<p>*thanks
if anyone would wanna throw some schools in that aren’t extremely hard to get into that would be awesome *</p>
<p>The problem is that great financial aid tends to be found at schools that are hard to get into…because the top schools can afford the best aid.</p>
<p>So, if you want some schools that aren’t hard to get into, that will also give you a lot of money, then you’ll need to look at schools that will give you huge merit for your stats. That will likely mean larger schools. That isn’t necessarily bad. Many have honor colleges that will give you some smaller classes. </p>
<p>What is your home state?</p>
<p>Did you try figuring out your family’s contribution based on the links I gave? Be sure to use your dad’s expected income for 2010 since you’ll be submitting a FAFSA after Jan 2011.</p>
<p>The USN&WR Big Book has info on the
- % of students who receive merit aid
- average size of award</p>
<p>With an hour or so of looking you can glean that information fairly easily.</p>
<p>Which is how we got our list, which included - in addition to others listed above - UVM and U Rochester.</p>
<p>Other smaller schools include Muhlenberg - 30% of kids get merit aid- and Franklin and Marshall - 24%.</p>
<p>P.S. You can increase your chances of getting good merit aid by selecting schools where you are clearly in the top 25% of student by your GPAs and SATs. Use that as a screening tool - along with your other criteria, like size, academic fit, in a big city, close to home, etc. - and you will come up with a list of 15-20 schools to analyze further.</p>
<p>Looking at average sizes of merit awards can be very misleading. Some can get huge awards, some can get small, but the average will be in the middle.</p>
<p>Also, looking at average financial aid is similarly misleading…especially if the aid is loans.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for all the responses. They are very helpful.
I’m not going to take the SAT, 32 is actually much better than I expected and I am happy with it.<br>
Thank you tk21769 for those links
I have so many schools on my list that look great, it’s hard to narrow them down.</p>
<p>Check out University of Denver. With your stats it should be a safety, and I know they give generous aid to outstanding local students - maybe that applies to OOS too. (It is a private school.)</p>
<p>These are the schools on my list so far alphabetically:
- Claremont McKenna
2.Emerson
3.Emory
4.George Wash U
5.Goucher
6.Guilford
7.Hendrix
8.Lewis&Clark
9.Oberlin
10.Pitzer
11.Rice
12.Santa Clara U
13.Seattle U
14.Tulane
15.Vassar
16.Wake Forest
- Wash U in St. Louis
A lot of the schools I really like are super small, but I’m worried about feeling suffocated at a small school.</p>
<p>Tulane and Saint Louis University offer substantial merit aid</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
Northwestern
Vanderbilt</p>
<p>All have strong FA aid - not substantial merit. 5,000-10,000 students</p>
<p>Mom2 said: “Looking at average sizes of merit awards can be very misleading. Some can get huge awards, some can get small, but the average will be in the middle.”</p>
<p>Mom2, using her statistical expertise, accurately notes the limits of using averages.</p>
<p>But that misses the point: there are data out there that one can use to do one’s own search for schools that offer - on average - fairly generous merit aid IN ADDITION to the anecdotal lists that people are helpfully providing here.</p>
<p>Besides . . . even having the averages adds value to statements like “Tulane and St. Louis University offer substantial merit aid.”</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>P.S. OP, would be a good idea to differentiate between merit aid and need-based aid (and, for that matter, whether the aid provided is grants or loans.) For our kid, the need-based figures will change as our family income changes and when the older child graduates. The merit aid - in the form of a grant - will stay as long as the required GPA is met.</p>
<p>So there’s different value to grants from, say, Vassar and Oberlin giving a total of 25k of financial aid
Vassar: 20k need-based grant and 5k loans
Oberlin: 10k merit scholarship, 10k need-based grant and 5k loan </p>
<p>In this example, 10k of Oberlin’s will not go away even if your family’s financial need changes.</p>
<p>I meant merit , but I mean, I am/was mostly curious if there were particular schools that were more generous.</p>