My son’s top choice was a top LAC and second an ivy but neither gives merit awards and we were full pay there. There were some full rides and partial rides from other colleges.
He picked an honors program with combined undergraduate and professional degrees at a state school with national merit based full ride.
Overall, it was dissapointing financially at high reach colleges but getting selected as National Merit Scholar with less than 0.5% graduates is an honor to be proud of. He self studied for PSAT and SAT and only took once so there was $0 investment.
1490 SAT, single sitting, no retakes
223 SI in CA
HS GPA: 4.7 or so weighted, 3.98 UW
College GPA: 4.0 for 37 units of dual enrollment
Class rank: 7 out of 623
National Merit Scholar
Applied and accepted to Texas Tech and University of New Mexico, both of which offer full rides for NMF. Did not apply anywhere else.
Attending UNM.
My NMF DD – 1440 SAT/33 ACT/4.0 uw / Valedictorian (all 4.0 kids are Val. in our district).Co-enrolled in statewide Science & Math school through online course, lots of ECs and leadership, 4 year (non competitive) athlete. Don’t know final rank but very high.
Accepted: Scripps (top merit they offer – 1/2 tuition, non NMF; Grinnell $22k ($2k wasNMF); Carleton (only $2500 NMF), Mt. Holyoke ($25k non NMF merit). Accepted but no merit money: St. Andrews, UNC (got Honors, but no $) [ Also accepted NC State – invited to apply for honors/merit but didn’t b/c of other options. WL: Cornell, Barnard. Rejected: Duke. Accepted and attending Davidson! No merit but more generous need package than expected.
oh wait - just realized this was NMF Scholars which my D was not. That’s what what I get for posting pre-coffee! Well, I guess she would have been one if she’d taken a couple of the merit offers, lol! Anyway, congrats to everyone and I hope the kids (and parents) love their last summer b4 college!
@vistajay, you wrote “Miami-Fla (Full tuition Singer Scholarship + $15,000 music scholarship + OOS Benacquisto=full COA).”
Did they let you stack the Singer and OOS Benacquisto?
My oldest DD, a NMF, had a 1570 SAT and 35 ACT. She accepted a full tuition + scholarship at University of Pittsburgh. It was not based on NM status.
Second DD, a NMF, accepted the full ride at UT Dallas which was based on NM status. Her stats were 1530 SAT.
@rtpstudent , yes that was what we were told. Our son did not accept but a HS classmate also was awarded Singer and then received Benacquisto stacked on top up to COA.