@yauponredux Yes - which ones do you think she should consider?
How about Pitt or Lehigh? Both offer merit scholarships.
There is a PDF download that costs $8 that has hundreds of universities categorized by state and their institutional scholarships. It is essentially a massive excel spreadsheet and it is clunky to work with, but if you want a decently comprehensive list all in one place, it is the best resource I have found.
http://www.mykidscollegechoice.com/full-scholarship-list/
To give you an idea of how many universities are listed, I spent 5 focused hours researching listed scholarships My Dd qualified for and the schools’ majors and data sets, skipped all of the California schools, and I only made it halfway it 1/2 way through the list.
Some random ideas, depending whether she’d like big or small, close to home or something different. My numbers are based on this year’s costs, so of course inflation will affect them.
U of South Carolina: Highly ranked Honors College. Specialty is Int’l Business which requires a second business major, such as Marketing. With her stats, you’d likely pay <$24,000/yr for tuition, fees, R&B.
Temple: Merit structure has changed this year, but since you are in-state, should come in under $30,000 if she receives even a small (e.g., $5,000/yr) merit award.
Penn State: Won’t get under $30,000 unless she is accepted into Schreyer or gets some type of Departmental award.
Pitt: good B school but only a maybe for merit. They are big on class rank. Is she in the top 5%? If not, expect more like $33,000+/year.
U Alabama: @mom2collegekids is the expert on this school. I think your D is eligible for full tuition award there due to the 33 ACT.
Smaller schools:
Bentley: offers some full tuition scholarships.
Duquesne: you would probably pay $27,000/yr or so after merit
U Scranton: offers some full tuition awards. Good number of $20,000/yr awards, which would put you a little over $30,000.
Xavier: handful of full tuition awards offered. $20,000 award (likely with the 33) would get you right around $30,000/yr.
There are lots of other Catholic colleges with strong business departments, but where merit likely won’t get you to $30,000 (such as Fordham, Loyola MD, U Dayton).
Off the top of my head, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Scripps, Simmons (particularly strong for business), Agnes Scott, Hollins, & Salem are womens’ colleges which offer merit scholarships – the first three being much more selective than the others. Your D’s stats would make her a competitive candidate for those awards. Smith, MHC, and Scripps have the advantage of being part of consortiums of schools that include male students, and Simmons’ Boston location means there are tons of other college students nearby. Worth a look if you are on the merit hunt.
The following thread is made for you. It lists automatic scholarships based on those stats.
@YogaMomof3 Since you are willing to consider so many different schools at this time I can only offer you some advice on how to do your own research. Note: My tips are mainly applicable to small to medium private schools in the Mid-Atlantic or New England where I searched for my own kids.
Step 1: Go to https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search and enter your search criteria starting with the Major and add others like size, location, etc. After you execute the search, click into a school your are interested in (then click on Applying on the left, and choose the GPA and/or SAT/ACT tab) to see if your daughter falls in the top 25 percentile in terms of the Test Scores and GPA. You may sort the list by Acceptance Rate to very loosely rank them by academic rigors required to get in. This is an excellent website to help you narrow down your search so play around with all the options and sort options. Also, create an account to enable you to save your searches and favorite colleges for later. This website is run by the same people who produce the SATs so it is legit.
Step 2: Once you have a few schools picked out, do a Google search of “(name of college) Merit Scholarships”. Most will tell you what range of scholarships your daughter would be considered for based on her Test Scores and GPA. In general, the more your daughter’s records are above average for the college, the more likely they are to offer you a significant amount. What this means is that a highly competative college would probably not offer your daughter a big scholarship since the majority of their candidates would have very good academic records. On the other hand, a college that is not as competative would be more likely to offer a big scholarship because they want more students like your daughter to enroll, which would in turn help to boost their statistics and rankings in the future.
Take a look at the webpage for Universityof Scranton below. I am not endorsing them but just wanted to point it out as an example of one of the most detailed pages when it comes to spelling out what is available and what the qualifictions are. http://www.scranton.edu/financial-aid/merit-based-sch.shtml