T20 Merit

Paying for College
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D had a friend who applied to Vandy with perfect test scores and GPA, tons of fabulous ECs, work experience, awards, etc… He was accepted but got $0 merit awards. Two years prior (HS class of '16), the val did get a substantial award, but it’s gotten much more competitive. Another exceptionally smart friend applied ED to Rice and ended up getting rejected entirely.

I’m unfortunately not surprised that you aren’t hearing the success stories. :frowning:

I have lots of them though for places like Alabama, Iowa, TAMU…

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Iowa State is a nice win for many

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One of my cousin’s children turned down some highly selective schools for her own state school that offered some very nice merit money, bringing the cost down to community college commuting levels. It freed up a lot of parental money for her to have a rich life style during college, able to partake in some great trips and projects and programs, as well as having s nice apartments. No skimping on expenses at all. The family would have really felt the $45-50k private schools with good financial aid would have cost. But had she gotten a substantial merit award, she definitely would have gone elsewhere. It was a long shot, and they all knew it. It was quite the surprise that State U was as generous as. they were…

So many of us place parameters on how much we’d pay for what. I’ve known families break to open the family piggy bank for HPY, et al. But Vandy , Wash U, Rice, needs to cough up some awards for the student to give up State U’s package.

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T20 schools have limited and targeted merit. They tend to award to poach students that they need/want for their reporting numbers and/or who they think will be accepted to ivies.

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How much is your family willing to pay each year? A half tuition award could be nice, but you’d still have $45k+ per year to pay. Is that fine with your family?

That said, I don’t think you should expect merit from a top 20 school without something that the school really wants. Are you from a state that sends few students to T20 schools? Sounds like you can’t offer a T20 ethnic diversity, but is there anything unique you would offer? Any amazing accomplishments?

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Here is the thing about those high dollar merit aid scholarships, they all require interviews. This is where the subjective comes in, someone who had many opportunities to shine and did, or someone who had little to no opportunities to shine, but shined anyway. Who do you think will get the scholarship?

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There’s nothing the student can do at this point to make himself stand out. Whoever he is and whatever he’s done at this point (assuming he’s applying now for next fall) is the end of the road (for college admissions). I think you’d already know if your child were a strong contender. His accomplishments would be unique (truly one-of-a-kind) and remarkable. Most people who get these awards are not chasing accolades for the sake of their resume. Their accomplishments are intrinsic to who they are, a reflection of their true selves, rather than a chased-after, sculpted depiction of what they think the colleges want.

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Not all the high dollar merit scholarships require interviews. For example, the Cornelius Vanderbilt full tuition merit scholarship at Vanderbilt does not.

Brantly said, “Most people who get these awards are not chasing accolades for the sake of their resume. Their accomplishments are intrinsic to who they are, a reflection of their true selves, rather than a chased-after, sculpted depiction of what they think the colleges want.” This was our experience. My kid was awarded the Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship. She has no hooks; is not a URM; we did not qualify for need-based financial aid and thus she did not offer Vandy any socioeconomic diversity. She had stellar grades and test scores and great ECs. She truly drove the process in terms of following her passions and engaging in the EC’s and taking the academic course load that supported these passions. Of course it is impossible to say with certainty which factors tipped the scale in her favor, since there is no way we can know. All I can say is that her entire college application and her essays reflected her true, authentic self–nothing was contrived. Whether this was the deciding factor or not, I do not know. She is pursuing an engineering degree, so I would imagine that being a female in a STEM field helped.

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Absolutely NOT TRUE. Both of my kids were awarded several HUGE merit awards and NONE of them required interviews. None even offered interviews.

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Should have said most, using absolutes is always a mistake. Were they all at T20 schools? I find that multiple offers is very, very. rare at T20 schools. I mean there is literally only a handful of T20 schools that even offer merit aid, and they had multiple acceptances with big scholarships and no interview, that is impressive.

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I think the very few T 20 schools that offer full tuition or other large merit awards do require an interview.

Getting larger merit awards at other schools does not necessarily mean an interview will be required.

This poster wants only T20 schools with merit…and that is tough.

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Be careful when you look at merit award totals on common data sets. National Merit Scholarships are part of that number. That’s why Vanderbilt’s number of kids receiving merit money looks like more kids get substantial awards. Many of those kids are just getting the $5000/year NMF.

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We targeted T20 competitive merit for my white suburban 4.0 35 ACT kid. A talented kid, but not a Nobel prize winner or Facebook founder.

We didn’t bother chasing the uber-ultra-competitive full rides like UNC/Morehead, UVA/Jefferson or Duke/Robertson. Too much work and powerball odds. Instead, we targeted the slightly less competitive (but still non-auto very very competitive) schollies at Vandy, ND, Rice, Emory, Tulane. Those were a mix of half tuition to full-tuition awards.

Got accepted at all those schools. Got no comp merit traction at all at ND, Rice, Emory or Tulane. Did get a nice half tuition auto merit award from Tulane. But hit the bulls-eye at Vandy – full tuition Chancellor Schollie. That schollie has a community service focus, and my kid had that going on in spades.

No interview required for Vandy, but separate application and essays were required. It was pretty much work to chase all those possible schollies. Several other T20 merit schollies did require interviews/visits in addition to the separate app/essays.

Among the T20, Vandy probably does the most big merit, in terms of number of awards (maybe 150 a year) and size of award (full tuition). ND, as a comparison, does less than 100 and the top award is $25k – less than half tuition. Next after Vandy are probably WUSTL and Emory. And then Tulane (although T40 rather than T20).

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Rice doesn’t require any app, essay or interview for their Trustee Distinguished Scholarships. They usually offer it to “students who stand out even among Rice’s distinguished community”, some say a code word for HYPSM admits.

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To answer the original question…My child is an Asian American student and was awarded a Robertson Scholarship to Duke. What made him stand out was his leadership record (ASB president, founder of non-profit, etc.), strong letters of recommendation from his teachers, and his interview. He was also accepted to Yale and Stanford.

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The comments about Merit Aid only going to those students with Financial Need is Completely Inaccurate. I am Director of Selection for a merit scholarship at a T20 school and our Merit Scholarship does not look at Financial Need at all… we have students with family incomes over $500,000, some with incomes under 40,000 and everything in between.

If a merit scholarship does not require you to fill out a FAFSA (examples include The Robertson and The Morehead-Cain and The Park) then financial need is not part of the decision making process.

It is completely inappropriate to make definitive statements that are downright false.

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I am not sure where you come by the information that it is fairly rare for a family with an income of over $300,000 to receive a merit award at Duke. That is completely inaccurate with regards to the Robertson. Duke has a variety of merit awards. Some, like the University Scholars do look at need, others definitely do not. When a scholarship does not require you to fill out a FAFSA (like Robertson) they do not consider financial need in any part of their decision making process.

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There are always a number of those with remarkable resumes and are shoo-ins at state flagships with full ride or close to it. When those very students also are good candidates for HPY but would have to pay full freight, it comes down to a question of whether $80k/year, $320k+ over 4 years is worth the investment or even affordable under advisement from financial planners.

But, maybe half that, or a full tuition scholarship/full ride to Duke, JHU, UCHicago, Vanderbilt, Rice, can be managed financially, and maybe those schools are a much better fit than the great state schools like UCLA,UCBerkeley, UVA, UMichigan, UT-Austin, UNC-CH, Georgia Tech for the student.

That’s what often get parents and students alike , miserably , ( Maybe happily?) contemplating, brooding, planning, plotting, obsessing even, on how to get those big fat awards when even admittance to those schools are so highly competitive.

My view on that, is to give it a whirl. But those lottery tickets. Its a luxury and a privilege to have a flagship state u as a safety, affordable and a sure thing. Even more of a great privilege to be ineligible for financial aid due to high income/assets. And to be or have a student in the running for these highly selective schools and awards Is a reward in itself, and a blessing besides that. These are issues that most of the world would love to have among their their biggest problems.

As to how to maximize those measly chances of getting one of those big awards, doubling or even quadrupling them still doesn’t give you more than a minuscule chance.

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Read through some of these kids’ biographies. I think these are the sorts of extraordinary accomplishments you need to get a full ride at a T20 if you are an middle- to upper-income Asian American student:

https://www.davidsongifted.org/Fellows-Scholarship/2019-Fellows

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Two middle class white kids received full tuition scholarships to U Chicago in my kid’s graduating class (last year two kids also got scholarships to U of C, but they were URMs).

At least one had a perfect 4.0 GPA, excellent standardized scores, sports (not recruited), social action, etc. I do not know anything about the other one (the first was D19’s friend).

@dropbox77177 Not entirely. While there are few merit scholarships out there for the most popular colleges, there are far more of them than there are kids like those. Most (or all) of those kids were also Davidson Young Scholars, and are at the top of that small group. Since DYS are all in the top 0.1% in academic ability, only a couple thousand even qualify. These kids are in the top 1% of that group, so there are not all that many of them.

Also, this group of kids is highly skewed towards STEM, and kids whose interests lie in the direction of humanities or social sciences usually have fewer awards and academic achievements, since there are far fewer national competitions that focus on humanities, and even fewer awards. So humanities kids who get scholarships likely look different from this set of kids.