<p>jrpar, that's now checkmate. They got me. I don't have a clue how to reconcile all that. But, it's great for the student who knows about it, isn't it? That's what we are trying to do. Get the info, and some sort of systematic methodology, out there for the applicants. If you don't know the questions it's darn tough to find the answers. </p>
<p>Thank you, it'll mean a lot to some kid next year. If they are paying attention that is. ;)</p>
<p>I've got some stuff from Rhodes I want to throw out there. I know at least two folks that will be screaming "shill" (my kid is attending) and to a certain extent they are darn right ;), I shill for a lot of schools including Rhodes, Scripps, Colgate, Centre, UMiami, Millsaps, Furman etc, but THIS particular time I'm just using Rhodes because I have their website memorized. </p>
<p>Rhodes has a very generous merit program that is also quite extensive. 42% of the kids get an award of an average of over $10K at a direct COA school @ $37K. <a href="http://www.rhodes.edu/Admissions/Scholarships/index.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.rhodes.edu/Admissions/Scholarships/index.cfm</a></p>
<p>For the 2005-2006 academic year, Rhodes awarded entering students 202 competitive scholarships valued at $2,152,304.</p>
<p>But Rhodes and other schools have some "have to read twice" scholarships that are beyond cool. </p>
<p>15 Bonner Scholarships
$12,100 per year, in addition to any other Rhodes grants or scholarships awarded They are going to stack this scholarship (and give you much more, stipends, travel, paid summers) </p>
<p>Let's look at the Bonner Service Scholarship-</p>
<p>Look at that closely. </p>
<p>Have a family income (parents and student’s total income) of less than $85,000 per year or an Effective Family Contribution (EFC), as determined by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), of $7,500 or less.</p>
<p>Have an SAT-I composite score (Math and Critical Reading) of 1250 or higher or ACT composite score of 27 or higher.
Rank in the top 15% of high school class (if ranked, or the equivalent performance in schools that do not rank).</p>
<p>For 15 kids, you can get all your need grant and or general merit money and then this goes on top.
Look at the Bonner bene's:
<a href="http://www.rhodes.edu/Admissions/Scholarships/Bonner-Rhodes-Service-Scholarships.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.rhodes.edu/Admissions/Scholarships/Bonner-Rhodes-Service-Scholarships.cfm</a></p>
<p>Can you see what that does for a middle class kid ? And it only takes a 2.67 to renew.</p>
<p>You have to read everything you can on the website to find these jewels.</p>
<p>Another point that I made about checking past recipients and the Common Data Set.</p>
<p>Rhodes lists at least 23 academic scholarships to be awarded each year of $21K or more with a COA of @ $37K. . We needed about $21K. :eek: So, the entering class is over 460 kids so she needed to be in the top 5% of enrolling kids.</p>
<p>2005 Bellingrath Finalists (Top Scholarship) , the 21 kids had a 1511 average SAT according to the Rhodes website. (these were NOT enrolled kids, just best scholarship applicants.) D was over that. 17.5% of enrolled had an ACT Math between 30-36. 20% had an SAT above 700 V, and 17.4 had Math above 700. D had all of those +. In our minds that meant she was a merit match for an award of $21K or above and for the two highest awards she at least had a fair shot. The Morse at $28,500 is just academics and the Bellingrath is all encompassing with a big service element. That's the basic analysis we did at every merit school. We went on to look for places where she could bring geo diversity , gender diversity, rural diversity. </p>
<p>Folks, best as I can tell - this is the start of the leg work you have to do. Of course it all starts with "the kid wants to go there". At least it did at my house.;) I just drove the bus.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon,
I applaud your effort to try and make the whole "merit aid" process transparent. Colleges seem to be very forthcoming and straight about a lot of things, but when it comes to the question of merit aid, they can be pretty darn obtuse. The confusion about Bowdoin (see above threads) seems to be more the rule than the exception. IMO, it wouldn't be very difficult for colleges to be very crystal clear about what they offer in terms of merit aids.</p>
<p>justaparent, I would have to start diagramming sentences in that Bowdoin stuff to have chance to reconcile their words, and that would hurt. I think it will come down to some "define your terms" high school debate where "awards" are not merit aid, or endowed scholarships are not directly from the school or ...something like that.</p>
<p>I'm not going for transparency, I'm just hoping for vaguely understandable but I may be aiming too high.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I've been paddling about the college admissions & application pool for something like six years now and FinAid is the area I have the least understanding, least amount of knowledge about. It's tortuous and makes the admissions process per se seem totally transparent in comparison. There are rules. There are variants and alternatives. There are exceptions. There are exceptions to the exceptions. Etc.</p>
<p>College/Universities that offered Merit Aid (Grants) to our D2 this past spring were: {all $ are annual awards}</p>
<p>Illinois Wesleyan University ($7,500)</p>
<p>Randolph Macon Woman;s College (13,500)</p>
<p>Lawrence University ($6,000)</p>
<p>Earlham College ($7,000)</p>
<p>Beloit College ($9,500)</p>
<p>St Olaf College ($7,500)</p>
<p>All are LAC's with student populations ranging from 785 to 2200</p>
<p>Sometimes geographic diversity can be a big factor in merit scholarships. For example, one college to which my daughter applied had a few merit scholarships. My daughter has excellent stats, but she received a scholarship because she was from an underrepresented state. And looking through their board of trustees minutes (yep, sometimes you have to look deep on those websites), it is clear that they want to continue to encourage geographic diversity in their students. Research is a good thing!</p>
<p>Yes, FF. That is exactly what I'm talking about. We found a scholarship at Hobart and Wm. Smith that has a full ride + auto admit to med school limited to females and among others (URM etc)- RURAL . LOL. As the father of a ranch raised pre-med D, well - that one just about knocked me out of my chair. If interested check out the Blackstone Scholarship. There is some amazing stuff hidden in institutional scholarships.</p>
<p>There is also a very nice scholarship , sometimes given without need, to Hamilton College only open to residents of Texas and I think Oklahoma, South Carolina, and a couple of counties in New York. That's what D was shooting for when she got surprised by the Shambach and some serious preferential packaging of need aid.</p>
<p>If any of you are interested, harvey mudd gives an automatic $10,000/yr scholarship for having over certain SAT/SAT II scores.</p>
<p>Blackwell. Blackwell. Blackstone is a magician's name and a Law Dictionary. Sorry. The scholarship at H+WS is Blackwell - not Blackstone. Sheesh.</p>
<p>atomicfusion, can you tell us how the brand new scholarship works - Corporate Scholars I think (I could be wrong on the name, see Blackstone above. LOL.) ? My D was invited to apply. (She applied to your neighbor , Scripps, instead.) It looked VERY interesting/generous, especially for a school like HMC.</p>
<p>And the standards are pretty high on the auto schol , aren't they? If I remember right, all above 750? (Trying to do this from an ever fading memory. This could be embarrassing.)</p>
<p>I would like to thank all of you for the valuable info. presented here. There is not enough time in the day to find this kind of stuff on your own. I will share some of this info with my son as we continue to add and delete to his "wish list." Thanks again.</p>
<p>
You don't have to do it all on your own. We were guided by the smartest people I know. Right here on our little site. What they freely gave us without question has put my daughter in the great place she is now. I know several 2010 parents would agree with me. The way this works is we '10'ers took from them, you take from us, and when you learn - you give to the next set of folks. Deal?</p>
<p>Good luck and remember that this can be the best time you'll ever have with your kid. It was for me. We had a blast. I wish I could do it all over again. ;)</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I know you weren't asking ME, but as a Mudd student I can answer your question. To qualify for the automatic Harvey S. Mudd Merit Scholarship, you need at least 700 on SAT Writing and Verbal, at least 750 on SAT Math and SAT II Math 2C, and you need to be in the top 10% of your high school class.</p>
<p>The Corporate Scholars Program is a recent innovation. It is intended to promote and encourage applicants from traditionally underrepresented groups in math, science, and engineering to seriously consider HMC. However, anyone is eligible to apply. It is a four-year full tuition scholarship, and includes required participation in HMC Summer Institute, a two-week summer program for about 25 incoming freshmen, as well as internship opportunities. It is very competitive, and is given out to only about 10 or so students each year. The application process involves one extra recommendation and essay, and if you make the first cut, which about 70 or so students do, you get called for an interview in March. From there the final Corporate Scholars are selected.</p>
<p>tiyusufaly, that is great info. I really appreciate it. For those kids so inclined that Corporate Scholars is one of the finest offers around. That Harvey S. Mudd will go along way to making it more affordable for some kids. Do you know if there are any extra FA bene's that go with that ? Like different treatment in FA?</p>
<p>Well I can tell you what I got for fin aid from them. I ended up with the 10k scholarship, but then they were also very generous with grants and ended up giving me 22k of those. So that's 32k of free money, which was far better than what other schools like northwestern, cornell, and JHU offered me. The FA workers there are very understanding and they ended up reducing my EFC by a lot due to a special situation that I was in. Bottom line is I don't think they just said "hey, let's subtract his grant by 10k". I think they barely subtracted from the grant or didn't at all.</p>
<p>Yes, my friend AF - that is what I call preferential or what others call "merit within need" packaging (or I guess it could have just been a coincidental adjustment of your EFC ;)). . I'm so glad it worked out that way . What a great opportunity you have.</p>
<p>The more we publish this kind of info the more folks will understand a little more about the nuances of the system. Not that we can predict outcomes, just that at X school these rewarding ;) outcomes have happened within the need element of FA. Thanks for posting.</p>
<p>I would posit that this happens within need based aid to some extent at all schools for those students most favored by that school (those students most likely to help the school accomplish a mission goal or objective) . Yes, even the Ivy League, AWS and even at Stanford. JMO - but I bet I'm right.;).</p>
<p>This info is invaluable - major kudos and thank you's to Curmudgeon
and all the other CC'ers who are augmenting this wonderful effort.
You are THE BEST!</p>
<p>Curmudgeon puts it all out there so analytically well! We also employed "drive-in" and institutional research -- targeting schools where S was above 75 percentile for admissions profile, plus had something that the institution rewarded/wanted. Worked out very well, but not always as our logic might have predicted!</p>
<p>S ended up with George Washington Honor Scholarship at Washington and Lee (full tuition for 4 yrs)(his first choice - and ours too amazingly enough!). He was also a Jefferson Scholar Finalist at UVa, Vanderbilt Academic Achievement Scholarship ($7k per yr), but did not even make the scholarship finals at URichmond. So the fact that UR has more scholarship money and a lower admit profile, and declared an initiative to attract science students like my S, did not play out for us. Go figure? No harm, but the lesson is to keep enough schools in the pot and don't count on anything!</p>