Sorry…meant $100k over 4 years. Auto correct eliminated the “k”.
Fishy – maybe your son’s swimming might help him get into a fancy D3 school that he couldn’t otherwise get into. Say like Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Emory, Williams, Amherst, Claremont, NYU (who are all good D3 swim programs). But then you pay 100% of the sticker price at such fancy school. Since they don’t do athletic scholarships and don’t do merit aid.
But he’d probably get big merit money at a great school that is ever so slightly less fancy. Like say Denison (where 88% of students get merit awards), Gettsyburg (34%) or Grinnell (44%). Maybe Wash U. A smart kid’s family only has to pay sticker price if you are a brand snob.
Just compare the list of NCAA D3 swim rankings against the Kiplinger database for merit aid. It will take you about 45 seconds.
@northwesty - do you think it’s easier to get merit aid at Wash U than at Emory or JHU? I would not have thought so, but I don’t really know.
Fretful – all that data is public. It is so easy to go shopping if you know where to look. You can get it from each school’s common data set. Or the Kiplinger database which compiles that info for a couple hundred schools.
2% of JHU students get merit aid; 6% of Emory students; 17% at Wash U.
@northwesty - thank you so much! Can you tell from the database, or do you know otherwise, what the sizes of the awards might be? (i.e. therefore the expected value - like if 2% of JHU get full rides but 17% of WUSTL get $2k off or something)
fretful, WashU has over 200 NMF freshmen each year that get $2K/yr. That inflates the %age of students getting merit aid, as you surmised. They also have some half tuition and full tuition scholarships. I saw the numbers somewhere once, can’t recall where. Do they put out a glossy scholarship book maybe? But anyway, not nearly 17%. More on the order of 5% get real money. JHU is not a NMF sponsor.
Only 40% at WashU get any need-based grant aid, so there are plenty of full pay students there. As at many other top schools.
At JHU the numbers are 6.6% (87/1317 freshmen) received non-need based aid. Not counting the 10 athletes who got money for that. So I don’t know about the 2% or where that comes from. I’m working directly off the CDS.
The breakdown is interesting.
71/632 needy got non-need based aid.($ for this is not given directly in the CDS, darn.)
16/685 non-needy got non-need based aid. (Average $32K/yr)
So what does this tell you? Either the non-need based aid for the needy has a subtle need-based component, or they have diversity scholarships or something?
44%(584/1317) get need-based grant aid.
@celesteroberts - thank you!
Fretful – just look it up.
Kiplinger database says 17% of Wash U students get merit aid; average merit award is $6k. Says 2% of JHU with an average of $31k.
It is always a little unclear how athletic scholarships are counted in this merit aid data.
JHU is D3 except for mens lacrosse and womens lacrosse which are D1 scholarship sports. Those two lacrosse teams would have about 25 full rides that would get split into about 50 partial scholarships (which is how lacrosse does it). My guess is that JHU’s CDS 6% merit aid includes those lacrosse athletes.
Thanks @northwesty. From what I can tell, the “expected value” (probability * reward) is not so terribly different at JHU vs. WUSTL, but of course that means nothing for any individual student.
It seems like the kind of kid who would get a chunk of $$ at JHU, might or might not be a contender for one of the handful of full rides at WUSTL, but would very likely get a few thousand at WUSTL. So I’m left in the dark as to how one would compare them.
Presumably, it’s not just the chance of getting “something” that matters - most of us reading here would like the chances of getting substantial merit aid. WUSTL (just looked it up) gives a handful of those awards out in each “school” - and you can’t apply for all of them at once (some depend on your proposed major, for example).
Actually the athletic aid is a clear line item on the CDS.
10 freshmen- $23K each.
It’s the non-need based aid to the needy that is muddy. I suspect that much of that cannot be truly reported as merit aid elsewhere so that the 2% is more accurate than the 6.6% on CDS. On their website JHU only lists one scholarship. It’s $30,000/yr to 20 freshmen. That’s about 1.5%
Fretful – do you have math or internet phobia? Just look it up!!! Section H of the CDS on the website of every college in the U.S. has this info.
Wash U CDS says 229 of 1622 frosh at WUSTL got merit aid without financial need. Average award was $10k.
Wash U used to do a lot more merit aid in order to buy better students. Now that it has arrived in the top 15 USNWR they seem to be tapering that off some. That’s the standard operating procedure as pioneered by Boston College decades ago and followed by many others. The further down the USNWR rankings for private colleges you go, the more merit money you find. It’s not that complicated.
I believe that fretful is expressing what I have found to be the case. Those Kiplinger and CDS numbers are difficult to interpret without more knowledge of how the school distributes merit. The chances of getting that average $10K are near zero. If you are NMF, your chances at $2K/yr are 100% ,but in general your chances at a substantial merit award of full tuition or similar are pretty small, certainly less than 5%.
@northwesty - whoa, harsh! Um, no.
First of all, do we know if the “average” given is a median - or I guess probably it is a mean. Still, we know nothing of the distributions:
JHU - 16 of 1317 freshmen, “average” - $32,379
WUSTL - 229 of 1622, “average” - $10,143
We cannot determine from that data:
(a) Is it easier to get a full ride at JHU or WUSTL, all application qualities being equal?
(b) Not counting National Merit Scholarships, what does the distribution of merit aid look like at WUSTL?
(c) What is the distribution of merit aid at JHU and WUSTL? I actually seem to remember that JHU gives half- and full-tuition scholarships, but I don’t know what else. WUSTL gives all kinds of little awards in addition to half- and full-tuition, and even a couple full-ride with stipend. With over 200 kids getting <em>something</em> it wouldn’t be hard at all for little awards to pare down the total pot enough to raise the average merit $$ higher than JHU’s for some students. But, would it be more than the 15-20 students that you’d expect, to be comparable to JHU?
I have a guess based on all that I’ve read, that WUSTL’s full-ride scholarships are more competitive than JHU’s. I have absolutely no skin in this game. In spite of my my “math phobia” diagnosis from you, I went to MIT. 
Yes, @celesteroberts - that is what I was trying to say.
Thanks @northwesty and @desie1 for the campus suggestions. I compared the Kiplinger and Collegeswimming D3 lists to see if there are some hidden gems. My S is already in touch with JHU, NYU and CMS.
My son is a gifted writer and loves Journalism. Obviously he didn’t inherit the writing ability from me. He’s dubious of a career in Journalism. As an editor of his HS newspaper, he has seen how hard it is to sell ad-space and witnessed the downfall of our local newspapers. So with some of my prompting, he wants to give Engineering a try. I’ve offered him my opinion that he should choose a field that he’s capable of and where he can get some job skills. I don’t think he necessarily needs to love it. JMHO After he gets a good job, he can go and enjoy his music, swimming or writing as a hobby.
After comparing the college lists, I was going to add Emory and Denison, but I noticed they don’t have real Engineering programs. Considering all the criteria, it still looks like we’ll be paying full price.
Oh - I didn’t realize he might want engineering. Emory’s engineering is a 3/2 program with Georgia Tech. Maybe he should apply to Emory any way - if he was awarded the full ride (or close to it) scholarship, he might find another major that could be the launching point to his career. They have a good business school. How about management consulting? (requires good writing and communication skills)
@fishyhead4, if Engineering is what is interesting to him, then that seems to be a whole different issue. The University of Cincinnati has a fantastic engineering program, and I’m sure that he could attend there pretty cheap. But it seems a little dangerous for him to put his eggs in a basket for a kid who, “is a gifted writer and loves Journalism…With some of (your) prompting is giving Engineering a try.” JMO.
As others have said, the large merit money awards will be if you look farther down the rankings. The NMF status does very little at the tippy top schools, but can be quite lucrative at schools ranked in the 30s or 40s, which are still competitive and where he would get a great education. It can be difficult to find a school for a kid that wants to pursue a sport at the D3 level, that also gives merit money and an excellent education. If he has Ivy level swim stats, that would certainly be great. Know that you are one of many families that have to look at the bottom line, as well as the best school. I was just talking to someone about our Big State U and how our kids might end up there. It is a good school, but kids feel a bit let down when they have worked so hard in HS to go to a school that they likely could have attended with a less challenging course load.
Unless he is interested in engineering and has good math/science skills/interest, engineering is a tough path. He also could be very successful with a major that leads to excellent writing/communications skills and/or business/economics. Certainly, engineering can be a path to a very successful business career as well. But if his heart is not in it, it can be difficult to force a round peg into a square hole.
Fishy – you should check out some of the Patriot League schools. They are generally at the Ivy level for sports. Schools like Bucknell, Lehigh and Lafayette are good liberal arts schools with engineering programs. And you can get some merit money, especially at Lafayette.
From personal experience, I will tell you that you should assume your kid will not be an engineering major for very long. While engineering is appealing from a career and job perspective, it is not the sort of thing that a kid can do just for those reasons. My kid did exactly that and it was a complete disaster (even though the kid was pretty good at math and science). Luckily, we picked a school that still made sense assuming engineering did not stick. If you don’t really like pie, don’t expect to do well in a pie eating contest.