What are some good schools with generous merit aid?

Paying for College
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“Rice University, a highly ranked private research university with 3,900 undergraduates in Houston, announced this week that it would offer free tuition scholarships to undergraduates whose families earn $130,000 or less. Students with family incomes of $65,000 or less will receive free tuition plus grants covering the full cost of room, board and fees. The plan will take effect in the fall of 2019.”

“Under Rice’s new plan, called The Rice Initiative, students with family incomes between $130,000 and $200,000 will receive scholarships covering at least half of their tuition. The new Rice grants are need-based. Families with large assets may not qualify.”

from https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2018/09/20/rice-university-will-offer-free-tuition-to-families-earning-less-than-130000/#3fa1155421ba

It is possible there may be some selective schools whose “need only” financial aid policies are so generous that you could pay much less than your EFC. Our EFC was just shy of 40k, npc calculators that were generous for us (2 parent, 1 sibling household with mostly W-2 income) came in at under 20k last year: Harvard, Princeton, Notre Dame.

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Case Western Reserve University is a favorite in my area (farm families with non liquid assets). They seem to offer workable/generous financial aid packages and can come in under EFC with their merit aid. They are very interested in geographic diversity, so being from AZ may help you.

What is your net price at ASU Barrett? My guess is with your excellent stats you are going to have a very tough time finding any school that can beat its ROI.

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@collegeboi12345 You might look at UT Dallas you’d likely get full tuition plus a stipend to help with other expenses.

If you want another real life example, DS’s girl friend is a year ahead of him (she skipped a grade) and is in her second year at Stanford for CS, last summer after completing her freshmen year, she could not find an internship. I think this was understandable as she had only completed her first year in collage but I really think she thought she’d get an internship based on the name of her school. That same summer my DS was selected to do a pre-freshman research program at UTD. He was able to work with some of the top professors and other top CS students. This allowed him to develop his research skills and start to work on “networking”. In the Fall he was asked to continue working on his summer project which will look great on his resume.

Another thing to consider is that state schools tend to be much more generous with accepting AP and DE credits. Both my DD and DS had enough credits to cover almost all their “core” gen ed requirements. This give them the opportunity to explore different classes, take a lighter course load or graduate early, whatever they want to do.

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OP - I think it’s super hard for students to see outside of the bubble they’ve grown up in regards to pre-conceptions about their instate options. Many OOS students are clamoring to get into the honors program at ASU. Speaking as the mom for an engineer in a public flagship’s honors program, you will work your tail off and be challenged. You will find your academic peers BUT you will have more opportunities available to you to shine.

The end goal of hard work in high school is NOT for college acceptances. Your hard work in HS is to PREPARE you for the work load that is to come. Establishing good study habits and having a great work ethic will help you immensely in your college program. That’s the point of HS - to prepare you for college rigor. Not to get you into MIT.

As noted upstream, you will be highly employable with your CS degree from any accredited program. Starting off your career as close to debt free as possible is a gift you can’t appreciate until you are earning money and having to pay your own bills.

Congratulate yourself on a job very well done and take your scholarship money and bloom where you are planted!

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@momofsenior1 Thank you! You were really helpful.

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@BuckeyeMWDSG see, this is what I’ve been looking for! You’re saying that even with an EFC of 40k, you were able to get away with 20k at some top universities - 20k is something I would consider paying. It’s super cool that Rice does that, I would qualify for half tuition.

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Consider paying how? It’s my understanding that you couldn’t afford to pay 20k a year- 10k from parents and 5k loan. Where are you getting the rest?

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OP should be able to make $5K between a summer job and part-time school year work

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It doesn’t sound like your family is lower income. So…how…HOW are you going to pay the huge costs to attend these colleges when all you can take is a $5500 Loan, and have a $10,000 parent contribution? That would still leave you with roughly $55,000 to pay…and that’s just freshman year alone.

UIUC? How are you going to pay the OOS costs there? The school is costly and the likelihood of you getting more than the $5500 loan is not guaranteed. What makes UIUC better than ASU? It isn’t!

GT is an excellent school, but how are you going to pay for it as an OOS student?

Get cracking on these applications to CM, Vandy and USC.

Stop listening to tales from your friends…because they absolutely might not apply to YOU. The OOS tuition and fees cost at UCLA is over $40,000 a year…so your friends are blowing smoke if they are telling you they are paying $30,000 a year for OOS tuition costs. And unless they are living with relatives…what are their living costs?

You can apply to any school on your list…but you need to do a couple of things.

  1. Discuss the finances of college with your parents. Listen to them in terms of what they CAN and WILL pay annually.
  2. Be prepared to walk away from ANY acceptance where the money is not forthcoming from the school to meet your budget. Please, please do not try to guilt your parents into taking huge loans or co-signing loans because of the prestige factor.
  3. Listen to what @CourtneyThurston posted upstream.
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@collegeboi12345

@CourtneyThurston @thumper1 and others have provided excellent advice so what I am about to write may not add much but here goes:

Yes, you are facing the reality of the middle class in that some of the most competitive schools in the country are going to be out of reach financially. There are thousands of qualified students across the US that are in a similar situation.

Happily there are MANY top schools that might be affordable to which you can still apply. Many of those options have been recommended up thread.

I urge you to check merit scholarship deadlines as some might already have passed (Nov. 1) and others are fast approaching (Nov. 15-Dec. 1)

Right now, I see as top-ranked options with merit possibilities: Rice, Wash U, Case Western, Duke (Robertson deadline may have passed), UVA (Jefferson deadline may have passed), Carnegie Mellon (check deadline) Vanderbilt, and USC.

You might also consider public universities in the WUE consortium where you might qualify for in-state or in-state x 1.5 tuition. However, if your budget is only 15K per year, they may also be out of reach.

https://www.wiche.edu/wue

BTW, many highly-qualified out of state students end up at ASU Barrett Honors by choice because of its strong reputation and merit awards for high stats OOS applicants. You would find many peers.

Schools in the UC system offer a limited number of very competitive merit scholarships (Regents and Chancellors). I believe that these may have a need-based component as well. It is possible that your friends might have received these coveted awards. It also sounds like that family might have had more than one student in college at the same time and changes the EFC formula. In any event, there may be aspects about that family’s finances about which you know nothing. Speculating about what others earn or pay is not particularly useful.

Finally, while you “might not mind” paying your EFC for MIT or Caltech, you may not have that choice. As mentioned several times up thread - your budget is limited to 10K per year provided by your parents plus 5.5K in federal student loan. That’s it, unless your parents are willing to pay for prestige out of income or through parent loans

Best of luck to you!

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For us the npc was under 20k at a handful of schools. You have to run the npcs to see what works for you. We did this for every school before wasting time applying.

In the end my S did not end up applying to any private schools. He already had an offer in hand for full tuition at a state school that he really liked in October.

He also applied to UAH. Full tuition and four years of housing was being offered last year for his stats which became his front runner in February.

He was disappointed he missed the big BAMA aid that was available for 2017 freshman and is back for 2019. He has a friend there who started in 2016 that is doing very well, landing great internships and having a blast.

S was offered a full ride at an instate (OH) school in April and he took it. He’s already a research assistant in a lab and has some honors and awards to list on his CV.

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“I’m still going to apply to MIT and Caltech, cause they’re my dreams, and I wouldn’t mind paying my EFC for them. Odds tell me I won’t get in, so doesn’t really matter anyways.”

OP- this is the nut of it. You wouldn’t mind paying your EFC? With what are you paying your EFC? 10K from your parents, 5K from your loan. If you are smart enough to be applying to MIT and Caltech you can do basic, second grade subtraction. You won’t have the option of paying your EFC because you don’t have the money to pay it.

You cannot borrow more than the federal student loan limit. That is a fact. So unless you’ve got a generous uncle or family member who is willing to co-sign (and is credit worthy), you need to put aside the idea of borrowing past the federal limit to fund your EFC.

Take an hour to mourn what could have been. And then get cracking on a realistic plan. You aren’t the first person in the world to discover that you’ve got champagne taste on a beer budget but guess what- some people prefer beer.

Go to ASU and knock the cover off the ball.

And I agree with the posters who are telling you to stop listening to your friends. I’ve got a friend who insists her kid got a merit scholarship to Princeton. That’s all well and good- but Princeton doesn’t give merit scholarships. Who wants to brag “we are low income so we qualified for a generous financial aid package”? Nobody. Much nicer to brag “Little Johnny is so smart Princeton gave him a huge merit scholarship just for showing up”.

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I know a guy that graduated from ASU in CS and had to choose between job offers from Microsoft and Apple. You’ll be fine there. You would also be fine at a lot of the auto or competitive merit schools if you want to get out of AZ. My AZ kids both chose out of state on big merit scholarships at lower ranked schools. One graduated and is working at a great job in engineering. Another graduates this May from a lower ranked LAC and just landed a dream job for someone in her major. Both will have no debt and money in the bank from their choices. Both landed great internships, REU’s did lots of cool things from their no name schools.
Run from debt and use your abilities and skills to make the most of the opportunity you take.
Get in gear and reformulate your list.
Illinois Tech in Chicago offers full tuition. Deadline is Dec 1.
University of Wyoming offers WUE scholarship for AZ residents and would be super affordable. Great if you like the outdoors and really want a change from Arizona. Also Western Washington and some others for WUE scholarships for AZ residents.

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Not much to add to what others have stated other than my kids have taken the same path as @CourtneyThurston and @missbwith2boys’s ds took. My ds who graduated from high school having completed multivariable, diffEQ, linear alg 1&2, plus 5 in major physics courses attended Bama on full scholarship, was surrounded by wonderful friends, had opportunities similar to what Courtney describes, also graduated with $$ in the bank, and is now at one of the top grad programs in the country.

He could NOT attend any top school, regardless of admission bc we refuse to consign for loans for our kids. Just not happening. We, as adults, know that the argument you are presenting as to why you “are willing to pay your EFC” is a false narrative.

@collegeboi12345 Rice offering you 1/2 tuition is absolutely worthless to you. Tuition alone would still be something like $23,000 and COA $40,000.

With a budget of $10,000/yr, you don’t even have enough to cover room and board without loans.

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You’ve gotten lots of great advice on this thread. Just as it is nice to be able to say I go to UCLA or MIT for CS, it is also very impressive to be able to say you got a full tuition scholarship at a place like Bama or the like. The Presidential plus dept scholarship at Bama is pretty much a full ride. I’d be impressed if this becomes your story. You can lock down ASU and Bama right away with their rolling admissions and continue to hunt down big time merit. Change your mindset as you are in an enviable position.

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“Just as it is nice to be able to say I go to UCLA or MIT for CS, it is also very impressive to be able to say you got a full tuition scholarship at a place like Bama or the like.”

Indeed. One of my twins chose UCLA. The other turned down UCLA (and Berkeley) to go to Utah. Although both are overjoyed with their choices, I know which one has (by far) the better deal.

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I can’t deny that there’s the factor of bragging rights when it comes to getting into one of these schools, but for me, that’s not totally what this is about. I just want to make the best decision for my future, and set myself up with the best life I’m capable of having. My peers and others told me that the better the school, the brighter the future, so that’s the mindset I always carried. Maybe they were wrong. I’m going to try to avoid debt at all costs and find a good balance for me, It’s really comforting that you are all saying that where I get my education won’t make much of a difference, and I really appreciate all your advice. For those stumbling upon this, please leave any good colleges with merit scholarships that you know of, i’ll be sure to check them out! Thanks.

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I’m sympathetic to the bragging rights issue. We have plenty of people say “wow” about twin 1 going to UCLA. No one says that about twin 2 going to Utah. They tend to assume she must not be as smart as her brother, which is not the case at all, and it can sound overly braggy to mention her scholarship (we just nod when people say it must be really expensive paying for two in college).

But some people won’t understand turning down prestige (its hard enough for many to comprehend turning down Berkeley for UCLA), so you just need to put that to one side and focus on the college experience itself. Even beyond the difference in price, the selective cohort/honors college experience is far superior: the dorms are better, class sizes are smaller, there are lots of perks, access to professors, etc. Moreover, you really don’t want to be telling people “I turned down MIT/Caltech” (let alone “I got in but couldn’t go to MIT/Caltech because I couldn’t afford it”) for the rest of your time in college, that would just make you sound bitter and dissatisfied.

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Another anecdote that is slightly different but very similar to what @CourtneyThurston is saying. My oldest went to a directional U that you probably haven’t heard of unless you are in that state. He was a solid but not outstanding student who had always planned on going to the state flagship (he followed a girl, which is a different mistake for a different thread). I told him if he was bound and determined to swim in a small pond, he better plan on being a big fish.

It is not yet Christmas break, and already he is very involved on campus and talking to employers about internships that are not normally open to freshmen. He has a couple campus leadership positions, and someone remarked the other day that they didn’t know if a freshman had ever held that office before.

Point being, there are lots of @CourtneyThurston stories. There are girls and guys like her on every campus. Maybe you think you belong in the big pond. And maybe you do. But if you can’t get there, be the big fish. The average ASU grad isn’t going to get the opportunities that you want. That’s fine, no one said you had to be the average ASU grad.

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“I just want to make the best decision for my future, and set myself up with the best life I’m capable of having.”

I want to add that the advice we’re giving you isn’t just to emphasize that not going to a tippy top school won’t hurt – it’s that it is very likely far BETTER because of the financial impact.

As I mentioned before: I totally understand that it’s very hard to understand the huge impact of (1) No debt and, hopefully in addition, (1.a) Graduating with money saved.

If you can get to part (1.a) – which is very achievable by choosing a school where you’ll have a full ride, which your stats can, in fact, offer you at some schools – you will be SO INCREDIBLY set up for an amazing life.

Seriously. I get that it’s hard to see this when you’re 17/18. But I’m seeing it right now: almost everyone I know is graduating with the amount of debt I have saved. The life impact differential is enormous. They’re looking at 10 years or more of payments (hundreds of dollars a month – in the worst cases, sometimes thousands), where I’m looking at not only a clean slate, but money saved and in the bank (and invested).

I’ve been able to live in neighborhoods that the kids with student loans can’t dream of living in. I can have a nice wedding that kids with student loans can’t dream of having. I can travel almost indiscriminately to visit all the exchange students my mom and I hosted; kids bogged down by loans cannot.

In my view, you’re on the brink of trading 4 years of “nice to have” experiences that won’t even make a difference on your career path for a potential LIFETIME (or at least a decade or longer) of financial discomfort.

That is – and I mean this kindly – absolutely nuts.

Don’t do it. Limit yourself to the federal loan maximum (about 5-7k/yr, so about 27k of debt TOTAL).