Apologies, I thought people were also sharing information about merit scholarships they were aware of. I’ll return with details after we hear.
The trouble with some unknowns, For example, your school has a coa of over 65K a year
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Merit-Based Gift 334 (36.1%) of freshmen had no financial need and received merit aid, average amount $11,241<<<(collegedata)
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bargain, right? takes you down to 248K. For a non selective school with an average ACT of 26 and high school UW GPA of 3.4.
Yes, it’s expensive, but I’m not sure of your point. It’s one of the best art and design schools in the world, so it can’t fairly be reduced to its average ACT score or GPA. I’ll update everyone on our D’s merit award when she gets it.
thanks for the info
My D18 got into Butler University last week with $20K in merit aid. They have a great honors program.
Money isn’t everything. Hi parents, my darling daughter, both an odyssey scholar and hispanic scholarship recipient at university of chicago is getting an experience and education I never thought she would get. She has been coerced into joining a BDSM club (yes you heard that right) http://rack.uchicago.edu that is fully supported and funded by the university. They go on field trips to scummy clubs (see GD2) that are actually funded by the university. They pay for students to go to these clubs where they risk being raped and abused. I am so distraught by this as a parent. I don’t feel that my innocent 18 year old daughter has the ability to make sounds decisions around this. Don’t send your children here. If I could go back in time, I would turn down all the money she received and send her to my local community college.
It looks like an intentional choice and she voluntarily joined. I am guessing she is paying a fee to be a part of it and they do fundraisers to fund their outtings. I don’t think one can be “coerced” in to joining, but you should rejoice in your relationship with your daughter that she has told you she is doing this. That is pretty honest and upfront. @Mom2Quads
My son received “at least” $10K per year from the University of South Carolina (assuming he maintains a certain GPA while in school). His basic stats were 2.8 unweighted GPA and 1320 SAT, out of state (New England). Now its important to note that he took all honors or high honors courses at a competitive high school. All three of us were thrilled with his merit scholarship…at the end of the day if all goes well, we could end up paying roughly $35K per year which is much lower than we had assumed. It goes to show you that there are good schools out there that give out good merit money…
Reminder - Southwestern University in Texas, an LAC near Austin. Excellent merit aid. Daughter there now with $27.5k merit per year (3.8 GPA, 29 ACT), and a friend of ours just accepted with $25k merit (4.0 GPA, but SAT under 1200). Excellent private school with a lower sticker price to begin with, a College That Changes Lives, nice area, hidden gem. Our D is graduating this year and it has been fantastic for her. Great merit!
SWU COA $57,870, the merit of 27 K brings it to 30K a year still. $120K.
$30k is approximately the same as our state flagship. So about the same price, but imo a much better education and personal attention at a small private college like SU. Also, they came through with need-based aid when, unexpectedly, we needed it. Great school.
We used a Washington Post Article called “College grants for the affluent” which includes a chart that shows the Percentage of Freshman who received No-need grants plus the Average such $award (estimate it lists top 250 or so colleges/universities both private/public.) Not sure the date of the article but the data are based off of the 2013-14 Common Data Set. Was very helpful when developing DD’s list.
I never posted D’s results in this thread. We are bubble / almost full pay family so we were looking for merit last year.
D was from a top 10 public school in our state in the South. 4.0 uw, 8 APs plus 5 courses as part of highly selective online program for the statewide public STEM boarding school, NMF, 33 ACT, three 700+ subject tests, 4 yrs XC & 2 years track (not competitive), senior editor of newspaper, president of model UN, sttering committee for an unusual global health student group that did some amazing trips, various awards and other minor ECs.
Mt. Holyoke – half tuition ($25k – ish)
Scripps – half tuition ($25k – ish)
Grinnell – 27k
Carleton – $2k (just for NMF status)
Hope this helps some folks. I think being geographic diversity pick for these schools helped.
@AlmostThere2018 where did your child end up?
She ended up at Davidson which offered her enough need aid ($15k grant – not loans or work/study) to put it in our financial comfort zone, albeit at the top. She almost chose Scripps, but decided for her science interests that Davidson was a better fit and, given lower travel costs and slightly lower total cost of attendance, it was only about $5 to 6k per year more per year.
We were pleasantly surprised with the grant – the other colleges offered need aid only in the form of federal loans and work-study. (She’s still working some – just not through work-study.)
The University of Miami offered my son very generous merit aid. He was offered $25,000 a year for four years. 33 ACT, 3.95 unweighted GPA, 5.7 weighted GPA. They also have a Stamps Scholarship program, but you need to appy for it.
I wish my son would look at some of these schools. He is a great student with excellent SAT scores and AP grades but he is only interested in NYU and they don’t offer Merit money. I make enough to not quality for need-based aid, but not enough to actually be able to pay for NYU.
@brokeparent1970 from another not flush parent born in 1970, take a look at this thread if you haven’t already http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21830631#Comment_21830631 I know it’s hard. We have a high achieving, high stat kid who we had to have this conversation with and while disappointed, she understood and is now officially chasing merit. Luckily we live in CA, too, so we do have the UCs as an option, too. We told her she’s on a UC budget. If she wants to go elsewhere, it will rely on merit. Where are you in state? I’m sure there are some good options there. Have the talk.
@brokeparent, you write as if your kid has the say in his process, He simply does not. His application list needs to be crafted according to parental guidelines. You can walk away from any offer, even your ED application, if you cannot afford it.
@brokeparent1970 My daughter is now a freshman. She is going to our state flagship school and she received a scholarship ($5k from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana). Before the process started we talked to her about how much we could afford to pay every year. We told her that this amount assumed that she would take out the minimum student loan every year (unless she became an RA). We created a spreadsheet that included applied to, responses, money offered, and total cost (including room and board and travel expenses). Maybe do something like this. We went in to the process like this and she knew that there would be three more siblings after her, we are a single income family and honestly, I am paying my own student loans still from law school.
Information and context is powerful. I did it this way and she made natural choices that were inline with this. In the end we had 3 out of state schools, 2 private schools and 1 in state school that all would “cost” the same amount and chose from there.