Merit scholarships info

Paying for College
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<p>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</p>

<p>So, your D has already taken Cal III at another college?</p>

<p>Anyway…Think about it. Who do you think are taking the Math classes beyond Cal III ??? Do you really think that the “run of the mill student” is taking DifEq and other math classes? Do you think that someone with an average ACT gets that far? No. No they don’t. And, if they do, they’re a rare very smart kid who just doesn’t test well. </p>

<p>Virtually ALL schools heavily weed their STEM & premed students during the Bio, Gen Chem, Calc years. Schools have to get those who aren’t talented enough in those areas to MOVE ON to other stuff.</p>

<p>That’s why Honors Colleges don’t have to offer as many “honors versions” beyond lower division course. Virtually everyone who’s taking the harder 3XX courses in a particular major have “passed” the “weeding process” that takes place early on. </p>

<p>Bama has 3 Honors programs. The avg ACT of the Computer-Based Honors Program is a 33/34. The avg ACT of University Fellows Program is slightly below (it uses a more holistic method). The regular Honors College has a more generous admissions program because the school doesn’t want to become virtually an “all White & Asian” HC. Whenever there is talk of raising the minimums, the models indicate that too many URMs would no longer qualify. No one wants that. And certainly, a southern school would want to avoid that like the plague.</p>

<p>This isn’t unusual. many OTHER honors programs just aren’t upfront with what their minimums are. Other honors programs will dance around the issue by saying that they have holistic admissions, which allows them to accept a few students whose stats are significantly below the average, but are likely adding good diversity to their programs.</p>

<p>As for exhausting all the honors classes, that probably isn’t true. Even if your D comes in with a good number of college credits, there are still many, many, many fascinating honors courses to take. Both of my kids entered with 45 college credits. They still found plenty of courses to take. Upper division courses with “intensive writing” are also offered in the HC. (The IW requirement is becoming very common in colleges today.)</p>

<p>Does your D already have her Fine Arts credits? Social Behaviorial Science credits? Does she have all of her foreign language credits? Even if she does, does she plan on doing a minor or take any classes “just for interest”?</p>

<p>My kids did take some upper division honors courses…many were “special projects” and research related, for which they were given honors credit. And they did do the IW courses in the HC.</p>

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<p>Thanks to several who’ve offered useful info and encouragement. To answer various questions, she does some activities but that’s not really her “thing” and I wouldn’t waste time applying for awards that are obviously for exceptional service or leadership. I will check with the GC but I don’t recall any helpful list of local opportunities.</p>

<p>Minor or double major, idk, math, applied math, electrical engineering, physics, all possibilities. She will have a year of math (Calc III and Diff Eq) and a semester of CS beyond the AP level. She already finished AP Spanish language. She likes Spanish and will probably take more in college. She reads Spanish-language news to keep up her skills. I don’t think she has anything that would satisfy a college fine arts credit but I expect she will want to play in an ensemble or perhaps marching band in college. Social science, she has done a semester of college credit psych. She likes psych. Really there isn’t much she doesn’t like. “Just for interest” is totally her thing. Today she said she was joining a before-school seminar or something on comparative government. I said, I don’t think you have time for that, you have to get your applications going. She said, but I don’t know much about other governments. As though that settled it. Sigh.</p>

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<p>UVA does not offer “merit” scholarships. They meet “full need” (although they might be changing it up a little). The Jefferson Scholars program is the full ride (tuition/fees/books/room & board) awarded by the Jefferson Foundation. It is VERY competitive requires several rounds of interviews plus you need a “hook” for it. A student from DS’ high school was awarded the scholarship and he was accepted to Harvard etc. He founded a tutoring company for under-privilege kids among his EC’s. He did turn down Harvard and is at UVA.</p>

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<p>Still not clear if you are full pay, but Vanderbilt is very generous with need-based aid. They also give $5000 per year for National Merit finalists, which makes a small dent in a big bill, but every bit helps. My girls both loved the school, and I was sure at least one would choose it until the very end. One note of caution-- unless you are engineering there, you are limited to 18 credits of AP or dual enrollment credit.</p>

<p>My experience with our GC was that local scholarships were something they waited for you to ask about, no lists were provided. </p>

<p>Your daughter sounds like she might like Case Western (in the merit aid category). We know several math/engineering kids who received nice scholarships and love it there.</p>

<p>Echo MTNest: Jefferson, AB Duke, Robertson et al will have all top stats applicants distinguished by amazing ECs. Emory scholarship is also very competitive, but Emory at Oxford scholarships are achievable for mere mortals if one is willing to wait to transfer to the main campus.</p>

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<p>A girl who is mathematically talented and interested in CS/engineering has lots of scholarship opportunities from the depts at the schools. My daughter wasn’t thinking of engineering, so I don’t know that much about it, but for example UMichigan has some $20K/yr renewable for 4 yrs engineering scholarships. Seems like several of the schools D applied to had big engineering scholarships endowed by alums who did well and want to give back and I was wishing she liked engineering so we could take advantage of that. Everyone is looking for more women in these fields, so if she is that advanced and expresses true interest, her chances at getting real money that way are not bad at all. Does she do the math team competitions at her school?</p>

<p>To clarify my earlier post, I didn’t mean to say that it isn’t worth your time to pursue various kinds of scholarships, just that one has to evaluate it carefully in light of your circumstances to decide if it’s worth it. My daughter had so many musical groups, APs etc, that every moment was busy. Then auditions to prepare for, and visiting was always intensive with music lesson with prof, visiting classes, getting a feel for fit of dept. The automatic NMF scholarships were such a blessing as so easy. She did get a couple of non-NMF tuition plus scholarships, but only at places like Rutgers and Stonybrook. UMiami was very generous in their initial merit offer and she got a Stamps invite which she passed on. In retrospect, I see that she wasn’t the kind of student the top 20 type schools were looking to give money to, and wish we had that time and money back. That’s all. But with your D way ahead in math and other subjects, she may have a shot at some of the big full rides at UNC/Duke/et al.</p>

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<p>@celesteroberts, You give great advice that is benefiting my DS at this particular juncture. I need to ask you to clarify your statement better - “…and wish we had that time and money back…” what are you referring to?</p>

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<p>^^^^probably the time and money involved in the detailed applications to those schools.</p>

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<p>OP you obviously have to look at each school for what it offers your child, but if looking at Alabama honors, also look at U of South Carolina honors (top public honors if you believe rankings). Top merit scholarships very competitive and can be stacked with NMF. D is math major and is now taking 500 level math and pretty sure all but maybe one had honors section. Mid range for SAT (CR+M) 1380-1470 but top scholars - McNair for OOS and Carolina had average of 1507/4.6 wgpa. A very smart group. It would be worth a look at the website to be a good safety. </p>

<p>We were where you are. My D at USC was accepted at Duke, UVA, Davidson and few others and got no merit aid to Duke, UVA or Wake. Top money from Furman but didn’t love and actual merit money from Davidson, just not enough. Lots of these top schools just don’t give many awards out. D followed money to USC honors and couldn’t be happier. </p>

<p>Older D is at Washington&Lee - not sure it fits criteria for you but for top (not ivy) LAC it has generous merit through Johnson scholar program. Very competitive but generous. D is there on full tuiton scholarship. Very smart kids.</p>

<p>Definitely go for the selective schools - they have to give scholarships to someone:) What we realized was at that level, as proud as were are of our girls, they weren’t unique in those applicant pools.</p>

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<p>I agree about University of South Carolina…and their scholarship and honors programs. If your daughter is interested in applying for their honors college and McNair, the application is due BY December 1, and so is the admissions application. The honors college application was the MOST challenging my daughter did…very in depth and lots of questions. It took her a very long time to complete. The McNair Scholarship is a generous full ride.</p>

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<p>@4beardolls, what MDMom said. Also a lot of mental energy spent thinking about possibility of attending the schools, a few visits. Not entirely wasted, of course. Visits are useful to see the spectrum. But could have had more time to practice for the concerto competitions, for example, or sleep. </p>

<p>It was my fault for encouraging it. I wish I’d gone into process better informed. Could have had a more abbreviated working list. Some of the schools were really there cuz just chasing money. I think these schools get that as a benefit in addition to the top kids they give awards to. They get many slightly less qualified kids, but still excellent students, interested enough to apply and then they hope to woo them into loving school enough to attend whether they get the money or not.</p>

<p>Our family has benefited greatly from the good advice we found here, so if I’ve learned a thing or two along the way, am happy to share and hope it gives people another thing to think of as they mull over options.</p>

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<p>Don’t rule out Rice cause it’s in Texas. First, it;s in Houston, which is a huge city. Second. Rice kind of has its own orbit system(and I mean that in a good way) and is very unlike many other parts of Texas and pretty much nowhere near what people consider when they think of stereotypes of what Texas is like</p>

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<p>Yes, she participates in math team, has been one of her school system’s top math competitors since middle school, and does pretty well, especially considering the number of talented kids that live and breathe for those competitions. I think last year she got a 6 on the AIME.</p>

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<p>I would not rule out “non-selective” colleges. My son was also incredibly frustrated throughout HS because he was not challenged and had very, very few “intellectual peers”. He (and two of his peers who are also NMS) ultimately chose a state school (OU) that offered a very generous NM Scholarship because he was so impressed with the programs geared toward students like himself. Schools like OU (and Alabama) that heavily recruit NM and other high achieving students, have a high concentration of students like your daughter. My son has been at OU for three weeks and has told me many times how happy he is because he has finally found a group of peers who challenge and inspire him. It’s worth visiting schools that give great NM scholarships. You might be surprised like we were. :-)</p>

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<p>The advice to look at the Robertson at Duke/UNC is great advice. So is the advice to look at U South Carolina Honors. That USC Honors app took my son the longest of any he worked on but it yielded a very nice scholarship and admission to a very nice honors program with some exceptional courses. Columbia is a beautiful city. The campus is great. (He didn’t go there, but I really have fond feelings for the school and the honors program there.) </p>

<p>Have you considered the University of Minnesota? Relatively low OOS tuition even before scholarships, great College of Science and Engineering, nice honors program, good scholarships.</p>

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<p>[url=&lt;a href=“http://park.ncsu.edu/]park.ncsu.edu[/url”&gt;http://park.ncsu.edu/]park.ncsu.edu[/url</a>]</p>

<p>NC State University, known for it’s engineering/STEM majors offers the Park Scholarship.
It’s is NCSU’s version of the Morehead at UNC</p>

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<p>University of Minnesota-Twin Cities: nice campus, lovely city, great transportation system, very good engineering school (highly ranked for ChemE), honors college (requires 3.5 GPA to participate) and decent scholarships. Of course, if your child doesn’t like the cold weather then it might not be a top choice. One of the reasons DS chose it was the cold weather, unfortunately, they have had a heat wave for the past few weeks.</p>

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<p>@MTnest, do you know what types of merit scholarship UM Twin Cities offers to OOS? I am not aware that they have good scholarships.</p>

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<p>Yes, from what I know, Minnesota has good scholarships and I think their OOS rate is not “that” bad when compared to other state schools. and while we’re on it, I think Illinois waives OOS tuition to help attract top quality students.</p>

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<p>[University-Wide</a> Scholarships](<a href=“http://admissions.tc.umn.edu/costsaid/schol_campus.html]University-Wide”>University-Wide Academic Scholarships | Office of Admissions)</p>

<p>The Gold Scholar Award- $10,000/yr for NMF is not automatic, but they have about 75/yr to award(??I think, my memory is failing, maybe it’s more like 125, someone help me out here), so if you are a decent student, you are likely to get that. In addition, if you are OOS (we weren’t really, WI gets instate rates) they will stack on the Gold National, which pays the difference between IS and OOS tuition. There are some additional smaller scholarships they stack for the best students, like Bentson. The NMF scholarship usually comes with something extra, like a one time research stipend or study abroad money for a couple thousand. They have an excellent math program, top-notch.</p>

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<p>Urbana-Champaign doesn’t exactly waive OOS tuition. They have a scholarship that is somewhat competitive for OOS students, that is intended to bridge the gap but isn’t quite enough. It’s for $12,000/yr, while currently the difference is about $15,000; $15K vs $30K for base tuition/fees. Those are rounded numbers. My D was awarded that to our surprise as they have a very good engineering school which attracts lots of OOS and internationals and I assumed the engineers scooped up all the scholarships.</p>