Top colleges that offer some scholarships/aid?

College Search & Selection
1

I am a little uninformed about the general financial aspect of college. My family is in the upper middle class, but it is not like we can afford sending me to, for example, Duke, if we have to pay the full cost (65,000-70,000 ish?). As a member of the upper middle class, is it impossible for me to get financial aid? Also, how does getting scholarships work? Do I have to apply for them? When is the deadline to apply?

On a similar note, since I am so uninformed on the financial side of college, can you guys suggest some places for me to apply to where I might be able to get some scholarships? I don’t mean to sound like I am bragging at all, but as a pretty qualified applicant (~3.98 UW GPA, 4.4 W GPA, 36 ACT, prospective National Merit Scholar, decent ECs), is it realistic for me to get scholarships to schools at the level of Rice, Duke, Brown when I live in CA? I know there are a lot of questions, but help me out if you can please!

Thanks

2

You probably won’t get need based aid. Each college has a net price calculator (NPC) linked to from their college website (usually on the financial aid or “Affording” web page). Try that with info your parents can provide, and it will tell you what you likely would have to pay.

The schools you are looking at give few or no merit scholarships, and they are wildly competitive. You can certainly apply to them, but I would pay more attention to schools where you are likely to get merit and your in-state public schools.

Most colleges don’t have separate applications for merit – they offer it to the students they most want to have accept their offers of admission. But they may have specific deadlines (apps received by a certain date to be considered), so you have to look at their websites. Dec 1 or Dec 15 are common dates, but each school is different. So you have to research this on each college website.

How much can your family pay? It is pretty common for someone with stats like yours to get scholarships for $15,000-$20,000 per year from schools that are a bit lower in the rankings (say, start around #20-25 on the LAC list and work down from there). But that just brings the cost down to, say, $40-45K/year. MIght not be enough. So figure out your budget, and let us know what major(s) you might be interested in, and we can maybe provide more suggestions. I think you can get INTO a lot of places with your stats. But you need to be strategic to find places where they will make it affordable for you to attend.

3

You are in CA, so be very thankful that you have the chance to go to Berkeley or UCLA at in-state rates (about $30K pa). Hard to find a better deal than the UCs unless you choose a less prestigious university or are incredibly lucky with one of the handful of ultra-competitive scholarships at a few places like UVA, Duke or USC. Most high ranking private universities (like Rice) won’t give you enough merit aid to make the cost competitive with the UCs, you’d be looking at $45K-$50K per year at best. And forget about Ivies, Georgetown, top LACs etc. which only have need-based aid.

Now if you can’t afford $30K pa and need a full tuition scholarship, that’s a different matter. It is certainly doable, especially as a NMF. There’s a reason Alabama gets mentioned a lot on this site.

4

I agree, based only on the information given so far, that one of the UCs (at in state rates) may give you the best balance of quality and affordability. However, we’re missing some information, such as:

  1. What do you mean by "upper middle class" ? The Ivies and other "full need" private schools award need-based aid to some families earning over $200K/year. You and your parents need to run the online net price calculators on any of these schools that interest you, and discuss whether they are able and willing to cover the Expected Family Contributions. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-21/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need https://professionals.collegeboard.org/higher-ed/financial-aid/netprice/participating-schools
  2. What kinds of colleges and majors appeal to you? If you want a large research university with strong engineering programs, then an in-state public university may be among your best options. If you want small classes and a humanities major in a different state, then it might make sense to consider some LACs and small universities that offer competitive merit scholarships. Check the Kiplinger "best value" lists for colleges that seem to offer a large number of merit awards in adequate amounts. Depending on your situation, these schools may or may not offer lower net prices than what you'd get from need based aid (https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=lib_arts)

If your parents haven’t saved much for college and are unable/unwilling to spend enough out of pocket, then you may not be able to afford any of these colleges (based on in-state sticker, need based aid, or competitive merit). In that case, look at schools that offer big merit scholarships (full tuition/full ride) automatically for qualifying stats. (http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/)

Once you have a strategy and build an application list, then the process of applying for financial aid usually involves filing the FAFSA, which many colleges use to determine eligibility. For some scholarships at some schools, or for some family situations, the college websites may indicate a need for additional paperwork. (https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa)

5

Everyone has a different idea of what “upper middle class” is. There are schools that give financial aid/merit to households in six figures plus. There are many facets to the finaid process, each school being different but # of household members, how many in college, home equity, savings…all those things figure in. Run the NPC on a few schools and see what happens.

6

Let’s say “upper middle class” and “six figures plus” means $140K/year income, with $140K in home equity and $70K in cash savings. For Cornell University, that could qualify for nearly $39K/year in need-based aid, resulting in a net price of about $35K. After subtracting “self help” (from student loans and employment), you’re close to the UCLA/Berkeley sticker prices. YMMV (because many factors matter).

7

Forbes has a pretty good article in 2017 by Troy Onink that gives an overview of how colleges determine what they think you can pay, the financial aid process, different calculation methods of FAFSA and the CSS which many privates require. Some of the details have changed, but the general overview is very informative.

8

Remember to run the ‘net price calculator’ aka NPC on each school’s website. That will tell you if your price for the school will be affordable for your circumstances.

9

The NPC generates a bunch of numbers, including a net price. It can’t tell you whether that number is affordable for your family. For that, your parent(s) may need to look hard at their own numbers and discuss what is realistic.

If the OP (or a parent) has accurate income/asset information, then to get the ball rolling, it might be helpful to run the NPCs on several different kinds of colleges, such as:

  1. One or two of the UCs (or other in-state public schools)
  2. Several colleges that claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need, e.g. Duke (https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-21/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need)
  3. Several colleges that offer competitive merit scholarships, e.g. Tulane (http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/)
  4. At least one college that offers large automatic merit scholarships for qualifying stats (UAlabama-Tuscaloosa)

For each level of the reach-match-safety stack, one of these 4 types is likely to offer the best balance of quality/price for a strong, “upper middle class” student. Some NPCs may not show the full range of merit scholarship possibilities; for that, you may need to do a little more digging. In general, though, the most selective “full need” schools either don’t offer merit awards, or the competition for them is very high.

10

“Let’s say “upper middle class” and “six figures plus” means $140K/year income, with $140K in home equity and $70K in cash savings.”

In what part of California would this be considered upper middle class? Certainly not within 50 miles of the coast anywhere between SF and San Diego.

11

“Is it realistic for me to get scholarships to schools at the level of Rice, Duke, Brown when I live in CA?”

I would be surprised if you can get these schools down to the cost of your in-state public universities. However, you should run the NPC and see what it says. At least for us the NPC was very accurate. If parents are divorced or you own a farm, small business, or rental property it may be less accurate.

Also, for us the difference between the base price at different universities was much larger than the size of scholarship that was available (either in terms of what the NPC showed, or what actually showed up in offer letters). For example, for us McGill would have been well under $20k per year (we have dual citizenship), whereas Northeastern and BU would have been full pay (currently around $70k per year). The NPC for Bowdoin similarly showed us as full pay. We did not see anything even close to a $50k scholarship anywhere.

To me your stats look good for UCB or UCLA, and even without these you still have great in-state options. For what I majored in UCB has a better program and is higher ranked than any of “Rice, Duke, Brown”. There are many, many students around the USA and around the world for which the in-state California universities are a very high dream.

12

^ Maybe not, but for purposes of this thread, what matters is what the OP means by “upper middle class”.
Apparently his family income isn’t so high that college costs aren’t an issue.
Nor is it high enough to make him certain he won’t qualify for financial aid.

Some perspective:
The median family income of Stanford University students is $167,500;
at Caltech, it’s $146,300;
at Harvey Mudd, it’s $145,400;
at UCLA, it’s $104,900.
The national median family income is a little less than $60K.

13

Median household income in Los Angeles is about $52k. Is an income about 2.7 times the median not “upper middle class”?

However, many self described “upper middle class” people have much higher incomes than that.

14

I think, for the purposes of this thread, we can consider “upper middle class” to mean “let’s just postulate merit aid only.”

Rice does give some merit aid; Duke and Brown do not. For schools like Rice, merit offers are discretionary, so you can’t know how much they may or may not offer you until you get your admissions decision. (But you can know which schools definitely do NOT offer merit, such as all the Ivies, Duke, Stanford, Pomona, and many other elite schools.) Vanderbilt and WashU are others in Rice’s tier that are relatively generous with merit. UChicago gives some merit too, as does Claremont McKenna.

There are automatic-merit schools where you could attend essentially free with your stats. That 36 ACT and 4.0+ GPA will get you a full ride offer from U of Alabama, and a great Honors College education with a majority out-of-state student population, many of whom would be there for the “big merit” just like you. It’s something to think about. UA has gotten a lot less generous with merit now that their Honors College is well-established as a magnet for high-stats OOS students; but they still give the full-ride deal for a 36/1600.

USC and Northeastern are particularly generous with NMF. Most other schools at this level of competitiveness just boost the merit aid you would otherwise have gotten by a few thousand dollars for NMF.

A number of the women’s colleges, if you’re female, give good merit scholarships (not Barnard or Wellesley, but Scripps, Smith, Bryn Mawr and especially Mt. Holyoke). Other top-tier schools that give good merit include Case Western Reserve U, U of Rochester, U of Richmond, and Tulane. Excellent publics with good merit scholarships include Pitt and Michigan State. Also some of the more competitive OOS universities in the WUE program would be extremely affordable for you, between the WUE discount and the additional merit you would receive. (U of Utah, U of NM, UNLV/UNR, Washington State, Colorado State.)

If you go down a level of competitiveness from the above, then you can get even bigger merit awards from many schools. But my guess from your post is that your baseline is UC, probably with Regents, and that you’re mainly interested in schools of UC-level competitiveness and above. So hopefully the above addresses what you were asking.

15

Research all of the schools you are interested in online to see what each school does for merit aid. Rice meets full financial need and automatically considers every applicant for merit aid. There is no separate application at Rice for merit awards. However, Rice gives out relatively few merit scholarships. Each school is different. For those schools that give merit aid, some schools have separate applications for merit scholarships requiring additional essays etc. and some even have earlier application deadlines for students seeking merit. My daughter made a spread sheet with the deadlines and merit award requirements for each school she was applying to so she did not miss any requirements. Google the Common Data Set of each school to find out how many merit scholarships are awarded.

16

Duke does have merit scholarships:
https://financialaid.duke.edu/undergraduate-applicants/other-sources-aid#merit

17

Huh, okay, I stand corrected. Brown does not. :slight_smile:

18

If you are full pay and looking for merit it is helpful to look at the common data sets. From there, you can determine how may students that didn’t qualify for financial aid got some merit aid. If you take item H2a and subtract H2c, you get the number of enrolled freshmen that didn’t qualify for financial aid. Item H2n shows the number of them that get aid. For example WashU numbers are 1,771 - 722 = 1,049 students that don’t qualify for aid. 175 (17%) of them got some aid. The average aid received by the 175 was $11,182. @aquapt 17% @ $11,182 may be generous compared to 0% $0, but making a serious dent in a $70+ COA is still a long shot.

19

With your stats I’d try for some of the full scholarships at places like U Rochester, Wake Forest, U Miami, Vanderbilt, or Pittsburgh. Nothing is guaranteed, but you won’t get them if you don’t try. Obviously, make sure you like the schools first.

20

Hi everyone, thanks for all of the responses.

@intparent You mentioned that I could start looking at #20-25 on the LAC list to find some schools that would give me a decent deal, but how about national universities? I am not really looking to go to a LAC as I’m not crazy about the way LACs are focused. Also, to give a bit more context, I am interested in Biochemistry. Now, my parents say that if I get into one of my high reach schools (where I am unlikely to get merit aid), they will try to make it work in terms of the financial aspect, but I do not want to force their hand so I am looking for quality schools where the cost is not exorbitant.

@tk21769 You asked what is the upper middle class. My parents make about $300,000 maybe a tad bit more. Perhaps saying I am in the upper middle class was an understatement, but now that you know my approximate family income, does that change anything?

@Houston1021 Do you still have access to that spreadsheet your daughter made? Is it relatively up to date? If yes, would you mind sending that to me? Thanks in advance.

Lastly, I am not expecting elite private universities to go down to the price of my in state public universities. My family CAN afford paying around ($45,000), but it is just that >$65,000 is getting a bit pricey.