Do,both. Keep,your options open!
How many schools is too many? I don’t want to apply to more than 12 schools.
I go to Northeastern, who I thought was pretty good with merit money. They throw it out like candy, anywhere from 5k-25k a year.
If you are looking for Merit $$ AND acceptances, you’ll have to cast a MUCH wider net than if applying only to get in somewhere.
12 is an arbitrary number. 9 years ago DS applied to 15 colleges.
Getting large merit awards takes a lot of additional work, but it can pay off big!
But it wont if you dont make the effort and apply .
Mudd offers $10K off to a decent percentage of their students.
Olin is half-tuition for everyone. The small tech institutes (RPI, Stevens, WPI) as well as NYU-Poly definitely give merit scholarships.
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How many schools is too many? I don’t want to apply to more than 12 schools.
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It depends on your list. 12 may be enough if the list is well-crafted. If you have a bunch of tippy top reaches, and you also want some merit schools, then 12 may not be enough.
Until you understand how much your family is able to contribute each year towards the cost of college, it will be hard to build a good list. You also need to understand if you are likely to be awarded any financial aid by running Net Price Calculators at different types of colleges.
If financial aid is not in the picture at a given type of school, and if your family can pay $30K/year, and you can take a $5.5K student loan, and you can work over the summer and during the school year and save $3K towards the cost of school, that gives you a base budget of $38.5K/year, just as an example.
So, a college that costs $63K a year with the largest merit scholarship being $15K doesn’t work in that scenario, because you’ve still got a $9.5K/year gap. A college with the same cost that has a $25K merit scholarship for which you’re a credible candidate could work.
I like the Thomas Jefferson (VA) HS for Science and Technology scholarship lists for general and college-specific scholarships: https://www.tjhsst.edu/studentservices/career-center/index.html
And if your family is not able to pay full costs for OOS students at the University of California, why even have it on your list? That application is a pain to fill out, and the essays take time you’d be better off spending on polishing great essays for colleges that conceivably could give you a financial package that works. (And I say that as a UC alum.)
Money isn’t an issue but it would be nice to have a merit scholarship of some sort
For getting merit scholarships, you may need to aim at schools of low match or below. Nevertheless, it must be a school you are willing to attend.
Not sure where OP heard that USC offers good merit aid, but be warned, their awards are the most unpredictable (ask any HS counselor, USC makes them crazy). Just to clarify one thing that is frequently misunderstood and leads to heartbreak every year---- while USC will gives NMF half tuition, that is only if they are actually accepted. USC turns away many NMF every year. 230 NMF were accepted in 2014. You can be sure many many more than that applied. Just a heads up.
OTOH, U of South Carolina has automatic scholarship (6k for OOS) for NMF. OP stats would likely make her honors college material and probably OOS tuition waiver - so without any other possible scholarship would bring down cost to around 16k. Probably more with those stats. Might be competitive for McNair.