Can anyone tell me if MSU offers non-scholarship / no-need-based assistance out of state discounts to students coming from PA? I realize that MSU does not have reciprocity with PA, so just wondering if you have to pay full price ($45k+)?
There are some scholarships to offset cost of OOS tuition offered through the Honors College. My d received what I think is called the “Tuition Land Grant” (along with Professorial Assistant position for additional $3,000/ yr). This grant allows for tuition at the in-state rate. The Honors College National Scholarships offset part of the cost of OOS tuition with a $15,000.00 reduction.
See:
http://honorscollege.msu.edu/scholarships-incoming-freshmen
Thanks for the reply!
@momofsmartdancer do you mind posting her stats? very curious about what the resumes are for applicants who got the professorial assistant position. also, when did she receive notification about the scholarship?
thanks!
@dirtysprite2 - You didn’t ask me, but my son recently was offered the Honors College scholarship package including the OOS Tuition Grant (valued at $22,800 annually) and the Professorial Assistantship (valued at $3,000 for two years). He also qualified for the Red Cedar Scholarship (for alumni dependents) at $3,000 annually. He had a 33 ACT and a 3.53 GPA from the second-ranked US High School, with his GPA improving each year. He also passed 15 AP exams.
@Beaudreau- impressive! 15 AP exams… Ur son must have been very busy.
@dirtysprite2-
My d had
1580/1600 CR + Math
3.99/4.0 GPA & 5.12 weighted GPA
Likely NMF
10 APs & 2 dual credit classes
Extra-curricular- 25+ hours / week- year round
And some medical-related activities
She is pre-med- interested in some type of biology major and looking forward to doing research
@dirtysprite2 We got a letter.
I emailed them about this a while back and it seems that just about everybody with at least 33 on the ACT gets offered a Professorial Assistantship.
@wlester really? if so that is good news…if you don’t mind me asking, what did the email say?
I asked if students eligible for the PA (aka 33+ ACT) would still be able to receive the tuition grant if they were not offered/turned down a PA. They responded:
“Typically the Tuition Grant and the PA go together. There are some cases where a student will apply too late to be offered a Professorial Assistantship (we have 200 spaces); however, in that case they would still usually be able to receive the Tuition Grant.”
got the letter containing notification of the honors college and the PA today!
@dirtysprite2
Congratulations! MSU is one of d’s top choices. However we will have to see if any additional scholarship is offered. She will need to consider cost of undergrad since she wants to go to med school and will need some help from us for that as well.
If MSU is her top choice, it wouldn’t hurt to contact Admissions/Honors College/Lyman Briggs or whatever college she will likely enroll in to ask if there is additional scholarship money available.
My son was headed to Northwestern until I asked for more - MSU’s cost of attendance for us dropped substantially when we were able to provide a FA letter from Northwestern. MSU will counter offers from other AAU schools for students that they really want.
I specifically emailed Glen Brough in the Admissions office and the College of Engineering. The CoE scholarship was relatively small according to them, but $1500/yr was a lot of money to us.
Also, NMF get free room and board and the $2,000 MSU National Merit Scholarship. My son’s total package left us with zero to pay out-of-pocket and a check for him when the NMS award was disbursed. He did receive the $3,000 award for children/grandchildren of alumni - without that we probably would have had to pay a few hundred dollars.
@greeninohio Do you remember approximately when MSU officially notified you that your son would receive the national merit awards (free room and board plus the scholarship)? Was it in the spring, and did you have to ask about it? Or did your son receive anything from MSU for being a NMSF prior to hearing about that award?
@Michhoos The National Merit Finalist award is automatic, I believe, but you have to choose MSU as your #1 school in the National Merit Rankings. I can’t remember when the Finalists are notified - February, maybe? I think you can change your #1 choice until late April or early May. When I talked to MSU, they said there were a limited number of the NMF Scholarships awarded, so it was beneficial to name MSU as the #1 choice ASAP after the Finalist notifications came out. That seemed to “hold” our place in line, although I suspect they would have found a spot for him. Adding one more student to the dorms/cafeteria and one more seat in a classroom has a relatively low marginal cost. The only drawback of waiting so long to “commit” was a dorm room on the far north end of campus, far away from the Engineering building. He gets along well with his roommate and some of the guys down the hall -well enough that they are rooming together in a quad next year, so it worked out.
Up until the NMF announcement, I am pretty sure that all we had received from MSU were letters about the Honors College related awards. The actual Michigan State NMS wasn’t awarded until it was clear that he wasn’t going to win a scholarship from a corporation or NMC.
The most important thing for me to learn during the winter/early spring was that MSU stacked merit scholarships and need-based grants, etc. and that there wasn’t any real danger of the award money “running out” or being reallocated before the April/May regular decision period. He did not decide on MSU until we had visited Northwestern on admitted students’ day and until the eve of the Academic awards ceremony where his college decision was going to be announced. I think he was able to accept a spot in the Honors College without having to enroll officially at MSU. His enrollment deposits were waived, though, so I’m not sure if that’s true. To be honest, he handled all of the MSU-related stuff while I spent most of my time trying to guess what other schools he’d be admitted to and what their FA packages would look like.
@greeninohio Thanks for the info. I was hoping MSU would send a letter with the NMF award amount and the usual caveat language (must advance to finalist and select MSU as #1 choice) similar to what the other schools have done, but it doesn’t sound like they do that. He won’t visit MSU till early February for the ADS competition so we will see how he likes it then. It’s good to know they stack some awards!
@Michhoos The ADS Competition seems like it’s basically a marketing weekend for MSU. We didn’t even receive an acknowledgment that he’d participated, let alone any sort of award through the competition. You have probably done the breakdown yourself, but a NMF at MSU from OOS will almost certainly get:
Room and board, in-state tuition, $7,000 between Honors College admission and the NMF award, another $2,000 for a school-sponsored National Merit Scholarship, and the $2,000/yr PA position for the first two years. There is also a Study Abroad award through the Honors College. The main thing I didn’t know until late in the process last year was that the cash awards were in addition to the equalization to in-state tuition.
If you get a better offer from another AAU institution, MSU also has additional money available. It has to be an AAU school, though, and it has to be a merit award. The CoE also awarded a small scholarship after the initial FA package was put together - but only after I emailed them.
Finally, MSU didn’t reduce their package when he received a couple of local scholarships.
You are correct that MSU doesn’t really do a great job of explaining all of this and marketing it to NMFs. The overall package was clearly better than Cincinnati’s or Alabama’s, and on par with Kentucky and Oklahoma. Distance made MSU an easy choice for us - as did the fact that I and both of my parents are alumni.
@greeninohio I am definitely not expecting my son to get any award out of the ADS competition. We just have never visited MSU, so it seemed like a good time to go. We visited Texas A&M in late June when it was over 100 degrees, so why not visit MSU when it’s the dead of winter? He may as well experience the worst of the weather so he knows what he is getting into 
Also, he actually got pretty fired up about the competition, even though he knows it’s a hopeless test, so there’s no real downside to going except the fee charged and he has to see the school anyway.
I owe my knowledge about MSU’s offerings to NMF’s to this website, particularly from your posts and one other person’s. As a Michigan alum, MSU was definitely not on the radar initially and it doesn’t show up on the list of schools giving big NMF scholarships (at least, not the ones I’ve seen).
The website does say some of the awards are limited - they do not seem to be as automatic as some of the other schools. And I did not know that he could potentially get what they call the “MSU National Merit Scholarship” of ~$2,000 PLUS the “Merit Recognition Scholarship” which is the room and board plus $4,000. I figured those were either/or, not both. That’s why I initially asked you if you got something in black and white from them earlier in the college decision process. If he does get those awards, in addition to what he already received through the honors college, AND he likes the school in February, MSU is going to jump to the front of his schools for sure.