<p>
[quote]
If your son is a star student -- with near perfect grades and test scores -- or a great athlete -- then he can expect to get generous merit offers from many excellent colleges. However, if he is more of a garden variety good, but not amazing, student - he may find that the types of colleges that would award him merit money do not live up to his expectations in terms of academic quality or collegiate environment.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with this. There are lots of very fine schools "recruiting" good students with strong merit scholarship offers. They just aren't necessarily schools that are on EVERYONE'S radar (especially people in the northeast), and sometimes that is not a bad thing.</p>
<p>My son who was a very good student (not an Amazing student) got nice offers from various lesser-known colleges. He ended up at Denison in Ohio and has had a most satisfactory experience there with a large merit scholarship and a music scholarship. He's had very good mentoring, small classes, a lovely campus, and has grown nicely both socially and academically. He even has had the opportunity to do a paid research internship this summer, which I'm sure he would not have had at a higher ranked or larger school.</p>
<p>Additionally, my second son, an excellent SAT test taker but without an Amazing GPA got many very nice merit scholarship offers from very solid engineering schools (including Rensselaer, Rose-Hulman, Worcester Polytech, Rochester Institute of Tech and Northeastern, among others). I find it very hard to believe that he would have had a less than satisfactory academic experience at any of those schools. (He'll be attending WPI.)</p>
<p>There are Many such stories on this forum.</p>