@efinand you can find the merit data from common data set from www.collegedata.com. In the university filter page you have a choice to display only school that offer merit aid.
So- Iâd love to know where she id applying? Univ of San Diego has great merit aid as does Creighton, Gonzaga, Univ of Portland
thank you so much thank alote
Amazed by the merit scholarships offered by Gonzaga University. So many of the Jesuit schools offer fantastic merit aid: http://www.gonzaga.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/scholarships/Scholarship-Opportunities.asp
We were pleasantly surprised with Seton Hall with 21K per year and 1500 per summer if our student takes six under grad credits University of Pacific offered 17K which was pretty good, but getting into their DPT program for physical therapy is only 5% so that could play a big roll where our daughter goes, and sheâs looking at other Countries as well.
Weâve found generous merit based aid (did not apply for FA at any school) at Knox, Beloit and Lawrence so far. At least half off tuition.
Case Western was a huge surprise for merit aid. D is just slightly above the current student range in terms of stats & got $28.5K a year. I donât think very many students pay âsticker priceâ here.
Very nice offer for your daughter @palm715, congrats to her!
It is a nice boost for merit scholarships when your child is significantly above their 75th percentile range of admitted students. The trade-off of course is that they are attracting a significantly smarter kid then the average to their school. And you need to be sure that your kid will find academic peers. Sometimes itâs great to be a big fish in a small pond, and other times you end up being a lonely fish.
@LoveTheBard -nice article! It does miss out on many public university honors colleges with generous merit aid such as ASU Barrett HC, U of Arizona Honors, U of Oregon Clark Honors College, to name a few. Our oldest son graduated from ASU BHC in May and been accepted to several medical schools. He was an OOS BHC student with a pretty generous merit aid package. Hope this helps!
I second @TytoAlba re Beloit and will add Clark. They are both test optional so they must have liked something about D other than her stats! She was granted half tuition to both after applying EA.
University of Oklahoma gives OOS National Merit Finalists $124,000.00, or more. http://www.ou.edu/content/dam/recruitment/scholarships/NMpackage_2016_NonRes.pdf
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Vanderbilt is known to be very test score focused for the highest achievers and quite generous with their aid
Knox, Beloit, Lawrence, Earlham, Kalamazoo, Denison all gave test optional kid 1/2 tuition merit awards for strong well-rounded academic, sports and music portfolio.
Re: Vanderbilt- I would agree that they are very generous with aid but they seem to be holistic in their admissions process. I guess people sometimes think they are âscore focusedâ because they have âhighishâ averages? The direct experiences that we are aware of do not fit with that premise. Maybe parentofleader has had different experiences? I would not want to discourage people to cross Vanderbilt off of the list because of less than perfect scores.
Other places with good merit aid - Davidson. Chapel Hill- even OOS, U San Diego, Claremont McKenna College, Scripps, Duke, anyplace that has the Stamps scholarshipâŠetc. One thing we have learned is never let someone tell you itâs not possible, especially for those dream schools. You just never know who is going to connect with an application. Our kids have had many totally âagainst the oddsâ opportunities because they werenât afraid to at least give it a shot.
âRe: Vanderbilt- I would agree that they are very generous with aid but they seem to be holistic in their admissions process. I guess people sometimes think they are âscore focusedâ because they have âhighishâ averages? The direct experiences that we are aware of do not fit with that premise. Maybe parentofleader has had different experiences? I would not want to discourage people to cross Vanderbilt off of the list because of less than perfect scores.â
Just yesterday had a conversation about Vandy with our HS counselor. The HS counselor visited Vandy recently. The counselor told us that Vandy was very up front about how they wanted and were willing to pay for extremely high test scores. Which shows in the stats. Vandyâs SAT scores are higher than Columbia and Stanford.
I called Vanderbilt Thursday. It is too late to be considered for any scholarships if you have not already applied. Of course, if you want to start in 2017, then they would be a good choice.You really do have to start early in your highschoolerâs college hunt to capture the best deals.
If anyone is still trying to get their smart kids to understand, please take heart. There is something you can do, but it will take some work.
Figure out where they really want to go and do the Net Price Calculator (for my kid it was MIT or CalTech).
Now do the same for a flagship state university that is willing to give a full (or mostly full) ride.*
Now research the salaries of someone graduating in your kids chosen degree from each school. In our case it was ChemE. The difference in salary between OU and MIT was a couple of thousand dollars a year.
MIT was going to mean 200K in loans from 4 years of school.
Now do the math for figuring out how long it takes to catch upâŠif you are not a math person, your kid probably is.
I think too many people, especially kids, think that going to a school for undergrad means you have a better shot at getting into their grad school (especially Med School types). This is not often true and sometimes can work in reverse. The kid who graduates from a state school with no debt is considerably more prepared financially to take on a year or two of grad school at the âprestigeâ schoolâŠany many of them do.
If your kid is smart enough to be in the running, they will be smart enough to see why this makes sense.
*STEM students especially will find themselves often as well off at the flagship academically.
OP, Another thing to considerâŠschools like OU that court high achieving kids have them in Honors programs. They also can VERY quickly get into the courses for their major, which means they will be spending a lot less time with they typical student at the âstate uâ and much more time with the rest of the ânerdyâ kids. It is really the best of both worlds.
That is my dâs strategy. We talked about college cost and the value of an education from one institution to another. We didnât really need to say a whole lot. She does not follow the crowd and decided on her own that maximizing scholarships would mean more opportunities down the road because she will graduate with no debt. We did offer to send her to a highly ranked private university (as long as she received some scholarship $) with the understanding that we would pay up to the cost of what it would cost at a state university and that she would likely be expected to take on students loans of approx. 5k per year and also contribute with part-time job. However, this would exhaust our college savings for her and not leave anything in the college account for grad school or med school- making it unlikely she would receive a lot from us to further her education. She had no hesitation in stating that she was going to accept the full-ride scholarship offer from state university that is ranked in top 100 by US News. I think she is going to do very well both short term and long term.
Our family, not Catholic, has had tremendous luck with merit aid from the Jesuit schools. Looks like it is based often on ACT scores above 30. 2 sons. All Jesuit schools matched our in-state tuition and we were thrilled with the value system and the transformative education stressing working for others. Marquette biomedical sciences was a standout!
TCU has terrific aid and seems to like kids involved in the highest academics (againâŠabove 30 ACT) and music!