I am looking for schools that will offer likely merit scholarships based on my stats. My parents said that they are willing to pay 30k a year total (not just tuition) so I would need a 75% off tuition scholarship to most private colleges! From my research it seems that most colleges offer 1/2 or full scholarships though, not 75%. I already know that I won’t be getting any need based aid. My intended major is also biology, so that doesn’t really help.
What are some top 150 schools that I would have a chance at financial aid?
I am looking for med-large schools, pref with good science programs.
My stats:
State: Oregon
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Female
High school senior
GPA: 4.0/4.5
Class rank: 3/448
10 AP’s and 2 dual enrollment
34 on the ACT (32 eng/35 read/33 math/ 36 sci)
1420 on SAT (planning on not submitting)
Varsity track and JV cross country
Lots of orchestra related things.
Good ec’s rec’s and such. But no real hooks.
I’m not a national merit finalist :(.
My current colleges:
University of Oregon (honors college)
Oregon State University (honors college)
University of Southern California
University of Rochester
Boston University
Duke University
Stanford University
USC and BU will be very tough to get the large merit you want, and Stanford likely impossible.
Spend some time on the Kiplingers Best College Values site or google College Transitions Dataverse and select the list Merit aid by institution.
@AroundHere I know I’m not getting any aid for Stanford, but my parents love it and said that they would pay for it.
Miami of Ohio and University of South Carolina. But the USC app is due Sunday if you want to be considered for the Honors College.
I think there is a Western exchange program. See if you can find the list. I think there are schools in the bordering states that will let you pay instate tuition.
The Western Undergraduate Exachange program is at http://WUE.wiche.edu
The schools are not the flagship schools, so probably hard to do better than Oregon and Oregon State that way.
“My parents said that they are willing to pay 30k a year total”
With similar stats the only schools that we found that fit this price tag were in-state publics, or in Canada. There may be others but we didn’t find them. We did find lots of schools in the approximately 40k per year range with merit scholarships. Given that you are west coast I agree with others that you should look at the WUE (we are in New England so WUE doesn’t apply to us).
Maybe someplace like Lawrence or Willamette would come down that far with merit.