<p>Curmudgeon, thanks for correcting me. When I said "full ride" at USC, I guess I meant tuition-only for 4 years. Kelsmom, don't worry about high rent at USC. If you have demonstrated need, financial aid will kick in to pick up the difference. </p>
<p>I just checked USC's website, and students in the 2006 entering class received 101 full-tuition merit scholarships, 361 half-tuition, and 77 quarter-tuition scholarships. These awards are based on grades, test scores and leadership only, not financial need. There are also other merit scholarships offered, so approximately 22% of the 2006 entering class had a merit scholarship! While USC does not "hide" the fact that they offer these merit scholarships, I think many students (and parents) do not realize how many are awarded. Applicant beware--the scholarship deadline (Dec.) is earlier than the regular deadline, so be sure to have everything ready on time!</p>
<p>What I have found is that some people refer to their financial aid as a "full ride". I have had people with 0 efc's tell me they got a full ride at schools with no merit scholarships; also people with much larger efcs who get institutional grants that amount to a full ride. Well funded universities have money they can use however they want to get a kid they want to come.</p>
<p>USC, for example, has very generous funding sources. Last year the editor of our school paper, who had won numerous journalism awards, interviewed for but did not get the full tuition merit award at USC but the university made up the difference in grant money and the student was able to go there with that.</p>
<p>Two very good schools that provide either a full ride or very close to it are WashU and Emory. At Emory some of the Emory Scholar awards cover all costs. At WashU several merit awards (Ervin - Rodriguez) are full tuition plus $2,500 annual stipend. They also award additional scholarship money from general scholarship funds (Elliot & others) reducing annual cost to $3,000 to $4,000 or less per year. These awards are very competetive, but they are available.</p>
<p>As Cur mentioned before some top awaeds are not on college web pages. An example of this is the Danforth at WashU (full tuition) - students must be nominated by their school for this award.</p>
<p>What I hear about WashU is there are not very many of these full ride scholarships, so don't get your hopes up.</p>
<p>Similarly, at Carnegie Mellon they offer a few really good merit scholarships, but they are EXTREMELY competitive. My S1 applied there and got in but didn't get any money which surprised us. He had great stats, scores, ECs, other awards, etc. so you never know. One thing he hadn't done was travel to Thailand to found an orphanage--or discover a cure for cancer! oh well.</p>
<p>mommusic
I guess it all depends on what you mean by many. For the freshman class there are approximately 30 to 40 full tuition and over 100 half scholarships awarded. Yes, they are competetive - but they are available. This is from personal experience. Also, the nice thing about many of the WashU Scholars programs is that the awards are for 4 years and do not require a minimum gpa (just must be passing). So, I don't know what you hear or who you hear it from - but I speak from personal experience.</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me if they have had success negotiating merit money from a school which previously offered none? My daughter has been accepted at four private colleges. Two have offered between 7 and 11.5 thousand per year but none was offered from her first choice school. I was thinking of calling their Admissions Dept. and pleading her case. Does anyone have any ideas?</p>
<p>My S received EA w/o any mention of merit $$ recently. However, he did get a letter indicating estimated need based $$. HE called the person in admissions who had sent him the "congrats" letter to tell her that he was coming to visit on a certain weekend in Feb. Admissions told him not to come that weekend and that there was a weekend in March for potential merit scholarship students (letters to that effect had not yet been mailed) and that the school would like him to attend then and would pay for his airplane ticket. </p>
<p>In the meantime, he heard EA from another school. No merit letter, but he got a letter from the head of the department that he had listed as one in which he has an interest. Some schools have $$ in their departments, if they want the student. S is calling him next week.</p>
<p>FYI, some threads have mentioned that schools sometime identify applicants that they think are using them for "safe" schools and tend to not offer merit $$, unless the student makes contact to indicate that they really are considering attending if the merit $$ is sufficient. It is worth the effort to contact them. Any one had similar experiences?</p>
<p>It is worth the effort to contact them. Any one had similar experiences?</p>
<p>Yes. It is worth the effort. If you are a high stats kid for them and if they sense yiur excitement in attending you will get their best efforts. The merit schools that were lowest on my D's internal ranking also tended to be the schools where she did the worst merit-wise. Gee. Imagine that. Guess she shouldn't play a lot of poker.</p>
<p>IOW, it wasn't that the highest ranked schools were the tightest with the $. It was schools in which she was the least interested.</p>
<p>I know one 0 EFC student - a number of years ago - who was offered "full ride" FA from U Rochester and Bucknell. Had an amazingly great time as a bio major, then same from Rutgers for PhD. So while a free ride on merit may not exist Bucknell did come through with wonderful support for a special, brilliant student from a very poor family.</p>
<p>There is also the issue of using special non-academic talents/skills to get MERIT scholarship $$. </p>
<p>My S has gone to the websites of the various schools he is interested in attending. Under the listed sports for a school, he has found where it lists track and cross-country. These websites ask for the events the student has run in HS and his times. He has filled them out and emailed them to the school.</p>
<p>One school has only Division III involvement in track and CC. That means they do not give any atheletic scholarships for those sports. BUT, my S's times in HS are better than their top runners (S's times are NOT competitive with Division I & II (i.e. atheletic scholarship) times). To no surprise, my S immediately began getting phone calls from the coach. I kid you not, the coach called w/in 30 minutes of the first email and called S throughout the month between Thanksgiving and post X-mas when EA was announced. The coach called S within 1 hour after the telephonic notice of EA from the admissions depatment. </p>
<p>I imagine the coach passes on to the admissions/scholarship people that S would like to attend, but needs merit$$ and mentions that in addition to being a student that the academic side really wants, the track and CC teams would benefit.</p>
<p>In adddition to contacting admissions and department heads, trying to market special skills to get Merit $$ ( or more MERIT $$) is worth a try.</p>
<p>This is still a work in progress. The merit scholarship campus event is not until March. I'm not sure that we will ever know if there is more Merit $$ offered due to these contacts. However, the CollegeConfidentail thread for this school reflects that the particular private university is VERY tight with merit$$. </p>
<p>I was trying to suggest ways to approach getting any Merit$$, or more Merit$$, that did not merely entail using an amount one school offered to try to get another school to "up" their offer.</p>
<p>I had a similar experience with my son at a DIII school. When I told the coach about the amounts of merit money mon S had been offered at another school. the coach told me that he had a close relationship with the person who did both admissions and financial aid. In addition, I know for sure that at least one other DIII basketball program cheats outright.</p>
<p>Not that neither of the schools to which I am referring is an elite academic institution.</p>
<p>I haven't seen Tulane listed. My S., a Junior, has a full 4 yr. tuition scholarship there (doesn't cover room and board). My D was recently accepted with a half tuition scholarship. She is waiting to hear from other schools and is hoping for good merit aid.</p>
<p>There are separate threads also for full ride & substantial merit scholarships for NMFs, but this is a very helpful thread. Thanks for posting it.</p>
<p>One thing to also keep in mind is the conditions for keeping the merit aid, whether there's any "grade period" for the student if s/he has grade trouble for a term or two, what GPA is needed & how many credits/term must be taken. Also important to note whether a change in field/major will affect the scholarship. Some schools are much more forthcoming about how many students retain their merit aid for each year of all 4 years while others claim not to keep track of the info. The info is illuminating--I would want to know ahead of time before accepting whether most or very few kids keep their scholarships at the particular school, especially if the family could not afford to otherwise allow the student to continue at the U.</p>
<p>St. Louis University offers 30 Presidential scholarships each year which cover full tuition. My DD has one. It also covered her tuition while she studied abroad for a semester. She also received money to study in a summer program overseas. She received $1200 towards her class at LSE. It didn't cover all of it, but it helped.</p>
<p>calmom & mardsen, I am behind in reading the posts on this thread. My comment about my son & Scripps was actually a joke (had to do with it being a pipe dream ... don't ask! ... not too funny ... but I had just finished substitute teaching a bunch of 9th graders, so forgive me).</p>
<p>calmom, I would never put pressure on my freshman for full rides. I do hope his hard work will pay off that way, though. Given the amount of time we wasted looking at schools with D before we realized that some were out of the question ... I figure it's good to get a nice group of schools for S to begin with down the road. I am well-versed in the whole need-based aid thing (having worked in F.A. many moons ago), but I am only now learning the ins & outs of merit aid. As I read & file info away, it will be a big help once S figures out what he might want to do. I can give him some places to begin looking, which is more than his sister had. It was a bit overwhelming for her, and she was interested. S will be more laid-back, so offering him some options to start with sounds like a good plan.</p>
<p>Thank you,
I am hoping its not too late probably for U of Kentucky.(Pre-Pharmacy/Pharmacy sometimes have earlier cut-off esp. for scholarships). I read your post and as in incoming freshman, this too was the most important factor for my family- costs. I read the other posts here and can't believe the arrogance (and ignorance) of some posters. I too was looking at going to a tier 1 school or private school, and got some acceptances but, the problem is I want to go
into a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy program. Locally I have 3 choices, the top rated U of M, (but your chances of getting in after your undergrad is limited to 65 seats). Ferris State and Wayne State are the only others. Wayne is inner-city Detroit and Ferris is a rural state college, both have almost open enrollment and not very selective. I am a 3.9 and 29ACT student
with all AP classes, lots of strong EC's. Yeah, these schools might not always be the most challenging but I believe my curriculum will be just as challenging as most and honors programs are available and I have been accepted to some already, but once I start the remaining 4 years after pre-pharm does it matter that much if I went to a $40,000 per year tier 1 or a $ 17,000 - 25K (incl.r&b) per year tier 2/3 with a decent professional school of pharmacy. I would like to go to Purdue or Butler but out-of state is $$$. But here in Michigan, my father fell victim to the economy and our family is struggling to keep our heads above water. My Dad who has a BS degree and some post grad degree is doing any type of temporary manual labor he can find. We may move but instate may make difference and nobody is selling houses without a big loss here and the econ here doesn't look to get better soon.
With an EFC of about $1,000. Does not leave a lot of options, most schools have given me some merit $ but 60% or more is in loans. When your family goes from $ 60,000 to $26,000 this becomes overbearing. My parents want the best for me but I do not expect them to "sell the farm" for me.
SO I am looking to need-based colleges that you and other kind members on this forum told me to look into, like UNC, has a Carolina Coventry if your family's income is less than 200% the poverty level. I thought your approach was very well executed and you have the results that worked for you and your children ( this could be true, even from an ROI standpoint). That's what we're doing, being realistic and optimistic by taking the top 20 best values for us, then looking to get into one of the top three that I liked from visits and stays. Believe it or not I liked some of these "lower" colleges better than U of M. But if Uof M gave me a free ride or a decent fin aid package (which they don't -my cousin was 4.0 Val/ACT 32 and got zip but still attended), I would probably go. Everyone is different.</p>