Maybe old new for the veteran posters on CC, but I thought I’d share this interesting article on U. of Alabama and their merit scholarship program:
http://nyti.ms/2ehaRkm
Glad to note that NY Times recognizes other universities besides the elite institutions.
i meant “old news” . Is the edit feature gone?
However (generally, not specific to Alabama),
I enjoyed the read. Thank you for sharing that. I so wish my son made the mark. He has a 3.96 GPA but falls just short of the SAT score. It was refreshing to see the finance major commenting that she did not want to graduate with $70K in debt. She is wise. It shocks me that so many finance and business majors have no problem going into debt exceeding $100k. It would really make me question how well they understand the principles of finance and making wise business decisions.
@ucbalumnus - that caught my eye as well. Our own alma mater is there as well. (Or so it seems, from the bleachers.)
Not surprising, this has been a trend with a lot of schools (University of Virginia comes to mind), where they basically are positioning themselves as being a ‘public ivy’, and to build up their reputation they recruit elite college capable kids by offering them a lot of merit money, more than an Ivy or similar school would offer them. This is done in music all the time, new schools or ‘up and coming’ schools will offer talented students a lot of merit money up to full ride, more then they would get at the top conservatories (who often base all aid on financial need, including merit).
The downside is that often these schools become in effect a ‘public private’, the government ends up almost being detached financially from the school, and then you get the school raising tuition and such to where it is almost as costly as an elite private school to make up for the lack of government support and also to pay for the merit scholarships. This also means that outside the very elite students, they look for full pay students (often international, but also well of potential students from this country) to in effect pay for this, and in the end it means it either shuts these schools off from kids who aren’t superstars and/or from really well off backgrounds, or they go into debt to go there. The argument I have heard is that the ‘other’ kids can go to other state universities that aren’t like this or community colleges and such, but what that leaves out is that often with those other schools (the non top tier/flagships ones), state spending has been gutted and kids going to those schools find lack of facilities, lack of class offerings, to the point that one article I read stated, that kids find they have to go for 5 or 6 years, not because they aren’t good students, but to be able to get the needed classes to graduate.
The “cannot get the classes to graduate on time” problem does tend to be way overstated. However, being financially limited to commuting to the nearest four year state university imposes other limitations:
“This is leaving state residents and lower-income students with “no four-year schools where they can go in an affordable way,” he said. “There is less aid for low-income students and there are fewer seats” as colleges favor those who already have an advantage.”
Maybe, maybe not.
UA has increased its enrollment by 92% over the past 15 years. Other doing this include Ole Miss (74% enrollment increase), South Carolina (58% increase) and Oregon (48% increase). Even the top tier public Ivies have been doing this a bit – UNC 18%; UVA 17%; Michigan 16%; UW 15%; UCB 14%.
Many of these schools have not dialed back the number of in-state seats much or at all. They’ve created new/additional seats that can be sold (even after the merit money awards) at higher average net prices.
When you need to edit an OP (within the time limit), the edit feature button is in a different spot.
It’s true that recently more Honors Colleges from large public colleges are recruiting for OOS students with good stats, especially in CA where UC public colleges do not offer any financial aid or scholarships other than small Regents Scholarship which is super competitive and highly subjective. I am under no illusion that there is no bargaining process between my kid (an OOS with good stats) and the recruiting public colleges which offer good merit scholarships. It’s like recruiting athletes: if you cannot recruit enough good athletes locally, you have to go where you can find them. Colleges are finding out that schools actually “need” good students to raise their reputation. I have not dealt with UA because Univ of South Carolina was better suited for us, but so far, I am highly impressed with Univ of South Carolina’s efforts to “recruit” my kid. Ultimately, I will defer to my kid’s decision, but I am certain that my kid will receive a very good education (just as good if not better) at Univ of South Carolina as he would have at UC Berkeley especially in his intended major. As for UC Berkeley’s better brand name, I feel my kid can overcome that with a better resume and skills.
My kid may or may not feel differently, but as a parent, I have no hesitation in sending my kid to an Honors College at a reputable public school in South, especially on a near “full-ride” merit scholarship; I feel it will do my kid a lot of good to be exposed to the Southern culture and environment. Like any culture, there will be good and bad aspects, but a lot depends on your being open-minded and appreciating differences.
Huh? The UC’s offer plenty of need-based financial aid but yes, merit is not rewarded.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/paying-for-uc/glossary/blue-and-gold/
Was the poster in #9 referring to out-of-state financial aid, which the UCs do not offer (in the absence of merit scholarships)?
The current situation at UCs is:
Nope. Poster in #9 is a California resident (based on other posts)…
“Huh? The UC’s offer plenty of need-based financial aid but yes, merit is not rewarded.”
The business model being discussed here is merit money being used to recruit high stat OOS students. It has nothing to do with need-based aid, which is a totally separate ball game. Apples to oranges.
Except on a VERY limited basis (like uber-competitvie scholarships like the Morehead and the Jefferson Scholars), the Public Ivies (UCB, UCLA, UVA, UNC, UM) are not playing the OOS merit money game. Like the actual Ivies, they are predominantly need-based aid.
The merit money game gets played at a lower level – Alabama, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona, etc. Some extremely attractive deals and great experiences are available at the honors colleges of those schools.
Our mailbox this fall has been full of solicitations for my high stat kid from all of those state schools (Big Merit Scholarships!!!) as well as from the Ivies (Big Need Based Financial AId (if you qualify)!!).
Sorry, I didn’t realize that a post on cc would actually stay on topic. 
Nor did I realize that you and ucb were mind readers to know with 100% certainty that websenation meant to type “merit” aid in his/her post, and that the missing word is just an oversight. Perhaps you are both correct, but personally, I can only go by what someone writes, not what I think that they meant to write. (But do note, web specifically called out “scholarships” separately from financial aid.)
My bad.