<p>overseas, my son and many of his classmates are also US Nationals who attended international schools in Asia. Although Japan may not have the same “exotic” factor as say, Laos, I believe that being an American expat in Japan would be a plus at most LACs. It really depends on how she presents herself and her experience in her application. In essence, living in Asia can be a great EC!</p>
<p>Will she have a chance to visit before applying? Lots of young women change their minds after visiting women’s colleges that are part of coed consortiums, like Smith and Scripps. Smith’s STRIDE scholarship is exceptional. </p>
<p>I would also mention Emory. Not an LAC but urban with excellent sciences and generous merit aid.</p>
<p>SummerAus, I’m sure you’d be a person of interest to many good colleges. Keep an open mind about schools that are in the midwest and/or rural as they have a hard time recruiting high achieving African Americans and may be more generous with aid to entice you to attend. </p>
<p>The first step is to look into NEED based aid. Ask your parents to use an on-line calculator to determine how much you may be eligible for. If that doesn’t work for you, then you’ll have to concentrate on schools that offer MERIT based aid.</p>
<p>Better to use the net price calculator found on each college’s web site, since the different colleges have different levels of financial aid generosity.</p>
<p>Many, many young women change their minds about applying to women’s colleges after their parent(s) have insisted that they visit at least one. Your daughter’s interests and stats make her a good candidate for some of them, and some might even have significant money to toss her way. When you are in the US again, drag her to visit one of them, just as you will also need to drag her to visit one or two big state schools that have good merit aid to offer. Part of the whole game is keeping very clear in your own head how much money you are truly ready, willing, and able to pay so that you can help her keep clear how much she can truly expect you to shell out. If that factor is straight in everyone’s head, aiming for the best combo of affordability and likability is easier.</p>
<p>Just a quick note about the fact that when you check to see how your D’s stats are compared to the CDS, or the freshman profile many schools publish, many parents who are going through the application process for their 2nd or 3rd child are finding that stats are higher all the way around each subsequent year. I think that means in order to try and get the best merit aid you need to make sure your D applies to schools where she is really at the top. Good luck!</p>
<p>There’s something I don’t understand. Just now, looking at the Kiplinger’s Best Value site, Grinnell shows up as giving 49% of their students 11k in merit aid. But on their CDS page, it looks like they gave only 44 students merit aid in 2011-12. Does anybody understand this discrepancy? I’ve been using the CDS section on non-need based aid to check merit money and wonder if I’m missing something, of if Kiplinger’s is wrong.</p>
<p>Overseasmam, things change rapidly in the world of college admissions and funding. That could be a reason.</p>
<p>Also when I have looked at numbers for merit awards, there is also a split between those getting only merit that were not also eligible for financial aid and those who got merit awards and also got financial aid. </p>
<p>Getting “some” merit is a whole other story from getting the big dollars. My one son got merit money from a lot of schools, but all under $5K from mostly top priced schools. Every cent counts, but really, at some schools, that was truly a drop in the $60K bucket. </p>
<p>I remember the elation when my one son got a $30K award, and the scariness of the reality that it still left more than $30K to pay at that school. It’s that bottom line that counts, not how much you get, but what you will have to pay. </p>
<p>So when looking at schools where your student might be eligible for merit make sure you find out what the maximum awards are and how many are given out. A school might give 50% of their kids merit money which looks pretty danged good for a kid in the upper quarter, but if 90% of those awards are for $1-5K and there are maybe a handful of awards, or just one or two or NONE that will bring the price to what is affordable, you are wasting your time applying to that school when there may be other schools that have a number of awards that can bring the price to what is doable and that your child has a fighting chance of getting.</p>
<p>OverseasMama, there are other places to look for FA or merit information. You can look at USNWR’s Best Value, CollegeBoard, Petersons, Collegedata, CollegeExpress, etc. You may have to register and then log in, and the USNWR does have a paid subscription for access to certain areas. You can buy the Fiske Guide 2013 or Princeton Review’s Best 377 Colleges books. You can buy Princeton Review’s Paying for College Without Going Broke, by Kalman Chany, an excellent book.</p>
<p>According to the Kiplinger site, Grinnell’s average merit aid is $11,582. This figure is the same as the one in Grinnell’s 2011-12 CDS, row H2o, center column. So it represents the average merit aid for all undergraduates, not just freshmen, who received it. </p>
<p>The corresponding figure in H2n, center column, is 263. This is the number of degree-seeking undergraduates who had no financial need and who were awarded institutional non-need-based scholarship or grant aid. These 263 merit recipients represent what percentage of all undergraduates without need? This is the percentage that Kiplinger apparently is reporting. I don’t know how they arrived at the number of all undergrads without need. It’s not explicitly called out in the CDS, but I come up with 481 (by subtracting H2c from H2a). From there, I come up with 55% (263/481), not 49%.</p>
<p>^ O.K., I think I see how they got it. To 481 (H2a-H2c), they add 56 (H2g, the number of n-b aid recipients who also got merit aid). The sum is 537. 263/537 is 49%.</p>
<p>To me, it looks like 19% of students at Grinnell receive some merit aid. According to the 2011-2012 CDS, there are 1638 students enrolled at the school. Of the 1157 who received need-based aid, 56 of those students received some merit aid as part of the package. Of the students who had no financial need, 263 received merit aid. </p>
<p>So, I calculate that 318 students received merit aid. This amounts to 19% of the entire student body.</p>
<p>So it sounds like Kiplinger’s is reporting the percentage of students without need who get merit, rather than the percentage of all undergrads? That would explain the huge gap in stats. So glad there’s a site where I can get several answers to a question like this. </p>
<p>Btw, do any of you have teens who think you’ve gone totally around the bend with all the research we do on colleges? My D is really sick of the whole topic.</p>
<p>Here’s another crack at it: I think the Kiplinger figure says that of all the students who get merit aid, 49% of it goes to students who do not get need-based aid. So, if you don’t qualify for FA, you still have a 50/50 shot of getting some merit. I guess that’s the value of the statistic; otherwise, I really don’t know why it matters. And it certainly shouldn’t be so hard to figure out what the heck Kiplinger is saying!!</p>
<p>Holy Cross-very good LAC 1hour from Boston offers some merit aid for classics majors, music majors and perhaps a few others. HC is also one of the very few LAC’s that is still need-blind for admissions.</p>
<p>SDonCC–I agree, it shouldn’t be this difficult or this easy to misinterpret. And yes, since I know my D is in the “non-need” pile, the stat is still helpful. But sheesh. I noticed on website the other day that a college was claiming 98% (or something like that) of its student body graduated in four years–but then read the fine print and it was actually 98% of those who graduated, so they were eliminating the drop-outs before figuring the percentage. This kind of playing around with numbers for the best spin seems to be typical for the industry. There should be one source somewhere that gives straight, reliable odds for all schools on all these issues, but if there is, I haven’t found it.</p>
<p>I know there are a lot of different sources for looking for merit aid, but they all seem to present contradictory figures, and I figured the CDS would be the most up-to-date and accurate snapshot. Granted, it’s an inefficient way to search for colleges. Fortunately, I’m really only looking for a few more schools to add to her list. So the suggestions above have been really helpful. I think my D is going to have to be flexible about location to get all the other things she wants. There are some deal-breakers for her that I think are reasonable. She wants a small LAC and a strong science program, and I think we can find that in our price range.</p>
<p>I know this is very subjective, but for those of you seriously searching for the best merit aid, how many colleges are you planning on applying to? Maybe it comes down to how many essays your kids are willing to write. There are a lot of free apps out there.</p>
<p>No.
319 students get merit aid. 263 of these merit recipients get no additional, need-based aid. Either they don’t even bother applying for it, or they apply but are not determined to have need. Another 56 students get merit aid, but also get need-based aid. So, of all the students who get merit aid, 82% of it goes to students who do not get need-based aid.</p>
<p>263 is 49% of 481 (H2a-H2c) plus 56 (H2g). That is, the number of students who receive merit aid only (no n-b aid) is 49% of all “non-needy plus partially non-needy” students (defined as the 481 who get no n-b aid at all, plus the 56 who get some n-b aid but also some merit). 263 is 55% of the “completely non-needy” students. But the total number of merit recipients (263+56) is 19% of all 1638 undergraduates. </p>
<p>
Maybe so.
For students who otherwise would be paying the full sticker price, Grinnell is giving about half of them discounts in the form of merit scholarships (averaging ~$11K). Incentivizing an otherwise full-pay student to come to Grinnell is cheaper for the college than fully subsidizing a high-need student to attend Grinnell. Plus, “merit” pulls in kids with higher stats.</p>
<p>However … we don’t know the average stats of “needy” v. “no-need” kids. The no-need kids might have higher stats, on average. If merit recipients represent only 19% of all undergrads, then I would think your stats need to be in the top quintile of enrolled students to have a good shot at substantial merit aid.</p>
<p>I have to laugh. I am wrong with my calculations (and I realized after I posted that my 50/50 shot makes no sense whatsoever if only 19% of students get merit aid!), but I still have no idea what the 49% refers to. tk,what cohort does that 537 number you identified represent??</p>
<p>Kiplinger is really doing a disservice with this chart. </p>
<p>Anyway, the merit decisions at these small schools are holistic, not formulaic, and include awards for a range of test scores, not just those above the 75th %ile. The amounts of the awards vary as well, so there is always a chance for a very generous offer. Too, the schools can vary in how generous they are to students depending on how badly the school wants that student (as someone mentioned upthread). If you look at decisions posted by students from Macalester and Grinnell, for example, you will see that in some cases, Macalester was more affordable for some while for others, Grinnell came through better for them.</p>
<p>I would go ahead and throw a few darts at the schools you deem most desirable without prejudging the merit opportunity, but try to stay clear-headed and not “fall in love” with just certain schools until the results are in.</p>