<p>You might find a hidden gem among them, particularly if a school has a well-regarded honors program. I basically agree with you that most of those are not the opportunities you are looking for for your son, but your son will need a couple of safeties, and perhaps one of those full rides can fill that bill. He may not, after all, want to live at home when the time comes My oldest wound up at an ivy (with surprisingly generous need-based aid) so maybe I should just stop here, but he/we did think seriously about the advantages of being a bigger fish, getting more interaction with profs and research opportunities, etc. and he had a number of nice offers to less selective schools as well (two full-tuition offers, but no full rides). I think, having learned a thing or two since we started this journey, that my younger children will try to find a lower-tier school of interest that will offer assured or very likely full-ride merit as a safety, if nothing else.</p>
<p>Hi mom2college - the OP refers to his sonâs eventual choice as having an undergraduate business school. Stanford doesnât have one. Among the schools he discussed, only Penn has an undergraduate business program.</p>
<p>For physics, the key is to find schools which strongly support undergrad research. Donât worry about the tier. Look for money first, then start going through the physics dept. pages.</p>
<p>*My wife and I currently make around 250,000, but such income level was only attained 5 months ago. For the prior 7 years, there were bouts of unemployment and salary reductions where we had to empty all our savings accounts, deplete our retirement accounts and even declare bankruptcy. What is the likelihood of financial assistance from the Ivies? </p>
<p>================</p>
<p>My responseâŠ
Very unlikely.</p>
<p>When your son applies for aid, youâll be using your 2011 earnings. As you said, youâre not used to earning that much. Well, then, continue living as if youâre not earning that much and set aside money for college.</p>
<p>If you donât think saving money this year to put towards college for Fall 2012, then your son needs to apply to some schools that will give him big merit scholarships for his stats. Ivies donât give merit scholarships.*</p>
<hr>
<p>Again, my answer was about Ivy League schoolsâŠnot Stanford!</p>
<p>AndâŠif you look at the the other peopleâs posts, many were saying the same thing. Ivies are not sources for big merit scholarships.</p>
<hr>
<p>*Their proffered links to scholarships were all at third and fourth tier non-California schools whose graduation rates and academic standards are low. *</p>
<p>There were 2nd tier schools in there as well. As for Calif schools, there are a few schools that offer large meritâŠschools like Santa Clara and USC.</p>
<p>It sounds like there may be a terminology mismatch here causing at least some of the confusion.</p>
<p>âfull rideâ is used to describe a scholarship that covers the full cost of tuition PLUS room and board, and often a books allowance or other small stipend for expenses</p>
<p>âfull tuitionâ is just that â the cost of tuition is covered (no small thing, but this can easily leave $15 - $20K in additional expenses at schools where room and board and/or fees are high) â also with full tuition scholarships you need to consider whether the scholarship increases each year as tuition increases or not â my son got offered some of each type IIRC.</p>
<p>thibaultâI think you need to step back and listen to what people are saying. Just because YOU think colleges should be giving merit aid doesnât mean they will. Your best options for merit aid is to come into a school, a school that gives merit aid, at the top of their stat poolâmeaning, no Ivy level schools. There are 1000âs of kids across the country with high stats, âgiftedâ kids that have been in all kinds of special programs like your son that donât even get INTO these schools, let alone get it paid for at 100%.</p>
<p>What you are asking for just doesnât happen at top schools, period. At schools that do give merit aid, typically they are for about 1/2 of the total cost-tuition, room board and most donât even cover that much.</p>
<p>Ivy schools and some similar do have some income based tuition pricing options so if you are a family with an income under about $60K/year, you can expect your costs to be covered IF he gets in. Realize that only about 6% of the kids that apply to these schools actually get INTO these schoolsâeven kids with perfect test scores, top of their classes, perfect GPAâs. If you are an over represented minority, you can pretty much forget getting into any of these schools.</p>
<p>Iâd like to come to M2K defense. From all the posts Iâve seen from her, she is trying to help other posters. The reasons why her posts sometimes long is that she presents all the evidence. </p>
<p>You might have been offended to be called naive, but your posts show that you might not be completely aware of how the process works. There are NO MERIT-based awards in IVY league schools. Otherwise they would have to educate every admitted for free. </p>
<p>If you read the post your reference carefully, you would have recognized that the award the student received was not merit based and that the award did not come from IVY league (I believe the student got that scholarship from Stanford University).</p>
<p>The op of the thread originally posed his question as a parent who was rich on paper (family making over 200K) and could not afford to pay full freight for college due to medical expenses and periods of job layoffs.</p>
<p>The OP was given feedback based on this information. Later, when he talked about the outcome he disclosed that his kid world class athlete kid was given a full ride to Stanford (the Ivies will and do look at Stanford as a peer school) which helped him to get preferential aid at the other schools.</p>
<p>slithey - you say, âIâd go with the experienced knowledge base.â</p>
<p>As the poet said, âa <em>little</em> knowledge is a dangerous thingâ emphasis on LITTLE. I find that on these boards, unless the poster is speaking from a position of real expertise, his or her noise-to-signal ratio tends to be high. </p>
<p>You clearly know what youâre talking about wrt Pitt. How do I know? Because my closest friend is a neuroscientist who did a post-doc there, got a PhD at one of the other two schools I mentioned, and frequently works with neuroscientists at the third school. But these schools <em>overall</em> are not of the same caliber as the top-tier programs such as the ivies. They are of course first-tier in neuroscience. Without such expertise, itâs hard for a poster to make assertions of the sort that mom2c routinely makes without poisoning the thread with misinformation.</p>
<p>lerkin, SteveMA - go back to my list. I very clearly indicated a large number of non-ivies, including a significant number of public OOS universities that are not in the top 25. </p>
<p>What Iâm looking for is what slithey, alone on this thread, has offered: specific names of specific schools that are outstanding in the physical sciences and that have extremely large merit-based packages available.</p>
<p>OkâŠwe should all bookmark this thread and hope that in a few years Thibault reports back that his child got a full ride merit to an ivy. I look forward to reading about it. </p>
<p>As we all know, the Ivies really need to get into the âarms raceâ of getting top students and stop admitting the dregs that theyâve given seats to in the past. Man up Ivies! and pay up!</p>
<p>thibaultâgo to the âParentâ forum, look on the left side of the page and there will be a link. At the top of that page there is a very long thread about schools known for Merit aid, along with exactly WHAT aid kids are getting. You will see that what you are asking for just does NOT happen at the schools you are consideringââtier 1 and 2âânot 3 mind you. Iâm not sure where you are getting your âtiersâ from though.</p>
<p>Just to get a more specific handle on the info needed, your son is in what grade?</p>
<p>How many years until he is a senior in high school?</p>
<p>I ask because many of the full-tuition and full-ride merit scholarships that existed when my son was in middle school have since either disappeared, changed significantly in terms amount or restrictions have narrowly limited qualified applicants.</p>
<p>The STEM areas you are referring to along with the schools you first listed were the target schools for my son. He was admitted to MIT, CalTech, UNC-CH, Princeton, Harvard, Duke and several others. As that we were in a similar financial situation as you have described he applied to numerous schools and widely.</p>
<p>The scholarships he was eligible for outside the institutions themselves might be opportunities for your son depending on some variables. MIT/Harvard cost for my son was also met with a Navy ROTC scholarship (difficult to earn). Princeton with an Air Force ROTC, all 3 being a Gates Foundation finalist.</p>
<p>UNC as a Morehead finalist, or using the Carolina covenant. Questbrisge is also another option.</p>
<p>But as time has past there have been large changes on the financial aid front/merit scholies. As the economy has tightened as has merit money.</p>
<p>I can only envision in each progressive year, monies will dry up and be moved to more need based aid as it has done in the past ten years.</p>
<p>As far as âlargeâ that is a relative number. Full-tuition the competition is fierce and full-rides are even more difficult.</p>
<p>Again depending on how many years before he is eligible will greatly influence the results and longevity of your search.</p>
<p>SteveMA - my tiers are to some extent subjective. They come from my own experience doing recruitment for investment banking and high tech; from my best friendâs experience as a nominator of the best science talent in the nation; and from my very large familyâs experience across a wide range of universities in the US, UK, and continental Europe over the last 35 years. Iâm by no means an expert, but I have a good feel, I think, for academic quality and can tell the difference between the Pitts and the pits.</p>
<p>as it was stated before the big ticket awards at highly ranked schools are highly competitive and in some cases will not cover out of state tuition.</p>
<p>I recommend you take a look at University of Minnesota for their chemical engineering (ranked 4th of US News). Many opportunities for internships around twin cities and because UofM is somewhat lower ranked than Wisconsin (reciprocity state), it offers many merit-based scholarships for high stats. Room and board are also pretty cheap in comparison with other states. </p>
<p>Some scholarships are guaranteed (for NMF currently it is 10K in state, not so sure out of state). Combined with many other scholarships it offers (they can be stacked), you might very well get full tuition covered. Minnesota has a weird law that limits the difference between in-state and out of state tuition to only 5K.</p>
<p>Thibault- in your origional post you wrote: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess what we are all telling you is that you are on a âfoolâs errandâ (your words), if you think there is a formula to get a merit scholarship from one of the top 10-20 colleges . However, there are other options and ways to help your child get the education at an affordable price. </p>
<p>If your child has a hook, like world winning shot put thrower, first gen american indian female, or famous actor that schools are willing to pay for, that is a different set of rules. But you did not say that your child is first gen american indian. And stating that you need a full or mostly paid scholarship leads us to believe that you are exactly where many of us are- middle to upper middle class. So the information we all went off of is that your child has no âhooksâ, middle class, but is very intelligent. And we welcomed you to the club, with the info we all have. </p>
<p>Why did we make these assumptions? Because many of us found CC with the same thoughts/outlook as you have right now. And CC first burst our happy bubble, then helped us cope with reality. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the rules of admission and merit aid are not equal for all, and those things matter.</p>
<p>thibault, I got a great deal of my knowledge and expertise from reading threads here on CC. I never knew about Pitt before that. Iâve learned a lot since, toured the school with D1 as a potential safety, because people here on CC forums gave me that knowledge. Ditto for CCS. Even though Iâm a Californian, I learned about it here on CC. Rochesterâsame deal. Became interested because of keilexandraâs research into schools that offer big National Merit money, had D1 tour. The spouse and I still think the world of the school, even though D1 was uninterested. </p>
<p>You are giving me entirely too much credit, and the other posters here far too little. Thatâs why itâs worth your while to stay here and read. I have pretty mad google skillz, and there is just no way that I couldâve picked up all that knowledge as effectively as by reading CC. People post here not only to seek knowledge, but also to pay back what theyâve learned. m2ckâs style may not be to your taste, but thereâve been posters over the years that only learned about Alabamaâs generous merit aidâwhich made college affordable for their kidsâbecause of her posting. </p>
<p>You have many years in front of you before reaching the top of the roller coaster ride that is college admissions. You the parent get to use that to do your homeworkâfigure out what you can afford, scope out possibilites, vent/talk here on CC so that you do not burn out your kids on all things college. Then youâll be prepared for when/if your childâs interest suddenly change. Ditto for your finances. You could lose a jobâŠor have a stroke of good luck, where schools that werenât affordable before become so. And youâll be prepared and well-informed as various schools change their need and merit aid policies.</p>
<p>MommaJ - Iâm here to get solid-fact-based information thatâs relevant to my narrow request and thatâs delivered in a civil, grown-up, courteous manner - see Slitheyâs responses. His suggestion of UCSBâs College of Creative Studies is worth all the noise and obnoxiousness issuing from certain other posters.</p>
<p>Can we all please get back on topic now? If you know of extremely generous merit-based packages at very good universities that have world-class physics-related undergraduate programs, please give names and links if you can. Thanks!</p>
<p>thibaultâeveryone IS on topic, what you are asking for does NOT happen. Even at the last suggestion of the the U of MN, I know a handful of recent NMF that applied to the U of MN and got âmeritâ awards in the $1000 range. Some good friends of ours son had 36 ACT 2390 SAT, NMF, 4.0 GPA, graduated #1 in his class, excellent ECâs and got $5000 from the U of MN. He is at Purdue, which gave him $15,000, which is about half of the OOS costs.</p>
<p>Also, what happens if your son graduates from high school and decides he wants to major in say, History?</p>
My oldest wound up at an ivy (with surprisingly generous need-based aid) so maybe I should just stop here, but he/we did think seriously about the advantages of being a bigger fish, getting more interaction with profs and research opportunities, etc. and he had a number of nice offers to less selective schools as well (two full-tuition offers, but no full rides). I think, having learned a thing or two since we started this journey, that my younger children will try to find a lower-tier school of interest that will offer assured or very likely full-ride merit as a safety, if nothing else.</p>