<p>cptofthehouse are you saying merit money is available at Northeastern in Boston?</p>
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<p>Start looking through faculty rosters, course catalogs, and schedules to see if the schools have sufficient offerings in your areas of interest.</p>
<p>^ Before you get into faculty rosters and course listings too deeply, you might want to firm up your college financing strategy. Will you focus on sticker prices, need-based aid, merit aid, or some combination? Depending on your family’s exact financial circumstances, you might get the lowest net price from a UC at in-state rates, from a selective private school after need-based aid, or from an OOS public school with a full-tuition merit scholarship.</p>
<p>If your family income were very low or very high, it would be easier to identify the lowest-cost colleges. For middle income families, it’s trickier. For a family income of $50K-$75K, I would expect the lowest net costs to be at the richest, most selective private schools on your list (Pomona, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Williams) … or maybe at the UCs. At a slightly higher income/asset range, the advantage might shift to schools with full-tuition merit scholarships. So run the NPCs with as much up-to-date detail as you can provide.</p>
<p>The LACs listed in post #1 are very different from schools like Alabama and Temple, or from the UCs. Of the various kinds of schools mentioned so far in this thread, the LACs tend to have the best numbers for average SAT scores, average class sizes, average 4-year graduation rates, PhD productivity rates, and average coverage of determined financial need. However, cost factors can trump everything else.</p>