Greetings, I cannot get a solid list of schools to look at. I’m entering junior year of high school, and i’m captain of both my schools mock trial and debate team. All the other EC’s, accomplishments, stats, go on, but i’m not going to list them (for the sake of it not really being that important on this post!). When I was a sophomore I had a list of maybe 15 schools, but now it’s only three. I live in Omaha NE, and the biggest thing that matters to me in a college is a good debate team that can provide substantial scholarships to compete, while my parents biggest thing is the dollar sign. The schools we currently have are:
Baylor
George-Mason
University of Minnesota
Is there any idea on what colleges have good debate scholarships? Or what some good schools are (with teams) that won’t seem to strike me with $50,000 in debt? Thanks!!
It would be helpful to have some idea of your stats and maybe the type of school that interests you most: large/small? urban? Any region? There are so many schools having a few parameters is helpful.
I don’t know much about debate (Congrats on your success though!), but here is some info on financial aid.
You might google universities that meet full financial need. There are lots of schools that generally commit to covering all costs above what a student can pay. So if your family can pay $15k per year, and the school costs $60k, it will cover $45k. Most of these schools are very highly ranked–Princeton, Harvard, Amherst, etc–and very competitive, but others are more accessible: Clark University (MA), Holy Cross, College of Wooster, Denison, Dickinson, Gettysburg, Lafayette, Saint Olaf, Union College, Wheaton College (MA, not one in IL). All of these are terrific schools where you’d get a great education. Academics at Holy Cross are as good as anywhere. We love Denison and Dickinson. Being from NE is an advantage at many of these schools, as they like geographic diversity and probably don’t get that many applications from the state.
Wake Forest appears on some of these lists for meeting full financial need and has an excellent debate team. It is more competitive.
I think this is a helpful, very explicit chart from Miami of Ohio, which shows the range of merit aid you might expect. You could also google schools that give good merit aid. Good luck!
1, if you're worried about debt, you better have some schools that you get in-state tuition rates at.
2: check out http://msep.mhec.org/ The midwest student exchange program means that there's agreements within local states to not charge more than 150% of the in-state tuition for local students.