With high PSAT and SAT scores, will she be a National Merit Semifinalist? Is she a junior or senior this year?</p>

<p>Here is a list of large Automatic Merit scholarships offered by the Universities.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-18.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-18.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And here is a link to a thread with the larger Nat’l Merit scholarships if your D qualifies for those.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation-49.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation-49.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You can scan through both threads to find the most current listing of scholarships offered. If your D is looking at Ivy/near Ivy/Public Ivy type schools these listings won’t help much, but if she’s looking for a great undergrad education for little or perhaps no debt there are a lot of schools here (up to and including some state flagship level publics) that may interest her. Congrats to you and your D on her success in HS, and good luck on the college search!!</p>

6

<p>She is a senior. Her scores are well above the National Merit Finalist requirements, so yes, I have already looked through the list of college-based scholarships for NMF and will discuss with her as we put together her college list. But I think she will be best off at a very selective college because she really loves and thrives when she has the opportunity to work with intellectual peers, but too often that has not been the case in our schools. She doesn’t want to go to a small college, she doesn’t want to go to a college where she will be the smartest person in the class, and she would prefer not to be in a very conservative environment.</p>

<p>I don’t regard scholarships that are for “just” one year to be a waste of time. Every bit helps and the way I look at it, never again in her life will someone give her so much for doing so little (even if it requires writing an essay or paper).</p>

7

<p>It is unlikely she will be the smartest person in her college at most places, especially larger schools and especially schools with honors colleges.</p>

8

<p>After she gets into the application process, one more essay becomes a major pain. On a $60k bill, you have to win lots of those $1k scholarships. Take the advice here. Lots of us have really bright kids. Mine applied for three of those scholarships early in the process, won zero. </p>

<p>There are lots of colleges with scholarship money.</p>

9

<p>It is unlikely she will be the smartest person in her college at most places, especially larger schools and especially schools with honors colleges.</p>

<p>Very true.</p>

<p>and, please don’t confuse “having the highest standardized test scores” with being the “smartest person.” My older son has grown up having the “highest scores” in is classes. Did that mean that he was the “smartest person” who couldn’t learn from others? Heck no. These ultra smart people often have a LOT to learn from those who don’t always score in the 99th+ percentile. These ultra smart people often have a number of holes in their “walking around smarts”. lol</p>

<p>I can’t tell you how much my kid learns from others who are “smart” in many other ways (not saying that they’re dumb in the classroom).</p>

<p>His younger brother is no slouch (he’s now in med school), but he wasn’t one who consistently scored in the 99th+ percentile. Younger son scores would range in the 90-99 range. But, there are a ton of areas where younger son can run circles around older son.</p>

10

<p>

</p>

<p>Agree with those who say that when you have to write a ton of them and end up with no or minimal money for the effort, the return on the effort isn’t so great. Plus during senior year they are busy with applications and typically a lot of AP classes, and leadership in all their ECS. And some colleges don’t even give you any benefit from the scholarships if you have any need based aid, they just reduce the need based aid by that amount. Plus… even if you can scratch together enough to make a school affordable freshman year, then you are stuck trying to figure out full freight for 3 more years.</p>

<p>I am sympathetic to your issue of having a kid who wants to be with intellectual peers, and hasn’t been for most of their school career. But most of those “intellectual peer” schools aren’t generous with merit money (even a kid like yours is just one of a crowd at those). But you probably aren’t going to nickel & dime your way into paying for one of those schools through small scholarships. Usually you have to either figure out a way to pay most of the cost yourself (savings, current income, loans, student earnings), or focus more on schools with good merit (where typically your kid will be closer to the top of the pool of students) or in-state honors colleges.</p>

11

<p>Also…many of those private scholarships demand that the student be “needy”. </p>

<p>If your child “needy”? If not, then likely won’t get awarded. If your child has a good bit of “need”, then the scholarship would just go to “need” that a top school would already be covering with need based aid. So, no real benefit.</p>

12

<p>Agreed that the best scholarships are awarded by the colleges. Have you looked into schools like Vanderbilt and Rice? They give merit scholarships to high achieving students. What about applying to University of Pittsburgh…it’s bigger but has excellent programs and great merit awards…but apply early for the best chances. She would be a good candidate for merit from Case Western…it may not be “elite enough” for you, but she definitely won’t be the smartest kid there. Don’t forget to look at your state flagship university. Many have smaller honors colleges that make the big school feel smaller. And some have excellent scholarships for instate students.</p>

<p>Will your daughter require need based financial,aid to attend college? If so, you do need to know that in MOST cases, outside scholarships reduce your actual need, and therefore your need based financial aid is also reduced.</p>

<p>University of Southern California offers 1/2 tuition to NMSF. Northeastern in Boston offers full tuition scholarships to NMSF, I believe.</p>

<p>Give us some geographic parameters and it will be easier to make good suggestions.</p>

13

<p>"and, please don’t confuse “having the highest standardized test scores” with being the “smartest person.” </p>

<p>Wouldn’t dream of it. Those are your words. I don’t think those tests are well suited to measure ability especially for top students they claim to identify. The two best students my daughter knows, that she loved to work with and really inspired her, did not qualify for NMF. </p>

<p>“My older son has grown up having the “highest scores” in is classes. Did that mean that he was the “smartest person” who couldn’t learn from others?” </p>

<p>I don’t know why you seem to be going out of my way to put words into my mouth. </p>

<p>Today she spent about half an hour trying to explain how to do the lab to her AP bio lab group and they weren’t getting it, and eventually she gave up and just did all the work of the group herself to get it done in time. Came home a little frustrated. In contrast, last year she had the opportunity to do an independent study group with a few exceptional students from the grade above (those non-NMF students) and she would come home full of enthusiasm and so happy about being able to work with peers that she felt she was learning so much from–kids that would also “get it” when she explained things to them. I saw her really flourishing in a way that was simply not happening in most of those honor and AP classes. </p>

<p>I just wanted to know about the best ways to find out about merit/academic scholarships and tried to provide a brief summary of her academic record and a few of her thoughts about college since someone asked about that. Perhaps this isn’t the best forum for a thoughtful discussion of that topic. Thanks to those who provided the useful suggestions.</p>

14

<p>I’m sorry if I offended you in some way.</p>

<p>While you may feel that I am putting words in your mouth, maybe you should reread your first post and then you’ll understand. It comes off (to me) that your only focus (and measurement) of your D’s very high intelligence is her stats. </p>

<p>who is a 99+ percentile-type student … She has straight As, 9 APs all 5s, nearly perfect PSATs/SATs,</p>

<p>You may not have meant for anyone to infer those words to be your benchmark for intelligence, but it does look like your measurement for “being the smartest person” includes the things mentioned in your post. </p>

<p>It also appears (although I may be wrong), that after you looked at the list of schools where your D would get substantial merit, you concluded that your D would be the smartest student and therefore unchallenged and bored being around weaker students. Since the use of test scores (such as looking at schools’ middle quartiles) is really the only way you could surmise that, what else were you using to conclude that?</p>

<p>At some of those schools that give substantial merit, the offers aren’t limited to a few students. Therefore, at some of these schools, you have a quarter of the students attending with substantial merit scholarships. Those students aren’t equally spread out amongst all majors. No. They tend to be largely concentrated in about 12 majors… including the same majors that your D is interested in. So, many of her classmates would be similarly IQ-endowed. :)</p>

<p>My kids accepted large scholarships at a school that awards many merit scholarships. They were Math and Chemical Engineering students. Guess who their classmates were? Other students holding large scholarships for high stats.</p>

<p>Today she spent about half an hour trying to explain how to do the lab to her AP bio lab group and they weren’t getting it</p>

<p>Yes, this sort of thing happens in high school. College can be very different, especially once in upper division classes. In frosh STEM classes, you might find a few students who have no business being there, but they typically drop out and move on to other majors better suited for them.</p>

15

<p>OP, don’t give up on CC just yet – you have to sift through posts to get the information you seek, sometimes with a very thick skin!</p>

<p>Merit scholarships do exist at top (non-ivy) schools – Vanderbilt, Wash U, Duke, UNC, UVa, though the distinguishing factor will not be high stats but amazing ECs. If your daughter has a great story to tell outside her stats, definitely go for a Robertson or Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship. Chicago, USC and Rice give more partials but still very competitive beyond just stellar stats. There are many more schools with merit money a little lower in the rankings, many with honors colleges or special programs that would allow your daughter to be comfortable in her peer group. Visiting a few in this category may help sort out some options, many listed in the “Schools Known for good Merit Aid” in the Parents thread. </p>

<p>You know your child, and what will motivate or dishearten them. One of my daughters opted for the merit money at a lower ranked school with a great competitive scholar program so she could save her college fund for med school. The other is full pay at a highly ranked school that had greater strengths in her areas of interest. She valued the extras of amazing speakers and visiting professors in political science, history, etc.</p>

<p>It was our experience that many small, unaffiliated scholarships also had a need component. Even the affiliated ones asked about need or award differing amounts based on financial need. Many unaffiliated ones were local, so your GC should be your best resource. I don’t know your financial situation, but if you are full pay, I agree that time may be better spent on school-specific essays, including scholarship and honors program essays, at least until Jan 1.</p>

<p>Best of luck!</p>

16

<p>We went through this during the past year, and I wish I would have known earlier the things I learned along the way, many of them once I found CC. Senior year is extraordinarily busy and tiring. You don’t want to spend a lot of time writing essays that aren’t likely to get results. </p>

<p>First you have to look at the competitive scholarships both outside and at these various top schools and understand them completely. How many are offered, what the criteria are, if they run waiting lists for when top candidates turn them down, do they have multiple steps with narrowing field along the way and different criteria at different stages, is there a candidate winnowing weekend involving travel and personal or skype meetings, etc. </p>

<p>Then you need to be able to look at your child with a clear eye to judge if she is a likely candidate. Does she love writing essays? Is she a true leader overflowing with drive and energy, founding groups and persuading friends and others to get involved in her plans and visions? Has she been involved in depth in some particular activity in a way that makes her stand out? Does she present well in large group situations, helping people feel at ease and getting to know others easily? The pool of talent is just beyond anything I imagined. My D had stats like yours and lots of music ECs among other activities. But she was out of her league applying for these kinds of scholarships. She could get admitted, but she wasn’t going to get the AB Duke, or CVanderbilt. We didn’t realize this and so a lot of effort was wasted applying to places we couldn’t afford even with their generous FA packages. She didn’t even make the first broad cut for Pres. Schol. at GATech, which is well over 5% of admits. It turns out even their first stage considers mainly essays/personality/amazing ECs/leadership. So maybe this is your daughter. You know her best. But kids who are like that just are that way and the people who award the money can pick them out. You can’t decide to be that person they want for the application process. Either you are or you aren’t.</p>

<p>Another thing I figured out from reading CC and others and news is that though it seems that there are many of these big scholarships, it turns out that the money is all going to the very creamy top. They are all chasing the same few kids. You’ll see extraordinary kids here on CC who receive the prominent full ride merit offers from several of the ‘just below Ivy’ schools. In our local newspaper, there was an article about a kid from a rural area of our state who won just about every big outside scholarship you’ve ever heard of- Coke, Burger King, can’t remember them all, but they totaled several hundred thousand $$. She didn’t get that money by simply filling out a lot of forms and hoping like a lottery. She had to be someone quite unusual and special.</p>

<p>Also, we found that in some cases, the big university scholarships may be awarded to desirable minority candidates in a larger proportion than is suggested by the scholarship description, which may not refer to this in even a subtle manner, and so the scholarship is in fact more competitive for non-minorities than one might think.</p>

<p>There are many big scholarships available that are more stat driven, but not so much at the kinds of schools I think your daughter is most interested in. </p>

<p>My D did get one of those little $2500 outside scholarships, but chances and app were reasonable. Her HS has a pool of local scholarships which they administer and kids have only one app to fill out to get in running for the entire pool. However, they give no more than one scholarship to any student, so that was the most one could get.</p>

<p>Good luck and let us know how it turns out.</p>

17

<p>As far as geography goes, she has conflicting desires. She doesn’t want to go to school in a really cold place. But she prefers a campus atmosphere that isn’t conservative. She might be interested in Vanderbilt. We have discussed it a little. I know that Rice has a very good reputation but I think she’d prefer not to live in Texas.</p>

<p>After years of frustrating or unsatisfying classroom experiences, I’m not surprised that when I asked what she was looking for in a college, she said, she doesn’t want to be the smartest person in the class–meaning <em>classroom</em> not whole entire freshman class. She wants to study with kids who will be academically stimulating to her. Is that unusual? I didn’t intend to set off some kind of firestorm here.</p>

<p>No, I actually haven’t looked up the SAT scores of the programs mentioned. How could I possibly have the impression that she might not be challenged in these programs? I haven’t researched them, this is my impression. First off, the schools are paying students like her to come precisely to raise the academic level of their student body. You are right, being able to recruit substantial numbers of such students would make some difference there. Secondly, follow the kids. She doesn’t generally know their scores or grades, but she knows what kind of students they were in class and what college they chose to attend. Thirdly, our family does have some knowledge about higher education. And lastly, I recall seeing posts from parents of NMF students about the “tradeoff” between the free ride programs and whatever benefits there might be to attending a more selective school. What I haven’t seen is posts from strong non-NMF students indicating that they are choosing that school on the strength of the program, without a free ride. From mom2’s comments, it sounds like your kids’ classmates are generally all receiving merit money. I would be interested in whether the program is now, after some years of existence, succeeding in attracting students on its merit rather than with free rides. </p>

<p>OK, now I have looked at the Alabama honors college website and I am rather confused. For instance, for math it lists 3 calculus classes, all of which she will place out of. Computer science, 1 class she would also place out of. So wouldn’t she be enrolled in the same classes as all the other, non-honors students since she seems to have already exhausted the honors-specific offerings. Also it says the requirement to transfer into the honors college is a 3.3 GPA. That doesn’t seem all that high.</p>

<p>My daughter was away all summer and we are only just getting started on the admissions process. We’ve taken opportunities to tour campuses when we were nearby. But she doesn’t have a college list. She looked at the common app and essay questions a few days ago for the first time.</p>

18

<p>I was steering my son towards liberal arts schools that offered merit aid. Many of those schools offer 20 to 25 K for the best students. To my dismay I was still going to be left with a 35 k pricetag. I was starting to steer him towards a quality public school that he liked but had some reservations about. I called his first choice to see if there was more money available since they do offer some full tuition awards. I was informed that they had numerous valdictorians apply this year so it wasn’t possible. Days later ( I will never know if it was related to my call or not, it seemed to fast to be related) we received a letter congratulating him and awarding another !0,000 for a departmental scholarship. It really made a difference and we are only at the beginning but so far he loves it.</p>

<p>I am now turning my attention to my HS junior who is ranked #1 in his class and scored 800 on the Bio SAT 2. I will share with you what i feel i have learned.</p>

<ul>
<li>Sift through the threads here and you will find schools identified that give good aid. Also google things like “colleges with full tuition scholarships”. Dont stop there. change the words ie “full ride” “university” “merit”. Build up your own list. </li>
</ul>

<p>-then go to the schools’ websites. Usually you need to go to admissions then financial aid, then types of aid and then scholarships and you will find scholarships listed. </p>

<p>-I live in the northeast so I have concentrated there but there seem to be more schools in the south with full rides which is OK because DS 2 says he prefers warm weather. </p>

<ul>
<li><p>so far (of the top of my head, I don’t have my list with me)the list includes : BC, BU , Northeastern, Providence, Fordham, Stonybrook, Hofstra, Buffalo, Rochester, Rutgers, Richmond, Washington and Lee, UVa, Davidson, Duke, UNC Vanderbilt, Emory. </p></li>
<li><p>There are many more and I think the trick is to decide if you really want big money, what kind of concessions are you willing to make. I know someone who went to a small local college on a free ride, maintained a 4.0, got into a great lawschool, and scored a top job. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>-Don’t ignore the possibility of combining scholarships. It pays to specialize. Many schools have special grants for individual programs. You have to really read the scholarship descriptions. </p>

<p>-it can’t hurt to ask for more. All they can say is “sorry, no” but if they want someone, they may find the money. I know everyone talks about EC’s but if the student has great stats, there are plenty of schools that would love to pump up there admitted student numbers.</p>

19

<p>mathyone, I know you can’t reply, but check your private messages if you haven’t yet. One other thing no one has mentioned here is to ask your D’s high school guidance counselor if they have a list of scholarships students have received in the past. Sometimes there are some local ones that are less competitive and easier to get (but not the really big ones). To be honest, you are behind the curve if this is fall of her senior year, your D does not have a college list yet, and you are chasing merit money.</p>

<p>I do think you have identified the issue with the large NMF offers. In most cases those programs are not pulling in many truly high stats kids without the merit aid. One school that might be an exception is USC with their tuition break for NMF. Not a full ride, but not chicken feed. For families who have not saved much or can’t afford their EFC, I think the large NMF offers are a great thing, though. Can’t tell from your posts if that is you guys or not, though.</p>

<p>Celesteroberts post above is very, very true.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You don’t say where that info comes from… but if it isn’t from recent admissions (in the past 10 years), things have changed A LOT. I come from and married into a family with degrees from several prestigious colleges. And I found out when I got into this for my first kid 5 years ago that I didn’t know squat about the current admissions climate. Just saying that what you think you know might not be true any more. (And don’t get me started on what my parents, now in their eighties, think they know about the process! :eek:)</p>

20

<p>As noted above, the majority of merit money comes from the schools themselves - that’s where my son is getting 100% of his tution +.</p>

<p>However I did not find it a waste of my time AT ALL to look into additional outside scholarships.</p>

<p>The #1 source as mentioned by intparent is the school’s guidance counsellor/office. They should keep lists of available local scholarships. While some students do win national awards, the pool of candidates is much smaller for local awards. If your child is a top student in their school, they should be able to receive some local awards without too much difficulty. They won’t be LARGE awards, but every dollar helps. My S (5th in his class, NOT NMF) was able to get $1000 from a local business, $500 from our utility company, $650 from a local organization, and $5200 ($1300/year, renewable for 4 years) from an endowment set up by a local business man. $7000 doesn’t compare to the full tution he’s getting from his school, but for the 10-15 hours spent on apps + 2 interviews, it was a GOSH DARN PRETTY GOOD ROI. That equated to over $3000 for his freshman year which paid for his meal plan. </p>

<p>He also applied for a lot of national awards (he applied for just over 30 scholarships in total including local and national), but wasn’t lucky enough to get any. My favorite source was ■■■■■■■■■■, some people like fastweb. There are a lot of awards available and some only take a few minutes to apply for and don’t require essays or recommendations, others take a lot more time and have a lot more hoops to jump through. My S (engineering major) wasn’t one for writing essays, so I didn’t even ask him to fill out any essay based competitions. It’s a challenge to win any of the big national awards since there are so many applicants and they all have outstanding stats, but someone DOES win the awards, so it’s not a waste of everyone’s time…some people do wind up with huge awards. You could get lucky…it’s kind of like the lottery…someone does win…if you’re REALLY lucky it could be you…you have to figure out if you think it’s worth the investment of your/your child’s time or not.</p>