Small Pre-med schools, rural settings

[UpNorth2019]

Hi @SoCalDriver: Welcome to CC! We had a very similar search for D21 last year and are now back for another go-round with S23: both very high stats, 3.98/4.8ish GPAs, NMFs/mid 1500s SATs, etc. Both would be candidates for the tippy-tops, but we are full-pay but not willing/able to pay >80/yr just for undergrad, so I became an expert on merit aid at LACs. (Our budget was a max of 50K/year, so we were targeting fairly highly ranked schools which provided 1/2 tuition merit scholarships.)

I learned a ton. You can search my previous posts and replies, including this one:

LAC's with merit - is there a list somewhere?

I am on kid #4, so I should know what I am doing. But of course like the other 3 she probably going down a different path than her predecessors. I have one at a big essentially open admissions state school, 1 at a full need met LAC, and a recruited athlete. #4 currently interested in a smaller LAC, but not necessarily a super competitive one. Is there a resource that shows what kind of scholarships are available at different schools? Or is it a bit of hunting on each of their websites and maybe calling each of the financial aid offices? For example, I can see on Lewis & Clark’s website that there are up to 5 full tuition scholarships. But there are also 4 other levels of merit scholarships. I can’t seem to find anything regarding the number awarded, the typical requirements, or most importantly the amounts. I am early with her, so I’m not too stressed about getting this figured out right away. But I’m trying to prepare myself for what kind of cost I am looking at, and prepare her f…

Based on our family’s experience, the OP is off to a great start and there is lots of great advice here, but a few posters are off on a few things.

The first is that Carleton no longer gives a penny of merit aid other than token amount for NMF. (This changed very recently, so posters were correct about their merit aid as of just a few years ago.) What they do give is ‘need-based’ aid fairly high up into what most people would consider to be upper middle-class, although if the OP is from CA and owns two homes and a rental property, their family is unlikely to qualify. But it’s worth a shot.

Same with Colorado College: No more merit aid other than token NMF, although it sounds like that one’s already off the list. Same with Middlebury.

The schools I second as great fits are: St. Olaf (a pre-med powerhouse that punches WAY above its weight in biology), Grinnell, Whitman, Kenyon, and Denison. (I would also add UPS for anyone else reading this thread, but it sounds like the OP only wants rural schools.)These are all schools that my D21 and/or S23 considered or are considering. My kids categorically refused to look in the south (see my screen name) so I don’t know much about schools there, but I know there are some great rural LACs with good merit $ there as well.

My general advice is to:

1. Target the midwest and south: that’s the the bulk of merit $ is found for T100 LACs.

2. Be aware of how quickly the landscape is changing as more and more schools shift from merit to need-based aid. Things have even changed in the last two years between my D21 and S23’s search. You have to directly ask the schools what your kid can expect to receive rather than rely on older Common Data Sets.

I hope this helps. Good luck!