<p>goingnutsmom (nice screen name, BTW!), Bryn Mawr offered her the $20,000/per year for 4 years scholarship out of the blue. She did not apply for financial aid, so it was based purely on merit. Ditto for the $25K/yr/4yr scholarship to Mount Holyoke, which also included a subsidized internship. All she did was apply (RD), and they made these offers. Lots of schools do this, so it’s worth looking into!</p>
<p>Thanks for the link to the Kiplingers lists. But the information is confusing. For instance, they list Stanford as giving non-need based aid to 507 of their 7000 undergrads. But Stanford says “All undergraduate financial aid is based on need.” Perhaps some schools are reporting outside non-need based aid while others don’t do this? It’s also not clear if any of the numbers include athletic scholarships.</p>
<p>Yes, some of than non-need based aid is likely for athletic scholarships. This says there are 300:</p>
<p>[Cardinal</a> Athletics: Stanford University Facts](<a href=“http://facts.stanford.edu/campuslife/athletics]Cardinal”>Cardinal Athletics - Facts)</p>
<p>Out of curiousity, I checked the liberal arts listings on Kiplinger and they do show both Bryn Mawr and Mt. Holyoke, among others, as giving “non-need based aid” to significant numbers of students.</p>
<p>I would think the 507 includes athletes considering it says non-need based vs. merit. Football and basketball would have a larger percentage of full-rides, but baseball, soccer, track and field, swimming and the other ‘minor’ sports will have more partials divided up among more athletes. And I do think all schools with large endowments can come up with additional money for some tippy-tippy top students, including URMs, to help cover family contribution for highly desired students despite saying it’s all need-based.</p>
<p>Yes, I confirmed entomom’s post that there are 300 sports scholarships, so only about 200 for whatever else. </p>
<p>The Kiplingers list just specifies need-based and non-need-based. They don’t say anything else.</p>
<p>Here’s an old thread where a CC poster used Common Data Set numbers to extract the percentage of students receiving non-need-based merit aid. See post #103 for the latest summary of info–two years old but probably still useful. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/696637-merit-aid-percentage-common-data-set.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/696637-merit-aid-percentage-common-data-set.html</a></p>
<p>All this talk about merit scholarships is nice, but many of them only benefit the wealthy. Consider three schools on DS’s list:
- RPI – he has the Medal for his school, minimum $15k scholarship. I called them and it will directly replace $15k of the $23k grant we are estimated to get. Net result is ZERO benefit.
- Northeastern – Financial aid officer says with his numbers and quantity of APs, DS has a good shot at a $20k Dean’s Scholarship. Then he tells me that will replace $20k of grants in our financial aid package, not even lowering his loans. And their FA is poor otherwise.
- Rochester – DS is a Rochester Xerox winner (min $7500). They appear to credit about 2/3 of the merit scholarship toward reducing work study or loans and the rest toward reducing grants. This is the fair way to do it, so Rochester looks better with the merit aid.</p>
<p>So if you are paying full freight otherwise, the merit from the school is great. If you are seeking financial aid, results may vary.</p>
<p>Daddio- Oh yes…I fondly remember when I made that realization. I was even more incredulous than when I found out that outside scholarships were equally as worthless!</p>
<p>Daddio and proudmom. I totally agree. It was disheartening for me too. I’m totally changing my strategy for DS2. I’m focusing on schools with at least full tuiton merit awards. I get frustrated reading meaningless statistics like the percentage of students receiving aid. That tells me nothing about whether or not my son will receive aid and definitly doesn’t tell me how much.</p>
<p>We also concentrated on schools that gave out merit full tuition scholarships. It worked out well for both our kids.</p>
<p>The vast majority of scholarships for academic achievement come directly from institutions and the more safe a school is for you, the more money they will give you to entice you to attend. Just don’t apply solely to reach schools if you want to see significant $$.</p>
<p>mathyone, I went back and looked at your initial post, and your daughter has what sounds like really strong stats and wants to possibly do a STEM major. I think there are a number of strong schools that she would have a shot at a full ride at as a STEM female, so you might try to build that list. A few that come to mind that have good engineering/CS and offer a few selective full ridses are Duke, Rice, CW, Northeastern. I’m sure there are more you can find.</p>
<p>This is my 2 cnts from #1 completely unrelated to what you asked, ascending in importance to #7 please look at this ASAP.</p>
<p>1) If your kid has that elusive triple threat of great grades (in the most difficult courses), great test scores (SAT OR ACT and AP, SUBJECT MATTER) and great extracurriculars then you should take a shot at least one of the HYPS. These are among the finest universities in the world and D has earned it. I will let others more qualified talk about STEM programs but this is the time to look at that option.</p>
<p>2) You don’t seem confused about donut hole, merit aid or need based aid so I will spare us all those paragraphs but a great understanding can be gained from these pages and familiarity with these terms moves things along. I sum it up this way If both parents are monetarily successful and there are only a small number of children then you are in a Merit only situation. If your D is like mine she will get in some but not all of the exclusive schools she applies to. 99% of these kids wont get aid at highly selective schools. University of Chicago is a long long shot. </p>
<p>3) The majority of families will spend over a quarter of a million dollars on one students college b/4 it’s done. I echo the time management strategy of looking for more school based scholarships than national. Coke a Cola, Burger King and Bill Gates scholarships have their place but the profiles of winners did not seem to warrant our time. It’s just good business to apply to some merit aid possibilities. Pitt, Case Western, Alabama, University of South Carolina and Washington University of Saint Louis all got serious looks from us this time last year.</p>
<p>4) The reason the prior posters are leading you to compilation of GPA’S and scores is that the admissions department must be impressed with D ( in comparrison to the 20,00 apps they have in front of them) to forward her app into scholarship/merit consideration at many schools. As for separate written scholarships Robertson (Duke ,UNC) Stamps/Singer University of Miami were worth the time and effort. The competition, like the schools refrenced in #1 is tight and these kids have the best credentials.</p>
<p>For us it became question of how far down the rating scale would we go to pick up how much more merit aide. For years Admission directors and families have moved kids that qualified for the schools listed in #1 above into second tier schools for little or no tuition.</p>
<p>5) After the above we focused on:
Southern Ivies
Duke University (Durham, NC)
Tulane University (New Orleans, LA)
Rice University (Houston, TX)
Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN)
Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC)
Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX)</p>
<p>While we only applied to three they seem to hit that middle ground we were looking for in our reach, fit, safety analysis.</p>
<p>6) We found great knowledge in some cc heros. Bob Wallace and Curmudgeon in particular shared great facts figures and insight that shortened the process. You seem like you are committed to science/STEM schools but I would recommend reading “Colleges that change lives” and the impressive work of “Crum” on CC securing FULL merit aide at a great liberal arts school.</p>
<p>7) We did not get to apply as we looked at it too late but each High School can recommend one student for the Belk scholarship at Davidson. This is perhaps the best bang for the buck high level potential merit aid with great academics in the country. </p>
<p>All of the above have deadlines and it’s important to manage your time. We ultimately said no to two Ivies and yes to a nearly full ride at a Southern Ivy.</p>
<p>So far she loves it. Good Luck!</p>
<p>The majority of families will spend over a quarter of a million dollars on one student’s college b/4 it’s done</p>
<p>Uh no. not even close.</p>
<p>The majority of families probably doesn’t even spend $50k total on a child’s college education.</p>
<p>“The majority of families will spend over a quarter of a million dollars on one student’s college b/4 it’s done.”</p>
<p>Totally wrong. Since the median household income in the U.S. is about $50k annually, it is mathematically impossible for the majority of families to be spending $60k a year (which is full private college sticker price these days). Just like the majority of families in the U.S. don’t buy four Mercedes in four years.</p>
<p>After merit aid and financial aid, most private colleges get average net revenue per student that is about 55% of sticker price. That’s still expensive, but a lot less than full sticker.</p>
<p>The trick is to realistically figure out how much money the family is willing/able to spend on college and then shop accordingly. A small percentage of families will pay full sticker price. For other families, full pay after merit aid will work; so they are smart to go shopping at the merit aid type schools. For others, they’ll need big time need based aid – so shop at those type of schools; if your kid is smart, nothing beats the Ivy League (zero merit aid but huge need based aid). Some families realistically can only afford stay-at-home state universitiies or community college.</p>
<p>^^I agree. We have two in college and we aren’t going to come close to spending a quarter of a million on the two of them together. Granted, one has really great scholarships, but even if he had the minimal scholarships my other son has, we wouldn’t come anywhere near that amount. Not even close. </p>
<p>I read recently that the average amount a family spent on one child’s college per year actually fell to $21,000 last year from a high of $24,000 a couple of years ago.</p>