<p>My dad’s not happy with the school I picked out as my big financial safety, so can you help me find another school that would give me good or great merit aid, close/up to a full ride? I’m not getting anything need-based.</p>
<p>1500/2290 SAT single-sitting, 1550/2350 superscore. For SAT IIs, 800s on Bio-E and World, 780 on Math II. 231 on the PSAT (NMSF, will be finalist if nobody screws up the paperwork).
GPA from freshman to junior year is 3.90 UW, 4.14 W (with strong upward trend- 3.83 | 4.00 | 4.57). First semester of senior year should bring the UW down a little and the W up assuming that the county’s ridiculous new grading system doesn’t mess it up (big assumption).
Live in Maryland, go to the only good (public) school in the county. Science and technology magnet program, but I’m a humanities person. No idea what my class rank is thanks to lousy counselors, but at least top 10% of 620. Reasonably strong extracurriculars, with one leadership position, within which I demonstrated I was really dedicated.</p>
<p>I want to major in English (writing English) and/or history, but I want some elbow room to look around and maybe double-major in biology or computer science. Creative writing majors/minors are an epic plus. I really want a university that’s fairly evenly balanced between the sciences and the humanities- it can swing some one way or the other (preferably against sciences), but it does need to be good at both. I don’t want any schools with a big core curriculum or that are known for inflexibility.</p>
<p>Anywhere from 4,000 - 25,000 students. West, Southwest, Northeast, plus Mid-Atlantic and Midwest if you must. (I want to be far away from home.) Please exclude the South and Texas. No single-sex. Cannot be conservative or religious. It’s fine if it’s not well-known outside of its region, as long as it has a good reputation within that region. Vastly prefer private over public. (And I've already seen the list of NMF scholarships, before somebody posts it.)</p>
<p>Bard is offering big scholarships for students with a demonstrated interest in the sciences (they are trying to build up their science department) and I believe they also have another scholarship for public school students in the top 10%. It might be a little small for you, but definitely not conservative. You could easily double major in biology and writing. They’d love that.</p>
<p>Your qualifications are strong enough that you might have a shot at large merit scholarships available at a small number of selective universities. But the ones I know about (which go up to full tuition at least) are at Chicago, Duke, and Hopkins. One or another of your qualifications rules out each of these schools. If you can convince yourself that Duke is a colony of New Jersey, or that JHU is actually quite far from home … in traffic, then one of those might work. But then again, they’d be longshots. In other respects, Hopkins seems to fit your criteria very well.</p>
<p>I often recommend midwestern LACs, especially to good students in your fincancial situation (not eligible for need-based, struggling to cover full COA). They tend to be about $5K-$10K cheaper than their NE peers, and unlike them, usually offer merit scholarships. Grinnell is one of the best. It is smaller than your ideal but with a good humanities-science balance and excellent facilities. I’m guessing you’d get significantly more than the average merit grant, but not full tuition.<br>
[Creative</a> Writing - English | Grinnell College](<a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/english/creative]Creative”>http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/english/creative)</p>
<p>Of course, to have a good shot at the elusive “full ride”, you need to look at much less selective schools. State schools in the deep south are mentioned often on CC for guaranteed merit aid.</p>
<p>I mean, I guess it was… but, hey, America used to be a colony of Britain. Duke >>> NJ in my book :p</p>
<p>I’m actually already applying to Duke and maybe Chicago. (I would have put in NC as an exception to the South, because I have family there, except that that family already went over pretty much every college in the state with me. I know what I’m interested in there and what I’m not, so it wasn’t terribly relevant to this thread.)</p>
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<p>Well, if there’s one thing this area does well, it’s traffic… No, JHU is definitely too close.</p>
<p>I don’t mind much-less-selective schools, but I really don’t want any in the south.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input, both of you! I hadn’t considered Bard- do you know how good their writing is?</p>
<p>University of Richmond offers, I believe, full-ride scholarships to “Richmond Scholars”. The application is due Dec. 1. Don’t know if this is too far south or too conservative for you. It has become a popular school for kids in the northeast.</p>
<p>In addition to Chicago, Duke, and Hopkins, WUSTL is known for generous merit aid. WUSTL is also very flexible and accommodating for double majors/interdisciplinary study.</p>
<p>I would consider USC (the one in CA). It seems to fit your description and it would be a match, plus it’s known to award lots of merit money. USC also has the Renaissance Scholars prize for people who major/minor in very different subjects (not sure about the specifics of it, but creative writing + bio/CS would work). </p>
<p>UMiami also gives out good merit aid and sounds like it could fit as a higher safety. However, I don’t know how good either of these are for english writing.</p>
<p>Yep, I was going to mention WUSTL, too. I did not, because I get the impression they give merit to more students but in smaller amounts than Chicago, Duke, or Hopkins. I’m only basing that on the link to a CC post I provided above (showing the percentages receiving merit and the average amounts.) Perhaps some small percent of their grants are very large. But again, WUSTL has become one of the very most selective schools, so competition must be extreme.</p>
<p>I should have added Univ. of Rochester into my last post as well. USC, Miami, and Rochester are all pretty good well-rounded private schools that are easy to get automatic merit aid from. URochester also has a very flexible curriculum, which you might like.</p>
<p>I’m actually already applying to Rochester, but thanks for the suggestion. How do you know it’s easy to get automatic merit aid from them, though? There’s so little information about scholarships on their website…</p>
<p>Isn’t Miami a big party school?</p>
<p>As for USC, I dunno about them. Not sure I want to be in LA, not sure they’d be a good fit for me (geekier = better), so on and so forth… does anybody know anything on the feel of the school?</p>
<p>Honestly, though, I was mostly hoping for a lower-ranked school (lower-ranked than USC/Miami/Rochester, I mean) that would be very likely to shell out. It doesn’t have to be automatic- just probable.</p>
<p>Check out some of the older results threads on here, you can find out a lot about the scholarships schools offer from these, way more than what’s on the schools’ websites. Rochester has a history of being generous with merit and I and the people I know who applied there all got $ from them. </p>
<p>If you can compromise on the balanced but towards the humanities part try Case Western because it’s also known for scholarships. All of the schools I mentioned give a lot of merit aid, but not a full ride, which tends to be the case at most private schools.</p>
<p>You may also want to consider Oberlin even though it is slightly smaller than your targeted population range. It is strong in both English(Most popular major when I was there), history, and Biology and other science departments and gives generous merit aid from what I’ve heard.</p>
<p>On history, I can speak from firsthand experience as that was my major there. :)</p>
<p>@tk21769
I suspect you are correct. And of course, WUSTL also offers full rides for exceptionally qualified candidates at the higher end (though these are extremely competitive).</p>
<p>It’s a shame to eliminate all LAC’s based on size. One or two on the list might add variety and you can get great attention in creative writing from a top LAC. Amherst has the consortium, so you would have access to many more than 1800 students! It’s not a safety for anyone but would be slightly easier than Ivies.</p>
<p>Can I just say, I love this title?
From my personal knowledge and research, plus a 10-minute collegeboard/princetonreview search with your stats, I’ve come up with a few colleges for you to at least research a bit
Endicott College
Howard University
Marist College
Vassar College
Norwich University
Suffolk University
Westminister College</p>
<p>a few maybes might also be Point Park
^all of these are semi-cheap (hey, at least they aren’t $50,000+) or are widely-known to have really awesome financial aid and/or loads academic/merit/need-based/etc. scholarships. I saw you were already applying to Duke and Chicago. Hazah! (Remember, most of the colleges I meant above would be academic safeties for you as well, so don’t get offended or anything!) Also, you seem like you might be into a bit of the “hipper” colleges that are still pretty balanced, so at least give a look to Bard, Oberlin, Hampshire, Wesleyan, NYU, if you really want a good education with a few more hipsters on campus. Best of luck!</p>
<p>@jgraider: It’s making fun of pages that are commonly liked on Facebook. I think they started off as legitimate pages, but they turned into things like “that awkward moment when you walk into a closet and don’t end up in Narnia,” “that awkward moment when you take a potato chip and eat it,” “that awkward moment when you find out you’re the final Horcrux”… things like that.</p>
<p>It was kind of awkward, though, because I was talking to my dad, and he told me he didn’t like this school and he thought I could get a better education at the state flagship. I made this really horrible face when I realized I was going to have to apply to another college.</p>
<p>@viacollege: Thanks. My question is, though, why such the wide range in quality? I mean, Vassar and Howard, showing up in the same list? Kind of weird…</p>
<p>@Hitch123: I just don’t like having a really small student body. I want to go somewhere that’s at least bigger than my high school (~2800 people). It doesn’t really help that so many LACs have big core requirements or are in the middle of nowhere. The scant few that I might like aren’t safety schools at all, and I’ve already got more than enough other schools that would be about as difficult (or easier, even) to get into, which I’m sure I would be happy at.</p>
<p>@cobrat: I visited Oberlin a while back, and even though it’s a lovely school, I don’t think it’s right for me.</p>
No, JHU is definitely too close.</p>
How do you know it’s easy to get automatic merit aid from them, though? There’s so little information about scholarships on their website…</p>
My question is, though, why such the wide range in quality? I mean, Vassar and Howard, showing up in the same list? Kind of weird…</p>