Exactly. There are hundreds of top colleges around the country that offer full rides and meet all financial NEED. That is not merit aid and not the subject of this thread. Merit aid is by definition NOT need-based.
As a parent it is clear to me that we are most likely just above the bubble and unlikely to qualify for any need-based aid because when I run a draft FAFSA the EFC amount comes out equal to or above the cost of most colleges.
After surveying most of the viable college options here in the west coast it has also become obvious to me that the sweet spot for merit aid is found in both the private and public schools that are striving to move upwards in the rankings relative to the schools that they see as peer institutions.
So, for example, here in the Pacific Northwest the top public university without question is UW, which offers almost no merit aid of any kind. They donât have to because they already get all the top students who want to go to a big public flagship in the PNW. The other flagship universities in the region (UO, WSU, OSU and the directional schools like WWU) all offer some form of reasonably generous merit aid to top ranked students both in state and out of state. UW doesnât have to do that because they already attract those students and it would be money wasted.
The same pattern holds true with the privates. The top private school in the PNW is Reed College which is need-based only. They offer zero merit aid and if your EFC is above their cost of attendance then you are guaranteed to be a full pay student. By contrast, the other regional liberal arts colleges like Lewis & Clark, Willamette, and University of Puget Sound and to some extent Whitman, all offer generous merit packages up to and including full rides for the very top students that they are trying to attract away from Reed (and Stanford, Harvard, etc.).
The same pattern seems to hold true everywhere else in the country. So the answer to the question posed in this thread is to find the public and private universities that are aspiring to rise in the rankings relative to their peer schools, AND that have the financial resources to do so through merit aid.
For most students the reality is that your reach schools are unlikely to offer much if any merit aid. Either because they donât offer any as is the case with the top schools. Or because if it is a reach school for you, then you are by definition not going to be one of their top prospect. If you want merit aid, forget about the reach schools and look at schools in which you are more likely to fall in the top 25% of applicants.
my kid went strictly by merit aid. he had good grades and ACTs (3.97/34); not a national merit kid. He did not want to write any essays, and basically applied to auto merit schools that we found here on college confidential. The schools for us with the lowest bottom line of non-essay-type, large public schools offering engineering were Bama, Texas Tech, Arizona, Florida State, & UNL (instate). We are pleased with the outcomes. With four kids, we had to go the merit route.
No, that is generally not the understood meaning of a full ride - a full ride is generally merit aid (although financial need may sometimes be considered). Some mistakenly group need based and merit based aid together, but it is not correct to characterize need aid in the same way as merit aid. Regardless, the purpose of this thread is to identify schools with good merit aid, not financial need based aid. Itâs important to distinguish between the two because they are rarely, if ever, stacked.
My daughter had 7 types of aid that were merit, athletic, a scholarship from a fraternal organization, state grant, state merit, and 2 non-merit grants from the school (not based on need). She also got 2 need based grants. When we added them all up, it covered her COA. We didnât really care where the money came from as long as the bill was paid. Easier to say âfully coveredâ or full ride than to explain the spread sheet.
Some athletic scholarships are full rides (football and basketball at D1 schools) and those arenât need based. In the past many players did receive Pell grants which were need based, but now the power 5 conferences give a stipend, also not need based.
@twoinanddone The only point I am trying to make is that this thread is about merit aid. For a poster to say In this thread that his/her kid got a full ride to Rice for example is not only inaccurate, but misleading in this context.
@amsunshine We did receive full $$$$$$ and more. It is what it is, may be not for everyone and we were grateful to Rice and other similar schools who offered sweet deals.
I think I get what @amsunshine is getting at. @casinoofny says a son got a âfull rideâ from UVA but turned it down . UVA gives primarily need based. aid. There are about 30 or so Jefferson Scholars every year, but the Jefferson Scholars Foundation awards these , not UVA financial services . So, it is indeed misleading in the spirit of this thread to imply that UVA is handing out tons of merit aid.
Right, this is not a thread for humblebragging about their awards, there are tons of those already. How hard is this distinction to navigate for 16/17 yr olds when fully grown adults canât seem to be able to grasp the basics?
Things change so rapidly, I hesitate to say anything. I was directly told that Riceâs merit scholarships do reduce financial aid Acc to the fin aid director. However, Rice has since launched sine initiatives that give auto awards for those families having incomes below certain thresholds.
There have been merit within need awards, What that can mean is that if you qualify for ANY need under some collegesâ formulas, you can be awarded merit money that is over and beyond that need. What schools do this , I have no clue. Outside scholarships often operate in that need is a component of qualifying for the awards though no specific amount of need is specified. .
Small elites are the chupacabra of merit money. Part of the merit money problem is this is a distraction, when really, the big money mostly comes from schools that need to buy stats, and that adjustment of expectation needs to be made by families that wonât meet their own EFC. Hail Mary applications are often pointless unless you have something to school wants.
I donât doubt your kids got generous offers. But you yourself admit those offers were all a combination of merit and need based aid. Iâm not trying to cast aspersions on your kidsâ awards. But I do want to point out, again, this thread is about generous merit - and you have never distingished between your kidsâ merit awards from their need based financial aid. So your response about how your kids got âfull ridesâ to various schools is not helpful to those who are looking, in this thread, for information specifically about merit aid. Perhaps if you specified the merit awards offered, or how the total offer amounts, when stacked with financial need aid, exceeded your familiesâ FAFSA EFC or the NPC amounts for each school, that would be helpful.
Just as a timely example of what Iâm talking about, if you read KevininOCâs very informative recent thread about his superstar daughter, her journey detailed how often merit aid will not stack with, and in fact decreases, need based aid. She ended up with a true full ride plus to U of SC and had several other very generous merit based offers.
I donât see why it is always inaccurate. What if the student has a partial athletic scholarship and partial merit? What if it is a Texas student who also got local scholarships or some state awards?
There are a lot of ways to stack scholarships that donât include need based FA. My daughterâs didnât get any need based aid her first year (and didnât have quite a full ride so we didnât say she did) but she was very close and if the coach had given a little more or if sheâd gotten one more merit award, she would have had full COA.
Kevinâs daughter is a good example. She had the National Hispanic scholarship, so that combined with a schoolâs merit may have put her at âfull ride.â Kevin didnât dismiss most schools until heâd investigated all sources of merit, grants, and FA.
When my daughters first started looking at colleges, I was dismissing some because they cost too much. We then discovered some stacking grants and merit and it worked out better than I thought. I got some bad info both ways like there was a Florida resident grant (Yea) but I was told it was $20k when it was really $3k (boo).
Iâm not sure why you bring up all these examples of various outside scholarships in a thread about merit awards given by colleges.
Also, I could be remembering incorrectly but I donât believe Kevinâs daughter got a National Hispanic Scholarship. She got an unrelated, named full ride scholarship to U of SC. If she did get any scholarship related to National Merit (and I may have missed that she did), it was very small - nothing that would have brought her close to a full ride. NMF is a different story. I brought up his thread to point out that he learned full rides are very rare, and that merit will often not stack with need aid.
100 pages and 15 years ago, this was the original question:
âThis is a general question, rather than specific to a particular student. So, if it works, I think the answer to âwhat looking forâ is: schools that offer good merit aid (not nickels and dimes) to applicants at the top of that particular schoolâs pool.â
Over the years the question may have changed to âfull rideâ and only the funds coming from the school, but that wasnât the original question.
Right, the question was about the schools that offer good merit aid. I did not bring up full rides. Another poster did. I only clarified that the poster was not talking about pure merit aid.
ETA: the OP did not ask about outside scholarships or athletic scholarships or need based aid.
wow congrats to your daughter! Can you share her statistics, ECs and maybe a bit about her essays? My daughter has applied for the scholarships and the Moog scholars seems like it could be a good fit for her⊠Thanks!!
As far as I remember, she was at the 99.5% level in SATâs, and got a 34 in her MCAT for med school. She was an All-American diver at Wash U, and an accomplished gymnast/ artist/ flute player while at high school. She finished her MD/PhD at Harvard a couple of years ago, and is currently finishing her residency at Brighan & Womenâs Hospital in Boston.
Sorry, canât help on the essays - she refused to let either parent look at them before she sent in her applications. Strong willed young womanâŠ
In addition to the ADS, there are Merit Scholarships at Michigan State based solely on GPA and test scores. Link below is for out of state. Basically, a 27 ACT and 4.0 GPA can get you $15,000 per year, as well as a 36 ACT and 3.6 GPA. There is a grid in the link.
Totally agree!!! I have two in college and we applied to a lot even though their high school recommended less and the results were very interesting/confusing.
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