Sorry, just trying to post some quick examples and that one’s not so hot. But check out Rice, Macalester, Rennssalaer, Pepperdine…depends totally on what the student is looking for such as majors offered, tech school, etc.
Just as an aside, the poorest of the poor don’t get full rides at Ivies. Every one of them has a “student contribution” that is expected, and ranges from $2500 to $4k, even if it is determined that the parents can pay $0. Packages can also include loans and work study, at some.
I think part of the cognitive dissonance here, and a key problem with comparing college to a car, is that one does not purchase a college education. One pays for (in varying amounts) the opportunity to earn one.
OP - my husband totally agrees with you! We have saved a significant amount of money for our 3 kids to go to college, but we need at least one to go to a state U. Only 1 can be full pay at a $60K plus private school. Now how do we determine which one? 
I followed this logic: really smart one can do well anywhere, the less smart needs an additional push of the name-brand college.
Excellent articles alooknac. Thanks for sharing. They help explain a lot of things.
“Indeed, nearly a fifth of all students receiving so-called merit scholarships have less than a B average, and a largely overlapping 19 percent have only mediocre SAT scores, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics.”
Really? Because all the merit scholarships I looked at are more competitive than alot of top schools admission rates.
Its funny, no complaints of about “the wealthy” kids getting full sports scholarships. There is a huge population of people that make too much money to qualify for any aid, but not enough to spend $60K on college. People who live in high cost cities and states (NYC, LA, Chicago, NJ, DC, MA, etc…)
I wonder how it is that college prices doubled in the last 20 years - way more than inflation. Marketing, fancy amenities, etc… There is no way middle class/upper middle class people will be able to even afford 50% of tuition soon as sticker prices go north of 65K into the 70s. I guess all the small business and kids that grow up in a high cost area will all have to go to state college and the expensive private schools will only be for the poor, rich, and super athletes.
The article quoted here references mostly smaller private schools like Wittenberg and Ohio Wesleyan. My S’12, a sub-B average and average SAT student, was indeed offered merit scholarships at several private schools. All of the ones he applied to and was accepted to, in fact.
Most of the elite privates don’t offer athletic scholarships. No D3s, no Ivies.
My husband was one of the kids on full scholarship. He needed a FA stipend just to pay for books and toiletries. Now we’re a full pay plus family with kids at the same school. We donate as generously as we can to our college because we want other kids without means to be able to attend. We know these smart, talented kids from low income families make the school a better place for our kids to attend. They’re making insightful comments in class, winning football games, leading clubs and exposing our kids to worldviews they might not have considered in casual dorm conversations. They’re the best kids the school could attract, not just the best who could pay the price tag, and our kids will have a richer college experience with them as classmates.
just like paying taxes! lol
@OHMOMof2 “Most of the elite privates don’t offer athletic scholarships. No D3s, no Ivies.”
Of course not, they are all ‘merit scholarships’.
^those schools only offer need based. no merit, no athletic
@suzyQ7 - as HRSmom said, they don’t offer merit scholarships either. Need-based aid only.
A handful do offer athletic scholarships (Stanford, I’m guessing Notre Dame, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Emory?) but it seems those usually also offer some merit, or rather, non-need-based aid, though it is very competitive.
If top colleges and universities want the very top kids, they will have to pay some or all of the expenses for some of them. None of them want to be a school of only rich kids, and miss out on the smart poor and middle class (I say “middle class” at the Ivy-NESCAC financial aid level, meaning families making under $150-200K/yr or so). For the same reasons they want kids from all over the country and world, of many races and ethnicities, they also want kids who wouldn’t otherwise afford college. The cynical could say the poor kids are there to enrich the experience of the rich kids (“look! He grew up in the ghetto! She can’t afford a winter coat and grew up on a reservation! Learn about these aspects of the country from them!”) but really I think these schools do feel they have a mission to improve society by being a vehicle of social mobility.
@stMachine Would you be opposed to your children receiving merit scholarships or athletic scholarships? Because by your logic someone else’s 60k would then be subsidizing them. Will your children apply for outside merit scholarships from organizations and private donors? Again, you would be using someone else’s money. You do realize that when a college reports that the “average” student pays 30k that they are including not only grants but outside scholarships, student loans and work study to arrive at that figure?
I think merit is considered “earned”, whereas FA is given based on need, not ability or what you can bring to the school. You can have both though!
for the F&M Student: “His Dad is in the hole about $240,000. How much creative writing do you think it takes to make that much?”
I’ll admit, that there are times I think it’s “unfair” (especially, when we are “penalized” for making good decisions like saving money). I do understand the desire to rant…
That said…
Whenever I feel jealous or that it’s “unfair” that someone who has little gets some “benefit” (whether it’s college financial aid or otherwise), I remind myself that I would not want to trade places with that person. How lucky we are to have food on the table, own a comfortable home, provide a good education for our children, have money in the bank and still be able to enjoy extras in life.
I read the article about F&M. This quote jumped out at me, “Full charge for tuition, fees, room and board at the school is $60,799. Need-based aid, he said, “makes it possible for super-qualified kids to pursue the education they’ve earned.’”
I don’t begrudge schools making those decisions. We simply move on to schools we can afford. But, it does bother me that merit $$ is demonized. Token merit, maybe fairly so. But those “super-qualified” students who live in the “ridiculous” category (parents make too much to qualify for much FA but don’t have enough to pay for their kids’ college educations), they are the ones that are going to end up with few options if big merit $$ ceases to exist. A couple of our kids have (or will) graduate from high school with 300 level college courses already completed… They exceed CC courses. They are left with just a small handful of UG level courses at the local regional college. If merit scholarships don’t exist, that local regional college is their option b/c we cannot assume the debt that colleges think we can pay. (and based on the number of top students who choose to attend schools offering large scholarship packages, our family is not alone.)
Mom- but on CC it’s popular to demonize any money that your own kid doesn’t qualify for. Harvard needs to provide free tuition out of its endowment because even though its financial aid is the most generous in the US, Harvard is making us pay X out of our 175K income. Penn State needs to rethink its Higher Ed budget because it’s too expensive for in-state kids and my own child doesn’t want to start at our local directional. My kid can’t go to Rutgers (even though we are in state and can comfortably afford it) because it will be just like HS- so my kid wants to go to UVA but can’t get in and the out of state premium is too high, boo hoo.
No policy is going to be “fair” all of the time. Everyone likes to gripe about a college’s financial aid strategy.
Nobody is criticizing you or your kid. It’s how the folks here operate.
I live in a state which SHOULD have a grade A, solid gold public U. But it doesn’t. We have a grade A solid gold athletic program which the voters of my state take great pride in.
Ugh.
"Another area of randomness in financing - 2 families both with 2 kids both making $150,000 both with assets. First family kids are 4 years apart - full freight for 8 years. Second family kids are 1 year apart - probably a $25,000 to $30,000 discount on EFC for 3 years. Both families make same amount over 10 years, but one gets a large discount because of timing. I guess they really do think that college is paid out of current earnings. "
@GTAustin - but those parents paid when they had to take care of kids so close in age. They paid in sleep! Mine are far enough apart to not have any FA-helping overlap, but I would not trade those full nights of sleep and breaks from diapers for anything LOL.