Seeking merit-based full scholarships

Paying for College
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<p>*For others reading this thread, I ignored the mostly useless advice here and did my own googling. I came across two scholarships, one at U. Virginia (Jefferson Scholars Foundation) and another at U. North Carolina, and another jointly administered by Duke and UNC (Robertson Scholars: Homepage).</p>

<p>I also learned that U. Texas per distinguished alum Adm. Bobby Inman is now trying to compete with these first-rate southern schools for top scholars and has plans to offer its own full ride merit-based scholarship. *</p>

<p>Yes, we know all about the UVirginia and UNC (very few) full rides. We didn’t mention them because no one can depend on winning one or have realistic hopes of winning one. You can try, but it’s like winning the lottery. It’s hard enough for an OOS student to even get accepted to UT, UVA and UNC, much less win a free ride. Those schools won’t accept many OOS kids and a good number of their OOS students are athletes or have hooks.</p>

<p>What you don’t understand is that the top schools that do offer some full rides target those big scholarships for THEIR diversity numbers. Those are awarded to students who help them with their improve ethnic diversity (URM status) or regional diversity (from a state that they don’t get many applicants). I can remember when my older son was in high school and I looked at some of these scholarships. It was difficult, but with some efforts I was able to find out who these big scholarships were mostly awarded to. Finally, I was able to uncover “winners photos” in some Alumni magazines. It was fairly obvious that these awards had become “carrot danglers” to get URMs to these campuses. Not in all cases, but in a good number of cases. The non-URMs probably added regional diversity.</p>

<p>You may not know this, but UT used to offer large merit scholarships. it abandoned that policy when it decided that it needed to focus its money towards need-based aid. Whether this admiral decides to underwrite full-rides remains to be seen. Each one of those awards will cost about $160k per student. That’s something that would be costly to do - year in and year out - to more than a small handful of students each year. </p>

<p>Since you sounded like someone who HAS to have a very large scholarship otherwise your child will have to commute to the local state school, mentioning those might have misled you into thinking that your child might expect to win one. Instead, many of us felt it was more practical to mention that you should go fishing where you’d likely catch a big prize.</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>I would expect other first-rate, >$1b-endowed state schools to join the arms race for talent in coming years and offer similar scholarships.*</p>

<p>i’m sorry, but that statement just shows how naive you are about all of this. “First rate” highly endowed schools have not avoided the “arms race” for talent. THEY ARE THE ARMS RACE. THEY MOSTLY only admit talent NOW. They ARE what drives the arms race for talent. THEY get an abundance of apps from talent so they don’t have to dangle many/any full rides. It’s the other schools, the mid-tiers - that have to offer large merit so that they can get commitments from students who would otherwise go to those highly-endowed schools. </p>

<p>Your initial post (and the only one we had to go by when we later posted) indicated an inpractical list. Perhaps you were thrown off by having your list criticized, but it is not a list anyone would make if they wanted a reasonable expectation of very large/full ride scholarships.</p>

<p>The app process is very time-consuming and costly. There isn’t just app costs, but also the cost to send scores and send CSS Profile applications. Students spend hours on each app, scholarship apps, supplementals, and essays. For someone who has to have a very large scholarship (as opposed to someone who can afford to pay but would enjoy a nice bonus), to waste much time on highly competitive merit scholarships doesn’t sound practical. It’s ok to apply to one or two “just to see” and be hopeful, but to make a list of mostly/only such schools is ridiculous. </p>

<p>Also, those highly competitive top school full-rides often require “interview weekends” which often interfere with a senior’s school demands or other college’s interview weekends. Obviously, your child won’t have the time to be attending several interview weekends unless your child is not involved in any ECs…and if that were so, then he probably wouldn’t be selected anyway. </p>

<p>And…Sometimes these weekends are funded, but sometimes you have to pay the costs yourself. </p>

<p>Since it isn’t realistic to have a very busy student (which these winners must be) spend hours and hours on 15-20 applications, a better strategy is picking out 2-3 Merit Super Reach schools (Robertson, etc), which a student would not likely win, pick out a few competitve scholarships at mid-tiers, and for “insurance”, pick out 2-3 schools that will give your child ASSURED big merit for stats… </p>

<p>Right now, you really have little idea of how your child will score on the ACT or SAT. Your child may end up scoring well, but not tippy top. And that also will play highly into this whole thing.</p>

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<p>UT Plans</p>

<p>*Using current figures, the in-state stipend for a 40 Acres Scholar will be approximately $20,000, which will include tuition, fees, books, and living expenses. Out-of-state students would receive approximately $10,000 more for tuition. Accordingly, the overall goal is to create an endowment of at least $150 million, funded through the capital campaign now underway. It will be administered by the Texas Exes.</p>

<p>The program will launch the first year that there are 10 scholarships available and will ramp up to 75 scholars per year as new scholarships are endowed, ultimately resulting in steady population of about 300 undergraduate scholars on campus.</p>

<p>Contributions of $500,000 or more will create a named scholarship, and earnings may be designated for a specific school or college. Every individual endowment will throw off enough money for a full four-year undergraduate education, plus funding for enrichment activities. And the Association’s current elite scholarship eventually will be folded into the new awards and therefore be discontinued under its current name.</p>

<p>Participation in the selection process from the schools and colleges will ensure recruitment of the students that the University wants and needs.</p>

<p>The selection process will consider leadership and life experiences in addition to SAT/ACT scores and class rank. This points out an immediate and pressing problem: this massive undertaking could be seriously compromised if the Texas Legislature does not change the Top 10 Percent Law. Not only is UT fast approaching the time when, by law, its entire freshman class will be Top 10 Percent students (while certain desirable students who are extraordinary in a given area might not be), but by the same token, all out-of-state applicants soon could be crowded out of the freshman class by in-staters. For this reason and others, changing the Top 10 Percent Law is at the top of the Texas Exes’ legislative agenda in the session now in progress while it simultaneously takes the long view by forging ahead.*</p>

<p>UT is going to have a problem overcoming its Top 10% rule. The school already has to allow spots for athletes who aren’t Top 10% and/or instate, and now it will have to get the state lawmakers to agree to letting the school award seats to more OOS students. </p>

<p>The scholarship begins by awarding 10 full rides…and over the years add as they can til they get to 75 awards per year. Right now, 10 annual awards exist.</p>

<p>After looking at who the awards went to this last year, it looks like all the recipients are instate. Is that true?</p>

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<p>“mom2college” - I don’t mean any disrespect, but you continue to give unsolicited advice that isn’t useful or relevant. </p>

<p>It’s also expressed in a tone that would be offensive if it weren’t so silly. I know you’re trying to help people with your vast knowledge, but your ridiculously long-winded tut-tutting about paying for interview weekends, anecdotes about under-represented minorities, banal observations about SAT scores etc. have nothing to do with my very narrow, specific little request.</p>

<p>I appreciate your efforts - really, I do, even when you’re googling and cutting and pasting from articles that I referenced earlier - but you seem to forget that it’s my thread, and all I asked for was a list and some links. If you can supply these, super, bring it on. If not, please spam someone else’s thread.</p>

<p>best,
t</p>

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<p>lol…good luck!</p>

<p>And, I did supply a link to a list of schools that give large merit scholarships…perhaps you missed it?</p>

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<p>Wow…thibault, I’ll provide the response that mom2collegkids was much too kind to post. You may think of this as “your” thread, but it’s a CC thread, not subject to your control, and it will be viewed by many people who will read the title and anticipate seeing a useful discussion of merit based full scholarships. The input provided by mom2collegekids (who, by the way, is one of several indefatigable posters who regularly provide excellent information on the subject of financial aid) may not have been precisely what you hoped for, but will be valuable to many others. To characterize that input as “spam” is incredibly rude and disrespectful–in fact it’s a violation of CC’s Terms of Service, which lists courtesy as rule number one (and putting the phrase “I don’t mean any disrespect” at the start of your post doesn’t make it any less disrespectful). In the future, when posting on CC, I recommend that you appreciate the time and effort people take in providing advice to perfect strangers, and if you find that advice to be “silly” or “ridiculous”, simply say thank you and ignore it. This is a really lovely neighborhood, and everyone is expected to play nicely.</p>

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<p>Wow, tibault. Ignoring your disrespect for M2CK, I’ll give you some info. </p>

<p>Your son sounds like mine. In CTY (same as epgy- through Hopkins), top math score in the state for that testing, top gpa in school through HS. Headed to college next year.
My son and us heard over and over “he can write his own ticket” and “colleges will be fighting for him”. This came from teachers, GC’s, friends…
His dream school since 7th grade was CMU for computer science. Then, last spring, we did the fafsa estimator and almost needed to be hospitalized! Then, we looked at merit aid at CMU and realizing it was so very limited, knew that it would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to swing it.
We went through the same thing you are now. Looking for all of the top schools that offer merit aid and making our list from there. We also looked for GUARANTEED merit aid.
We got lucky, and my son was really happy with the school that he chose that offered guaranteed merit. So he did not feel the need to join in the school lottery for admission or merit aid.
So, as much as you think M2CK was not helpful, she was trying to help you understand early what we learned late. There are many on the cc boards right now that were not admitted to any of the schools they applied to. Or were admitted, but were not offered any need or merit aid and have no school that they can attend. So she is trying to help you prevent that problem. Read the thread “angry over the admissions process” to get a feel for some of the heartache. Actually, just spend time reading the admission/denial and scholarship/fin aid threads the next few years. It will give you a good feel for how tough it us.
The last thing I will say is that the colleges are changing their scholarships all of the time. The ones available now may not be available in 5 years and there may be new ones at different schools. So looking for scholarships this early may be futile. Instead, focus on ways to increase his chances at merit money when the time comes.
If all you really want are names of colleges that currently offer merit despite the competitive nature of them, there are literally hundreds of threads on cc about that, and each school has the scholarships listed on their website. </p>

<p>Sent from my DROID RAZR using CC</p>

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<p>OP should read a few of the recent threads posted by students/parents with lists that were limited to schools similar to her own. So many students despite application to 10 -15 schools now are finding that they were waitlisted,denied or they can’t afford it. They are in shock & now waiting for the list of schools that still have seats that comes out in May.
OP still has time to 180 her attitude and guide her son to realistic choices when the time comes. Unless of course this student is so “special” that the experiences of others don’t have relevance. Which I am * sure* is the case. ;)</p>

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<p>I, for one, regret giving “silly” advice to the OP.</p>

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<p>Wow, thibault! Me thinks you DID mean some disrespect!</p>

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<p>Debbie- it will be helpful to others that run across this thread.</p>

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<p>^^It has already been very helpful to me, so thank you to all of you who have given thoughtful advice and information.</p>

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<p>mom2ck’s advice was spot on, not spam.
I have learned so much from her advice on this an other threads. It is why during my D’s jr year of HS I helped her recraft her list (none of which included likely merit–ie, schools with no merit or schools with 1-2 big awards and little chance of winning them). We researched schools where she was either guaranteed or very likely to be sought-after, and made her list heavy on those.</p>

<p>She still applied to a few financial reaches. She even made it to the semi-finals of a full ride at a top-ranked public U (but did not win it). But thank God for the people here on CC–we’d added some other options as well, so that she wound up with a choice of 5 schools we could afford. All the financial reaches were admits but not possible.</p>

<p>She’s really happy where she ended up.</p>

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<p>Thibault, posters on this thread have been trying to give you the benefit of their experience. Just finding a list of top schools that offer merit aid isn’t enough. It may be all you want right now, but the heads up that folks have been giving you for things we learned later in the process is meant to complement that strategy, which is not a sufficient strategy on its own. Perhaps you never intended to use it on its own, we don’t know. But those top merit scholarships are like a lottery. No matter how well qualified your kid is, and he sounds great, there will be 10x as many equally qualified kids as your applying for almost any scholarship and every school of that level of selectivity. Admission to those top schools and awards of those top scholarships has somewhat of a lottery aspect to it. There are just more extraordinarily qualified kids than there are spots or full-ride scholarships to go around. Kids with 2400 SAT who are valedictorian of their class are still rejected from MIT & Harvard and passed over for those super-competitive scholarships, because there are so many super-qualified kids applying for those very limited opportunities. No one can count on such an opportunity coming through for them, no matter how many they apply for, and no matter how well qualified they are.</p>

<p>So, no one is trying to tell you not to encourage your son to “go for it” when the time comes. We’re only trying to tell you you need a plan B. And a plan C. Just don’t put all your kid’s eggs into the super-reachy baskets. That’s all. Finding out who offers the big scholarships is relatively easy (as you said, you googled it yourself). Getting the kind of insight mom2 offered you at this point in your search is priceless. Even if you aren’t interested in hearing those details now, don’t ignore it.</p>

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<p>OP, the very first step you need to take before looking for schools at all is to figure out your budget. You need two numbers: the amount of money that your family will be able to pay for college, and your so-called EFC (Expected Family Contribution). happymom posted a link for an EFC estimator. Generally, EFC is about 25-33% of your household income. That’s for every year of college. </p>

<p>You are looking for big merit, but it might be easier to get big need-based aid. If your EFC is $50k or more, then fine, you know that you are just looking for merit. But if your EFC is lower and you start concentrating on just merit right now, you could be leaving big money on the table. </p>

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<p>They have. It’s been linked. It changes all the time. People here helpfully update it. By the time your kid is a senior, it will have totally changed. </p>

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<p>Receiving one of these scholarships is tougher than getting into the most competitive colleges in the US. There are far more. Did you know that there are students who are admitted to big tippy-top colleges who turn down those big names because they are going to get a full ride at Pitt? </p>

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<p>Which would be wonderful. I’d include it on a list of possibles, and make darn sure that I had plenty of other options.</p>

<p>OP, your kid is VERY lucky that you’re starting to do this work now. You’re very lucky to have stumbled onto College Confidential this early in your process. People here have a wealth of experience and knowledge–you will not get a better education in college finance issues than on this very forum. If you want to consider this all “useless advice”, well, so be it. Gift horses and all, you know.</p>

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<p>Slithey, mathmomvt - thanks for the courteous and intelligent responses. My specific concerns with the advice given by mom2college and others is as follows:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Their proffered links to scholarships were all at third and fourth tier non-California schools whose graduation rates and academic standards are low. it should be obvious that, for a high-achieving California resident who can save significant funds by, among other things, living at home plus paying in-state tuition plus availing himself of Regents etc scholarships, this information is useless. </p></li>
<li><p>mom2college in particular made all kinds of unwarranted leaps and assumptions about us and our situation, as if we had asked her to be our college financial planner. We did not. I made it clear that we are <em>years</em> away from even high school. We don’t need this help.</p></li>
<li><p>when I gently, politely tried to steer her back to my original request, mom2college responded with an unintentionally funny post punctuated with gratuitous sneers and discussing everything under the sun, including whether weekend visits would be paid for.</p></li>
<li><p>the high point, or low point, of mom2college’s comedy act came when, in the span of two serial posts, she a) called me “naive” to believe that Bobby Inman and other Texas Exes’ wish to compete for top talent by offering full-ride merit scholarships is evidence of an arms race, and then b) cut and pasted from the very same article I noted, the one in which Inman et al. are quoted as saying they want to … compete for top talent with money (“find the Vance Young of physics” for UT).</p></li>
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<p>I’m a bit sensitive to the bad advice charge because, in researching this issue, I saw another thread in which mom2college swore right off the bat that an OP father with a $150k salary whose son was a star athlete with top academics had utterly no chance, none, nichego nada of getting significant merit-based aid from an Ivy League school. Of course, she turned out to be dead wrong, mainly because she - surprise, surprise - didn’t know much about either the OP’s actual situation or the Ivies’ actual process. But that didn’t stop her from assuring everyone repeatedly that the OP was naive, uninformed, wrong etc.</p>

<p>Look, I know the blogosphere is full of half-truths, myths, slanging wars etc. Caveat lector and all that. I’m just trying to move the needle a bit more in the direction of signal and away from noise. In this case, on this thread, I just wanted to save a bit of time googling merit scholarships at a short list of top schools, 's all. I realize now that I’m better off googling on my own.</p>

<p>Again, I appreciate your courteous and intelligent comments.</p>

<p>best,
t</p>

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<p>I remember that thread and participated in the discussion. The father was less than forthcoming with his information until the end when he stated that his son was was an African American male who was ranked # 1 in the world for his sport and a highly recruited world class athlete presenting a truly unique situation. Otherwise the information provided by the parents was spot on.</p>

<p>Even then the student did not get an academic merit or athletic scholarship. The student was given a likely to Stanford, which does give Athletic scholarships and asked for pre-reads before commiting in order to get preferential pakaging at a peer school (the Ivies). Even then, his son did not get a “full ride.”</p>

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<p>However, this would highly unlikely happen if a kids was soley bringing academics and not world class athletics to the table.</p>

<p>My question is what is it that you are looking for when you say full ride? Are you looking for tuition, room, board, books and a stipend, or full tuition, or full tuition and some other combination of things.</p>

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<p>slithey - re. Pitt, I’m somewhat familiar with top-tier, world-class neuroscience programs and am aware that there are full rides available at some 2nd tier, lesser-known universities such as Pitt, U. Rochester, and UCSD whose neuroscience programs are equal to or better than the ivies. </p>

<p>That’s exactly the kind of hidden or lesser-known gem I was looking for, thanks. If you know of other asymmetrical situations in physics-related fields – fabulous, world-class, ivy-equivalent program + 2nd-tier (not 3rd-tier, mind) school + lots of merit $$$ – then, please do pass them along.</p>

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<p>sybbie - re the ivy-bound athlete, the OP has no obligation to be “forthcoming.” This is not a deposition. And if his son is a world-class athlete, then your / mom2college’s lust for complete transparency would create a risk for him and his family of outing themselves when they’re trying to have a <em>confidential</em> discussion about extremely sensitive issues involving huge sums of money, personal financial matters, race etc. </p>

<p>But most importantly, what was so offensive was the categorical, sweeping claims from mom2college that merit-based scholarships from the ivies were not available. Combined with the absurd know-it-all tone, I think this sort of advice is a disservice to parents.</p>

<p>re. “full ride,” I’m referring to tuition.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>Are you thinking that Stanford is an ivy? </p>

<p>I looked over that thread, and I said that the IVIES (which does NOT include Stanford) are not going to risk league violations by giving essentially an athletic scholarship when those aren’t allowed.</p>

<p>And…a “full ride” is not “tuition”. That’s a “full tuition” scholarship. A full ride is exactly that…you go to the school for free…free tuition, housing, meal plan, etc. The ride is free.</p>

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<p>For most mortals, there’s no merit aid at the Ivies. If a parent comes on here and says that their kid got big merit at a bunch of Ivies, then they’re either lying or they have some special unique hook. It does other readers no favors to give the impression that their kid could also get merit money at these schools. </p>

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<p>:eek: </p>

<p>OK, this is really why reading here on CC is useful. First off, these are only second tier schools if one is working off the premise that anything other than things like Ivies and Amherst and Berkeley/UCLA are on a separate plane. Second (tier :D), only Pitt offers the full ride. UCSD’s only merit is regents, and that’s not full ride. Rochester offers generous merit-based, but that puts it around the cost of a UC, though I saw that someone this year got about $30k…not sure if that’s just merit or if it’s merit + need-based. </p>

<p>I’m a California resident, too, product of two UCs…and I’d still encourage high-achieving California students to look at other schools, even some “third” or “fourth” tier ones. We here in California have been spoiled by having access to high-caliber, inexpensive colleges. So we’re provincial. We’ve not heard of as many colleges as people on the East Coast. Which is a pity, because there are great opportunities out there. UCs are still a bargain, but they are more expensive. Regents scholarships are no slam-dunk, and aren’t big money. Living expenses are high, as are class sizes. </p>

<p>One of the best things about CC is that you learn about schools you’d never heard of before. You learn about opportunities at schools you’ve never heard of where a high-stats kid can flourish intellectually, for less than the cost of a UC. And not just here on the financial forum. Go hunt down the story of a poster named curmudgeon, whose high stats daughter was accepted at Yale, in the days before their generous need-based aid (owning property really messes up the EFC). She turned it down to take a full-ride offer at Rhodes, so she could save money for med school. Prospered, got a Goldwater scholarship. She’s now in med school…at Yale. </p>

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<p>To each his/her own. Me, I’d go with the experienced knowledge base.</p>