Thanks!! I will try to find a better forum.
I am just starting to think of all of is again for my middle child, now a juniorâŠI did not realize that any colleges gave merit aid with their acceptance letter. We were quite happily surprised when my oldest received quite significant merit aid from Fordham, Gonzaga U and U of PortlandâŠFordham gave the most in two different types of aid, but also was most expensive to attend of the above 3. My son chose Gonzaga for a variety of reasons. His merit award $13,500 p/yr and Gonzagaâs lower tuition/room and board (compared to other private universities) combine to make Gonzaga as affordable as our Univ of California Schools. The major benefit, is smaller class sizes and 4 yr graduation rate is norm not the exception.
According to Kiplinger, 81% of Gonzaga students receive merit scholarships. 40% for Fordham. 72% for Portland. This pricing model is quite common these days among certain private colleges. You just have to know where/how to shop for them.
Attending a private college is now like taking a commercial airplane flight. No two people sitting in the same row paid the same price.
So true @AsleepAtTheWheel 
What an apt analogy!
The model used by these private colleges is, in fact, EXACTLY the same âyield managementâ system used by the airlines. That where todayâs âDean of Enrollment Managementâ (who used to be called Dean of Admissions) learned it from.
Yield management works where: (i) the product being sold expires at some point (like a seat in English 101 in September), (ii) capacity and costs are mostly fixed and determined well in advance, and (iii) different customers are willing to pay different prices for the same product.
Is that true? If so, then those canât be ârealâ merit scholarships. That is just tuition discounting. That is just a game of increasing tuition, and then offering an âawardâ so that flattered folks will enroll.
IDK what makes merit real. If students get them for certain grades or scores or other academic achievement, Iâd call them merit-based. Which is tuition discounting, of course, as all merit (and need-based) scholarships are.
100% of scholarships and financial aid are discounts. For Fall 2013, the AVERAGE discount for U.S. private colleges was 46.4% after all.
The schools just vary in terms of how they spread their discounts around â grades, SAT scores, financial need, etc. etc.
The high price/high discount model is so out of whack that a few small colleges have started to use an âevery day one low priceâ instead. TBD whether customers will like that approach.
Having now read through 35+ pages of this discussion, it is sad to see that the US secondary education system has become a business with money 1st and kids education 2nd. College costs keep rising because thereâs no incentive for a school to lower them. They want to keep the illusion of exclusivity going. So the marginal schools (less desirable) offer aid (discounting) to their list prices while the premier schools do not. This has become an extension of the wealth divide where parents âpay to playâ and give their children that opportunity.
Unfortunately, in many cases the parent(s) cannot contribute whatâs required. Sadly enough many kids get caught in the fringes with loan packages that will ruin or hamper their financial future. I worked with a recent EE graduate who got a well paying job. His parents were unable to contribute. He had 6 figure student debt and a credit card debt to finance visits with his girlfriend back at school. Even with his well paying job, he was living in an unfurnished apartment on an air mattress struggling to pay his credit cards and unable to get a car. He rode his bike to work until he got hit in our company parking lot, crumpling his bike. Others felt bad enough to start giving him a ride to work until he could save enough for a car.
Personally I feel trapped by this system. My son has exceptional qualifications, but he only wants the âexclusiveâ schools. Our income puts us out of the financial aid arena and from my summation of these discussions, he will not get much beyond the NM $2500. So I just need to suck it up, pay to play and feel âgratefulâ that my son has options.
As a side note , why is there so much fervor over the National Merit Finalist $2500 scholarship? Which amounts to a 1% reduction in the cost of a private 4 year University. Would you get excited if a car salesman offered you a 1% discount on a car? Just think how much the College Board is collecting in PSAT fees when the test only qualifies you for this $2500 scholarship. Think about it, the PSAT doesnât count for anything else!
@fishyhead4, I think the âfervorâ over NMF means more to families who have kids that will apply to the schools that give them full, near full, or half tuition scholarships for making that benchmark. These are mostly the larger public universities, but if that is what you kid wants, it is a stellar deal. Some of the smaller LACs will offer more merit aid to NMF, so again, the designation is worth something. Also, NMF may get your application a boost at some schools, and any boost helps. The one-time $2500 award is nice, but there are better NMF scholarships out there. The schools your son has targeted likely has so many qualified or over qualified applicants, many of whom are NMF, that it really doesnât matter.
mtrosemom is right. There are plenty of kids (and their families) who are taking full advantage of scholarships offered at places like Bama and UK. A full ride is worth some fervor in my book.
@fishyhead4, if your son qualified as a National Merit Semifinalist, have you taken him to see any of the schools that offer big money to those kids?
Yes, years ago (more than I want to count), I got a full-ride to Texas A&M based pretty much just on NMSF status. I donât think there were even any essays on the application, and Iâd never heard of the school when they sent me a letter that said I was eligible for a full ride. It was enough of a full ride to buy a stereo with the leftover money even after textbooks. Only a small part of it was âofficiallyâ NM money.
Iâve checked, and most of that same money at A&M seems to still be there for NMSF. I had acceptances elsewhere (MIT included), but my parents hadnât had the money talk with me before I applied, and there wasnât enough money coming from them even for my closest UC.
That said, I donât think S17 would do well at a school like that, though a lot of kids would. He enjoys being around mostly nerdy kids like him, whereas my small high school hadnât had <em>any</em> kids like me, so I didnât know the difference. Anyway, weâll see what his scores are like and then decide. But, luckily weâve set some money aside, so the money talk wonât be as limiting in options for him as it was for me.
With all due respect, @fishyhead4â, I think you need to sit down with your son and explain to him that while he may want to attend an exclusive school, that will depend on the cost. You cannot allow a 17-year-old to determine how much YOU can afford. Especially if you have other children to educate or are closing in on retirement age.
I empathize, believe me! Although I asked my son to prep for his PSAT because I didnât want there to be any regrets down the road, I too had come to the conclusion that the $2500 wasnât worth all the efforts to apply for National Merit Finalist status because that was all he was going to get at the kinds of schools he was looking at. Plus, for some reason unbeknownst to me, my son was under the misguided impression that the PSAT and the NMSQT were two different things. In the end, he just missed the NMSF cutoff, and his subsequent SAT scores suggest he could have met it easily if heâd just bothered to get a good nightâs sleep before taking the test or reviewed a tiny bit ahead of time! So, while there were still schools where he could receive significant, stats-based, automatic merit money, he wasnât eligible for any of the very appealing NMF scholarships.
In the end, after comparing what was being offered at his one automatic-merit school (full tuition+), he decided he preferred that to what the âexclusiveâ schools were offering him. And those schools would have cost us two to three times what weâre paying, so weâre happy campers here. But Iâm not gonna lie, when I see how much MORE he would have received for a few points on a standardized test he took early one morning in the fall of his junior year, it hurts! 
My advice: Insist your son apply to some schools with guaranteed merit awards for NMF status or something similar. Doesnât mean he canât apply to the exclusive schools, and they may well be the better âvalueâ in the end, but itâs best to prepare ahead of time to maximize all your options, so there are no regrets down the road.
One more thing: Because my son went with a school that offers guaranteed stats-based scholarships, he is surrounded by other very bright and talented students. Although theyâre a small subset on his large flagship campus, their sheer numbers are as large as any (and more than many) of the entire student bodies of the exclusive schools he turned down.
@LucieTheLakie Thanks for the advice. I am trying to get my son to apply to schools with generous NMF packages. He has been very reluctant. I should add that thereâ another complication. My son has perfect 240 PSAT and perfect SAT 2400 scores and only missed 10 points on one of the three SAT IIâs, so I assume that heâs in the running for a NMF.
He is also a recruited swimmer and that is his true passion. Unfortunately, heâs only strong enough to contribute at the D3, D2 or IVY schools. Thereâs no financial assistance for D2 or D3 athletes. While the IVYâs are D1 schools, they do not give athletic scholarships.
Thereâs very few schools that fulfill his high academic and swim aspirations. Iâm afraid that if I force him to attend a school lacking these challenges, heâll throttle back and not push himself academically or athletically. Perhaps this sounds strange, but I have a son that will only rise to the level of his peers.
So chime back in if you know of another school with strong academics, an appropriate swim program and generous merit aid.
@fishyhead4â What types of majors and what state are you in?
D2 schools are allowed up to 8.1 scholarships for their menâs swimming and diving teams.
@18yrcollegemin you are correct that the D2 schools do provide some athletic scholarships, but they are generally small and split up amongst many athletes.
<a href=âhttp://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.htmlâ>http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html</a>
@âfishyhead4 â Weâre in a bit of a similar situation, but a year behind you (Class of 2016). We havenât finished all of the testing, and although I donât expect that our S16 will score a 2400, heâs a better tester than his brother who got a 2340. So heâll be in the ballpark. And he is a passionate year-round swimmer, good enough to swim at many (but by no means all) top-notch academic D3 schools, but not good enough to swim at an Ivy. So, heâs not as strong a swimmer as your son.
Iâll be interested to see how this all sediments out for you guys. Not to be trite, but my strong guess is that wherever he ends up heâll do just fine. No way a kid like that is going to shut himself down academically or athletically. Just not his nature (see the fable of the fox and the scorpion). I wish you and your son all the best.
I would try for the Emory Scholars program. It is highly competitive but they seem to select swimmers with stats like your sons. And they are treated like royalty at Emory. And he could get well over $100.