USNews Top 100 Liberal Arts College - Merit v. Need Only

<p>l_j, when you mean out of pocket do you mean out of pocket and then you also have loans and workstudy? Or do you mean total costs to your family of $5500 with no self help? In other words did they turn all your loans and W/S to grants?</p>

<p>Dragonmom - </p>

<p>The 05-06 data are only for entering students, while all the previous data is for all current undergraduates. </p>

<p>So, in 05-06, they had 177 NMF/~720 new students = 25%
While in 04-05, they had 529 NMF/~2850 current students = 19%
And in 03-04, there were 507 NMF/~2800 current students (student body is growing) = 18%</p>

<p>I think NMF remains important.</p>

<p>OT- jenn, Melbourne? in Austria? In the Alps? ;) However will you commute to class with Houston traffic?</p>

<p>"For us we calculated that as follows: find a school she'd like to attend
that offered sufficient merit to attend to X %-age of their kids, where
she was in the top X %."</p>

<p>Could somebody help me with how to apply this to our situation?
SAT: CR 790; Math 800; Writing 700
APs 5's on 3 APS in 11th grade</p>

<p>Rank: 80th percentile (1145 students)
GPA: 4.0 weighted, 3.45 unweighted</p>

<p>Do we determine fit into top x % based on test scores, rank, GPA or some combination? And if a combination, how would you compute it?</p>

<p>To state the obvious , you'll want a school that only/primarily considers SAT in their scholarship criteria but I have seen instances where a kid with a monster score , like that 1590, got more than the "chart" would have suggested. To answer the specific questions both rank and GPA are out of synch unless the high school is just super competitive and has grade deflation. Rank is less of a problem than the GPA IMO. By 80% do you mean specifically the 80th percentile, or the second decile?</p>

<p>Three Maine colleges, yay.</p>

<p>Curm:
How come I don't see Denison on this list anywhere, with an average of $12,000 merit aid awarded to 48% of first year students (52% of upperclassmen)?</p>

<p>**** Sorry - I just saw it on your list. It did not come up on the search, evidently because of the asterisk.****</p>

<p>Curmudgeon -</p>

<p>Study abroad is a wonderful thing. :)</p>

<p>Wow. Thanks Dragonmom for the Rice url. Notice the selectivity page for undergraduate admissions. Yield is way down to 33% after many years at around 40% including four years of 42%. Even though applications are almost at an all time high.</p>

<p>As for the NMF thing, with an ACT 35 and NMF you get zero scholarship money unless you count the $2000, but then they reduce your grant by $2000 so it's a wash. This is about Rice.</p>

<p>
[quote]
s for the NMF thing, with an ACT 35 and NMF you get zero scholarship money unless you count the $2000, but then they reduce your grant by $2000 so it's a wash. This is about Rice.

[/quote]
Mercymom: that case applies if you are a NMF with no merit aid other than Rice-sponsored NM scholarship AND you have need-based financial aid. Rice does also offer merit aid.</p>

<p>D was a NMF, 35 ACT, plus lots of other really good stuff and high GPA, etc, etc, outstanding letters of rec, etc, etc, and she got zero merit aid (other than possible $2,000 for NMF). Although I didn't realize it at the time, I think Rice was actually a "reach" for us in terms of merit aid. They were very nice about the need based aid, but the impression I got is that the scholarships are used to "tweak the profile".</p>

<p>This is certainly understandable with a school where the mid 50% range for ACT is 32-34, and therefore all the kids are really smart, and they also have an extremely high % of NMFs and vals, but the point is that with an entering class like that the "merit" scholarships are probably actually given to kids with particular attributes that are being targeted that year to fill gaps in the pie chart and whether you "qualify" is anyone's guess.</p>

<p>I realize now that we actually did conduct our search along the lines of Cur's safety-match-reach merit money strategy, although I didn't consciously call it that, and certainly didn't think it out as thouroughly as he did. D is going to a school she loves and will thrive at, and we are not compromising our retirement to do it.</p>

<p>"D is going to a school she loves and will thrive at, and we are not compromising our retirement to do it."</p>

<p>Amen to that win-win result! Avoiding the "there's only one place I could be happy" approach to college selection can certainly pay off, both financially and otherwise. But that can be a real challenge as kids see their friends headed down the "easier street" of early decision.</p>

<p>Curmudgeon,</p>

<p>I noticed that Beloit College is not on your original list, but from what I understand Beloit gives a substantial number of merit scholarships, many are 1/2 tuition. The Presidential Scholarship, which is currently $11,000, $12,500 or $14,000 per year, requires that the student have a completed application for admission filed by January 15 and participate in an on-campus interview.</p>

<p>To be eligible to interview for the Presidential Scholarship, the student must have the following:</p>

<ul>
<li>a 3.5 unweighted GPA (on a 4.0 scale) OR rank in the top 10% of the class</li>
<li>a composite ACT score of at least 27 OR a combined SAT I score of 1220 (critical reading/verbal & math sections).</li>
</ul>

<p>The award is renewable as long as the student maintains a 3.0 GPA.</p>

<p>The committee that conducts the interview (it only lasts a half-hour) includes faculty and current students.</p>

<p>D#2, who received a Presidential Scholarship and will be attending Beloit, had a wonderful time visiting the campus for the interview--she had an overnight stay in a dorm, attended an improv group performance, ate in the cafeteria, etc. One of the students told her that as far as she could tell, virtually everyone who interviews receives one of the scholarships. </p>

<p>What I appreciated, since D#2 had a 3.4 unweighted GPA, was that she still qualified based on being in the top 10% of her class. Her high school does not believe in grade inflation!</p>

<p>I also second the inclusion of The College of Wooster on your list--offered D#2 $14,000 per year, but Beloit's total package made it the least expensive of the LACs that admitted her and luckily was D#2's first choice.</p>

<p>Yes a tightrope indeed. I'm confused. How can you know where your S or D fits in, in comparison to the entire applicant pool? I mean to get merit you must be among the best of the best. But how can you know where a particular school draws the line? If you guess and guess wrong you've wasted an app. Also how do you know where you fit in as regards family income profile and how that profile will be interpreted by a particular school? A college may not share with the public a propensity to limit merit to merit "within need" for instance. That being the case families with relatively high EFC's may be out in the cold from the get-go. It seems you would have to have an inside track to know a particular schools tendencies or where your S or D might fall in an applicant pool that has thousands of kids in it. Must you rely on last years data and where is it published, as much about merit aid info seems vague. I mean most colleges don't come out and say we give 25 Presidential's 15 Leadership's 10 Medalist's etc., etc., Per capita merit can be very misleading as all the merit is divided amongst the entire student body whereas an elite select few may have recieved huge amounts and the vast majority, even with above average stats, little or nothing. What's the secret?</p>

<p>Samazon, no secret. Some info is better than none. Some schools DO give you numbers to work with. We tended towards the schools that we could identify something of a pattern. Those that were more transparent.</p>

<p>One thing before I answer the questions raised. There is no certainty in this process. No guarantees (except the automatic scholarships). I hope I have explained to everybody that we were searching for a school where we could pay our Fafsa EFC total including self help and student share. $16 K a year. So when we were looking we weren't only looking for full rides or even full-tuition, just schools where she stood a good chance of getting enough to attend. </p>

<p>How can you know where your S or D fits in, in comparison to the entire applicant pool?</p>

<p>You can check the school's freshmen profile or class profile. Or you can look it up on their Common Data Set. Or if speed is an issue you can look it up on Collegeboard or USNews.</p>

<p>Also how do you know where you fit in as regards family income profile and how that profile will be interpreted by a particular school? Some schools will post a scale that shows need aid applicants and % recieving aid and the amount of that aid, etc at the various income levels. Some of that data can also be found at the sources above. </p>

<p>Must you rely on last years data and where is it published,</p>

<p>Yes. We can't read what hasn't been written. There are however sometimes new initiatives that are posted on the website - somehow I missed Trinity College going Merit Aid by not actually checking every part of the website. Primarily I used the sources above, CC, and Google. </p>

<p>What's the secret? Hard work. Research. Open mind. </p>

<p>Good luck and happy hunting.</p>

<p>To this I would add: if a school looks like an excellent fit, apply anyway unless your are <em>absolutely sure to a moral certainty</em> that the school does not have some non-advertised source of aid that your student may qualify for. If accepted and then not sufficient aid, then strike it off your list. It's like playing poker where you can't see some of the hole cards...you don't know what they are unless you play the hand out.</p>

<p>Samazon,
It's not a wasted app. if your kid learned something from the experience, honed interview skills, had a chance to write another essay, and/or realized that a school was not for him or her because not given sufficient aid to attend. Curmudgeon and other posters' point is that you have to do some initial research, consider your family's and your child's needs and wants, and apply to a sufficient number of merit "safeties, reaches and matches" that your child will have real choices. </p>

<p>Our family had a very high EFC, but without some merit aid it would have been difficult to send both Ds to private LACs, which was what they both wanted. So even though D2 was interested in Sarah Lawrence, for example, when we learned there was virtually no merit aid, we crossed it off the list. For us, considering total cost in conjunction with the possibility of merit aid meant that East Coast schools ended up off the final list and Midwest and Pacific Northwest schools stayed on (D2 for inexplicable reasons would not consider any California schools).</p>

<p>I'll share our little story for Samazon. </p>

<p>When we started the college process with son #1 we were completely clueless. We started with a big fat college book and looked randomly at schools, in states we thought we could consider, that were "Highly Competitive" (not "Most Competitive") because that's where his stats were. We traveled around and looked at about 10 schools. We collected thousands of college brochures all over the house. Soon, my son refused to go on even one more college trip.</p>

<p>At some point a little light bulb went off in my head. How were we actually going to PAY for school? H and I sat down and crunched some numbers. We filled out the FAFSA calculator and saw that our EFC was a whopping $50,000 (when we actually filled it out it rose to $65,000). Our EFC was high because we have money saved for college - but not nearly enough to swing $45K/year for two kids. So then our concern was what happens after that money runs out? Our kid potentially has to transfer to a cheaper school? Take out loans? Spend down on our retirement/home equity/never go on a vacation again? It felt pretty risky.</p>

<p>From there we figured how much we could afford to spend per year in a fairly painful but not devastating manner, and, barring a catastophic event, with no loans.</p>

<p>Then we quickly added some schools that we thought son would qualify for merit money at (lower ranked schools than what he had been looking at). </p>

<p>I remember the day when we had 12 or 13 piles of applications/brochures on the kitchen table an it was time for my son to decide which 6 or 7 schools he would actually apply to.</p>

<p>We ended up taking off the table the schools that we knew for sure he wouldn't get money at! (Oberlin, Vassar, Colgate, Notre Dame, and maybe some more I can't remember.) </p>

<p>Of the 7 remaining, one was a state school we could easily pay for. Of the other 6 he got:
- waitlisted at one (no money obviously)
- no money at 2 of them (one of those was a big surprise, the other one wasn't because he hadn't written the extra essays)
- very little money at 1
- a more decent amount at 1 (but had to be renewed yearly based on what? we couldn't tell)
- a good scholarship at 1. </p>

<p>(He should have probably applied to more schools but was unwilling to fill out any more apps.)</p>

<p>Fortunately he really liked the school he got the good scholarship at!</p>

<p>Probably if we had started the search in a more organized way, and included even more merit money possibilities, he would have had more choices at the end - but it didn't really matter. It was, however, good that as he was opening his acceptance letters he knew CLEARLY what we were willing to pay.</p>

<p>At the time we investigated merit money using mostly college web sites or by gleaning information on CC or from our college visits. The guidance office was useless, as was the rumor mill around school. Some colleges are more forthright about their scholarships - they tend to be schools trying to raise their applicant pool. </p>

<p>So, I guess I'd suggest that first everyone fill out the EFC calculator. If you qualify for need-based aid it might change the process.</p>

<p>Then, look at your son's stats and where he fits in terms of selectivity (use a "big college book" perhaps) and then maybe lower it a notch. Narrow your list based on majors offered, size of school, geographical location (can you afford for him to fly home for breaks?), and whatever else your son feels is non-negotiable. Then subscribe to the US News web site and run a comparison of all those schools. Pay close attention to the financial aid/cost tab. They give merit aid information there. While you can't comprehend it completely, you can see obvious differences such as schools reporting offering 1% of their applicants merit money versus schools that offer 30% of their applicants money. Also use College Board for scoop.</p>

<p>For my next son it's been a little easier (I guess) for a number of reasons. I also feel a LOT less frantic about how "prestigious" a school he attends. I just don't care about it anymore. </p>

<p>Good luck. There are lots of great schools out there.</p>