Im hoping to go to northwestern university in the near future. Northwestern does not give any merit-based scholarships, and I will not qualify for much need based financial aid. I have heard posse is a program that gives a full ride to schools like northwestern, but thats only is the LA location, and not in the chicago one. I just dont want to sped an insane amount of money on college, although we can afford it. Any help would be appreciated!
As a rule, there is very little merit money for colleges which are highly popular, though there are a good number of merit + financial aid. So there are competitive financial aid scholarships.
Merit scholarships are generally provided by colleges in order to increase the number of highly accomplished students who attend those colleges. Schools like Northwestern are unable to accept the vast majority of highly accomplished students who apply there, so they really have little benefit in spending money to bring in additional students like that.
There are very few private organizations which provide substantial merit only scholarships, and these are insanely competitive. However, there are a decent number of smaller scholarships, and it is possible to piece together quite a bit if you apply to a number.
However, remember that these do not stack on top of whatever financial aid you will get from Northwestern. So if NU decides that your financial aid is $25,000, and you get an outside scholarship of $10,000, they will give you only $15,000 in financial aid.
Finally - Northwestern has a very low acceptance rate, and you are more likely not to be accepted than to be accepted. Moreover, unless you are thinking of applying to Northwestern ED, which is not recommended if you don’t think that you want to pay the amount that NU is likely to request that you pay.
PS. You don’t apply for a Posse scholarship, you are nominated.
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Yeah I guess you would be right about that. I guess it would be nice if more organizations would give scholarships solely based on merit. I heard that Uchicago also give good merit scholarships within the school, so I might look into that (if i can manage to get in ofc 
A couple of kid’s from my daughter’s high school in a Chicagoland suburb got merit scholarships. One is a full tuition scholarship, and I’m not sure how much the other one was. Neither was eligible for large amounts of financial aid. Unfortunately, UIUC isn’t all that generous with merit money either. Many kids from my daughter’s school have preferred attending UNM because it often turned out to be cheaper for students who were eligible for merit scholarships.
Other “elite” colleges which have at least a few good merit scholarships are Duke, USC, Vanderbilt, and Wash U. Tulane, Northeastern, U Boston, Emory, CWRU, and University of Miami also have merit money. There are a bunch of great state schools which also have merit money, Like GTech, W&M, UVA, and UNC, but these may be limited to state residents.
There are also a bunch of very good Liberal Arts Colleges which have good merit funding, like Boston College, Davidson, and Oberlin.
Boston College awards 15 full tuition merit scholarships. Everything else is need based.
Thank you guys, this was super helpful.