<p>Hi parents,</p>
<p>How difficult is it to get (academic) merit scholarships from Vanderbilt, Rice or Northwestern …… ?</p>
<p>I have some regional awards and some unique EC’s but I do not have any national recognition such as USAMO, Intel and Siemens.</p>
<p>If your child received one, what was his/her hook (such as USAMO, Intel and Siemens)?
Or, was it purely based on stats?</p>
<p>Vanderbilt has a variety of merit awards. They have changed their program since my oldest applied and there were very few full rides based on merit only. I understand from older threads on this topic in the Vanderbilt forum that there are a number of 1/2 and 3/4 tuition awards though. To even be considered for a full ride, a student would need almost perfect standardized testing. For NM Finalists, Vanderbilt provides an award of $5000 per year (reduced by any amount that is received for a sponsored NMS award) which would make you a NMS even if you don’t receive a sponsored award. S was one of 11 people on his floor freshman year who were NMS and there were 2 students with perfect SATs among that bunch as well.</p>
<p>Son received a $20k merit scholarship from Rice three years ago. He did not apply, it simply came with the acceptance letter. He was not a NMS (although he was commended). Like you, he had no national awards, but some state ones. I strongly suspect that the award was stats driven. He also was accepted to Northwestern, but received no merit scholarship there.</p>
<p>Northwestern has very few merit aid. Will only give $2500 if you are a National Merit Scholarship Finalist.</p>
<p>I am under the impression that there are no merit awards at Northwestern that do not include a “need” factor other than a National Merit stipend.</p>
<p>There are three types of full-tuition merit awards at Vanderbilt. Please look at their web site for specifics about the different named awards. They are awarded independent of financial need.</p>
<p>[Merit</a> Scholarship Programs](<a href=“http://www.vanderbilt.edu/scholarships/]Merit”>Scholarships | Vanderbilt University)</p>
<p>All require strong academic records, but the Ingram and Chancellor’s are also looking for specific types of out-of-class activities and interests. The Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship is perhaps the most “strictly academic”, but even that one will not be awarded purely on the basis of test scores and grades.</p>
<p>The students I know who have CV or equivalent merit awards (the program was changed for those who are currently juniors; those who are now seniors have awards with a variety of names) have extremely strong h.s. records, but not necessarily national or international awards of the sort you are mentioning.</p>
<p>Also, the scholarships are distributed proportionately among the various undergraduate schools (CAS, VUSE, Blair and Peabody), and, as far as I know, the selection committees are still school-specific, which might mean the different schools will be looking for different things.</p>
<p>There are still some partial merit awards. In addition, National Merit Finalists receive 5K per year unless they have another merit award from Vanderbilt, in which case it is 2K per year. Still quite a deal.</p>
<p>The competition for these awards has become very strong.</p>
<p>EDIT: To address your specific question, what “hook” did my kid have, he didn’t have anything called a “hook” in cc-world. He had very high scores (SAT I, SAT II, AP record), high gpa, very rigorous course schedule, including advanced math at a uni. while in hs, regional awards and one national award, but not the ones you mentioned, a whole lot of ec’s targeted to his field, a lot of team-type competitions (not athletic), and a lot of leadership. He was a strong student across many fields, but his ec’s were concentrated mostly on things that would catch the attention of an engineering selection committee. (When he applied to Vanderbilt, the merit program had not yet been reorganized. At that time, final selections were made at the College level. I don’t know for sure that is still the case.)</p>
<p>double post. Having trouble with this site today</p>
<p>Does Northwestern give everyone 2500 for National Merit? Is it one time or each year?</p>