<p>Hi, could anyone give any info on the qualifications for the Presidential Scholar Award, Distinguished Scholar Award, Academic Achievement Award, Founders Scholarship, and Leadership Award? Also, if there is a general amount, how many applicants usually receive each of them?</p>
<p>See <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1559992-class-2018-decisions-8.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1559992-class-2018-decisions-8.html</a> Post #110.</p>
<p>There are no set qualifications, although clearly a certain combination of high GPA, strength of schedule, and high test scores are required. But it also appears that Tulane factors in other merit considerations, such as unique talents, extraordinary leadership positions, whatever. After all, these are recruiting tools as well as rewards for exemplary accomplishments in the classroom.</p>
<p>There is no published data on how many applicants receive each offer. Anything else is speculation, unless one of the admissions people cares to chime in with that data. It probably fluctuates somewhat from year to year, depending on Tulane’s assessment of their goals and what is required to meet them.</p>
<p>According to this database, 39% of all enrolled students (not applicants) at Tulane receive merit scholarship awards, with the average award being $21k.</p>
<p>From that info, you can extrapolate loose parameters. In terms of academic stats, most kids getting awards are going to be above average to very above average applicants. So draw a halo around the 75th percentile admitted class stats to get a rough idea. Although individual cases can always vary, that was pretty accurate for my kid.</p>
<p>[Kiplinger’s</a> Best Values in Private Colleges-Kiplinger](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=prv_univ&state_code[]=ALL&id[]=none]Kiplinger’s”>http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=prv_univ&state_code[]=ALL&id[]=none)</p>
<p>I wonder why Tulane is so far down on this list. It’s very well known for providing generous scholarships!</p>
<p>The ranking isn’t by best merit aid, but by some formula Kiplinger uses to determine “best value”. Like all ranking systems, it is full of assumptions and flaws and isn’t anything resembling scientific. But then, there is no scientific determination of something like best college, or best value in colleges. But whatever, somehow they have determined that Yale is the “best value”, but of course that might not be true for anyone that doesn’t qualify for their loan-free financial aid for lower income families. Because as you can see Yale, like all Ivies, doesn’t have merit-based scholarships at all.</p>
<p>There is no column that gives the amount of total merit aid given, but what you can do is take the average amount per award and multiply it by the percentage of students that get awards. If we had a column of how many students there are per incoming class, we could actually calculate the total amount of merit aid.</p>
<p>But if you sort by “average non-need based aid” (= merit), then multiply by the percentage that receive this, then multiply this by incoming class size, you get the total amount of merit dollars. So even though Duke is first at $54,637 average per award (clearly they have no partials, only a handful of nearly full scholarships), only 7% of the students get such awards. Another way of saying that is if you assume that Duke and Tulane have similar incoming class sizes of 1600, then 1600 x .07 = 112 students that got merit scholarships x $54,637 = $6,119,344 in total merit scholarship money. Moving to Vandy and assuming the same class size, you get 1600 x .18 = 288 students x $24,788 = $7,138,944. Now doing Tulane, you get 1600 x .39 = 624 students x $21,157 = $13,201,968 in total merit dollars. So you are right, Tulane is by far one of the most generous. To be exact, you would have to look up the actual class sizes, but these schools, plus WUSTL and some others are of similar size.</p>
<p>Excellent analysis… , I would like to add another point… If you are a solid middle class family with some assets you will likely pay the full sticker price at all ivies and even many schools in that tier. My oldest son got into Georgetown, Vassar, Middlebury, Wesleyan, tufts and a few others and was given $0 aid, only loans. We had made the mistake not to look at schools where his high grades and scores would have landed him very good merit aid. I learned from my mistakes . My daughter who is a good student but not as stellar as her older brother got very good merit aid at all schools she applied, and she is now at Tulane. Tulane is an excellent choice for smart students who cannot afford $250k for undergrad when parents are too “rich” for needs based aid. CC has been invaluable finding schools like Tulane since HS counselors here have not provided any guidance</p>
<p>
That is not only absolutely true, it is one of the most discussed dilemmas facing colleges today, especially private ones. We found the exact same thing, but fortunately because I am a Tulane alum we knew about merit aid schools. But to go even a little deeper with the analysis of the landscape, there are a lot of the privates that have merit aid but with a lot less distribution of that aid, such as Duke that I mentioned. Also falling in that category is Johns Hopkins with $30,898 average but only 2% that get it, BC with $16,037/3%, Emory with $21,047/6% (what are they doing with all the money from Coca-Cola?? lol), BU at $22,631/10% distribution, and Brandeis at $21,351/13%. Then you also have those schools that have both low average payouts (relative to their tuition) and small percentages, such as Northwestern ($2,371/9%), Notre Dame ($10,182/9%), NYU ($7,841/9%), Lehigh ($10,259/10%), and WUSTL ($6,072/17%). The last isn’t such a low percent distribution, but obviously a low payout average.</p>
<p>So the landscape is indeed complicated. Indeed, another facet of all this is that there is a strong faction that has gotten louder this last year or so that is lobbying for schools to scale way back on or stop merit aid awards and devote all that money to need-based only. That would leave the middle to upper middle class in a real bind as far as the privates go.</p>
<p>Something that we really appreciated about how Tulane does their merit award is that it isn’t strictly based on stats. One does not need to have a 34 ACT and 4.0 gpa to get a decent merit award. Just like they look at the whole picture in determining whether to admit a student, they also look at the whole picture for merit. This of course makes it hard to answer the OP as there isn’t a cut off and one does not even necessarily have to be in the top 25% to get a good merit award.</p>
<p>My impression is that Tulane started using the merit awards much more in the manner you state starting last year, cyclonehome. My observations prior to that time is stats alone were a very good predictor of the size of the award. Now it does seem they are incorporating other factors to help attract students with other qualities the might be looking for. I think the term that is commonly used is “shaping” the class. To the extent that can be done, there very well might be merit in that supposition. Of course, the student still needs to have better than average stats.</p>
<p>“I wonder why Tulane is so far down on this list. It’s very well known for providing generous scholarships!” </p>
<p>What matters is what school is a good fit (academically and financially) for you and your kid. There’s a lid for every pot, but not every lid fits every pot. </p>
<p>If your family income is $60k and your kid is Einstein, HYP is the place for you – completely free!! But if your kid isn’t Einstein, that’s not gonna work because the kid won’t get in. And if your kid is Einstein but you make $250-300k, then HYP is going to be as expensive as it gets – $60k per year. But a lot of other private schools will be very reasonable.</p>
<p>In Tulane’s case, I agree with the above poster. The sweet spot at Tulane has been smart students whose parents can’t or don’t want to spend $250k for undergrad (which they’d pay at Georgetown, BC, Notre Dame because they are too “rich” for need based aid). But who can afford to pay $100-150k for undergrad (which is still not cheap).</p>
<p>My daughter received her admission letter last week in the mail and no where on it did it mention any merit scholarships, does this mean none for her or is there a separate letter that comes? Thanks for your reply :)</p>
<p>My son’s letter stated his merit award right in the acceptance letter.</p>
<p>Dolph- would u mind sharing your son’s stats?</p>
<p>His stats are SAT 1940, GPA 3.8. He has 3 AP courses (Psychology, US History and Govt and Politics) plus he has taken 3 college classes (English Composition, Intro to Soc and will be taking a Poli Sci class in the spring) and the rest Honors except Theology because there is no Honors theology! . EC’s- over 100 hours of community service every year,(He’s waiting for his Presidential Volunteer Service Award to arrive) Mock Trial (awarded Best Advocate), Track and Cross Country (Lettered), Secretary of the Senior Class, National History Day, Stock Market Club, St. Michaels Society (community service club) Commissioner for Student Leadership. He was selected to participate in Keystone Boys State last year and spent a week at Tulane over the summer working with lowernine.org in a service leadership program. He’s received academic awards for outstanding grades in chemistry, Algebra 2/Trig, and something else…can’t remember. He also received a Letter of Commendation from the PA State Police for Bravery and commitment to his community 2 years ago when our town flooded and he helped our neighbors to evacuate and rescued their pets…and he had a broken neck at the time. I’m hoping he gets the community service scholarship. That’s really his thing. His stats aren’t stellar but his desire to attend Tulane is over the top. He’s visited several times as we have been vacationing in NOLA for 19 years. His teacher recs were outstanding and he is extremely committed to community service. He is also interested in ROTC. He did the “Why Tulane” question and had 5 different people critique it for him before he sent it in.</p>
<p>Thank you. That’s pretty impressive.</p>
<p>Believe me, my comment was not one of “it’s so far down on the list and so we wouldn’t consider this to be a good college for my daughter.” I was merely expressing surprise. We were extremely impressed by the generous scholarship offered, and it certainly sweetens the offer!</p>
<p>Oh, I understood that, and I suspect most others did as well. You just made us all (well me, anyway) look at the list harder and what Kiplinger was actually doing with it. And it turns out it was more flawed than I even realized, as evidenced by Yale being #1. As I and northwesty said, that is a highly situational thing, even if you believe in the concept of a “best value” at all. Not a great value by any means if you are making $150K a year but don’t have a ton of disposable income, which is really quite common these days for people with more than one kid at home or in college. Since Tulane bases so much more emphasis on merit in their scholarships than the Ivies and other similar schools (which have zero or little merit aid), one really has to separate out the two situations. Kiplinger doesn’t do that, instead conflating the two into one table. But at least they give enough data that a person can do it on their own with some effort.</p>
<p>dolphnlvr6 - might I ask which merit scholarship he received in the acceptance letter ?</p>
<p>My son got accepted 10/31 ( submitted EA application 10/3) and stats very comparable to your sons (200 comm srvce hours but not as " outstanding" but he is in all the HS bands from marching , jazz, pep, pit , wind, and plays lacrosse and in a medical club… </p>
<p>act 32. . gpa unweighted 3.7 . all honors / 4 aps - 3 college classes thus far. </p>
<p>our high school is one of the 3 or 4 top high schools in our area. </p>
<p>he is very excited to be accepted and it is his number #1 and really really really wants to go to TULANE but he needs scholarships in order to be able to attend. He is doing the other additional scholarships as well (not the community service one I dont think as I agree your son should surely get that one !!)</p>
<p>He got the $20,000 Academic Achievement. </p>
<p>As far as the CSS, it’s still a long shot…you never know what kind of outstanding things other students have done.
We are hoping, it will make things much easier. I hate to see him have to take out loans. We are hoping for a nice financial aid package as well. But not counting on that either. Although I’m sure our estimated contribution looks pretty high on paper…I’m still paying off MY college loans,lol!</p>
<p>that is great… his friends who are there now said very hard to get the $30,000 scholarships - they dont know anyone in their friend groups who got them last year . He hopes for the academic achievement one as a minimum as well… Lots of great candidates. He also needs FA - I think potential there as well - needs more $ from somewhere to make it work… other scholarships outside or within Tulane. He is trying - really wants to go . Looking at expensive flights from NY to go to Destination Tulane program in the Spring.</p>