Which purely merit based scholarship has the biggest amount and what do you need to do to get it? My child is not low income nor a minority or any other underprivileged demographic so not eligible for any need based aid. As a non legacy, non-athlete Texan, not eligible for loyalty, geographical diversity or sports based scholarships either.
Bump
This is a very old thread (some aspects may be outdated), but it has some relevant info:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/1289184-merit-scholarships-at-rice.html
The students I know who got merit scholarships were top students with outstanding achievements, and also had offers from schools like Penn, Princeton, Duke.
Here is another more recent thread:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/1947932-ask-a-rice-merit-scholar-p1.html
A quote from another similar thread:
First thread is really old as it’s been more than a decade since Rice stopped offering National Merit Scholarships.
I do not believe your information is correct, @Riversider. Rice gives , IIRC, $1000/year for NMF. It used to be $750 but went up. Please be careful to post accurate information.
And Rice has recently announced a new financial aid opportunity : http://news.rice.edu/2018/09/18/rice-university-announces-new-program-to-dramatically-expand-scholarships-for-middle-class/
Do you have current information? Please post a link if you can.
Plenty of info on google. CC sometimes doesn’t allow links to competing sites. You’ll have to let your fingers do the walking.
Re: the new Rice initiative: http://www.ricethresher.org/article/2018/09/paying-it-forward-rice-ushers-in-new-era-of-financial-aid
Hmm… The most recent NMS website doesn’t list Rice as having a school-sponsored scholarship for listing it as first choice. That would be unfortunate, but it wasn’t a lot of $ anyway (DS had a NMS from Rice the 4 years he attended). If they stopped offering it, thats disappointing, but it wasn’t 10 years ago that they stopped. Its possible that they went from guaranteeing a small scholarship to NMFs (thats what my DS had) to it being one possible source of small merit funding, as we discussed in a thread on cc about 6-7 years ago. If they’ve recently phased it out thats disappointing, buy they have other scholarship sources. A call to the FA office could answer the question.
My child’s GC recently received an email from their FA. It says web information is outdated. There are no National Merit Scholarships. They do offer an exceptionally generous financial aid and several merit and athletic scholarships.
If I’m not mistaken, all Ivies and most high ranking schools stopped giving money to NMS. It looks like elite schools are trying to divert merit scholarship resources towards need based financial aid.
Rice is probably one of the very few top schools still offering some merit scholarships and keeping tuition lower than their peers to make it affordable for ones who aren’t eligible for financial aid but can’t afford to pay their EFC.
They used to be a tuition free school like Cooper Union.
OK. That’s unfortunate. But that decision was not made 10 years ago. Do not believe that is accurate.
I also wonder, and this is purely speculation, now that The former Director of Admissions Dan Warner, who came from Stanford in 2010, has moved on (to Lehigh) and has been replaced by someone from Penn, I wonder what admission and/or FA/scholarship changes might be in Rice’s future…
Rice’s “merit” scholarships are based mainly on nonacademic factors like community leadership and being a URM, though academic achievements help if your student happens to fall into one or both of these categories. Plenty of National Merit scholars with near-perfect ACTs/SATs/GPAs receive $0 and your expectation should be $0 if you weren’t born a URM and haven’t shown community leadership.
Theta a significant change from years past.
Many top ranked schools offer little to no merit scholarships because all of their students are “meritorious” . They have decided to shifted from merit to need and typically award 100% need based aid to the masses (based of FAFSA and CSS Profile and their own formula.) This leaves many top kids in the middle/ upper middle class as full pay. Painful but true.
The top schools that still offer significant merit include Vanderbilt and Duke.
Our GC bluntly said there is no formula, if you aren’t under or over privileged in some way then you have to be both an outstanding applicant and an incredibly lucky lad to get merit offer from any top 20 school.
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Many top 20’s don’t give merit $. For merit aid, the “formula” is to be a student (lad or lassie) the school wants. Its not just “luck”. Enrollment management departments/programs and big data can determine what $$ it will take to get a desired student to attend.
I would say expect to get nada for merit scholarships. I have a sophomore there and we have yet to meet anyone receiving merit based $.