I kind of asked this question for New England in an earlier thread. But sadly there isn’t a lot of big merit in New England anymore – less than there was even 5 years ago. So we are expanding our search.
What are the best* schools for STEM majors that offer substantial** merit scholarships that are either guaranteed, or can be at least somewhat reliably predicted*** and based primarily on “stats” rather than leadership, community service, sports, ECs etc.
*best – a school that has a strong reputation, preferably nationally, either overall or for a particular program – this doesn’t necessarily mean US News rankings, particularly if there is some special honors or other program that is more highly regarded than the school overall
**substantial merit – merit awards approaching full tuition for 4 years of study or that otherwise leave less than 30K per year to be covered by the family (including books, travel, everything)
***somewhat reliably predicted – if a school doesn’t offer guaranteed aid for particular stats or NMF status, but we have reliable historical information about what could reasonably be expected, that’s fine too. What I’m trying to avoid is schools that offer a handful of full tuition or full ride scholarships, with hundreds of qualified applicants.
I know about University of Alabama – what else is out there that we ought to look into?
Our state flagship (UVM) has unfortunately substantially reduced their merit money, but is still doable due to in-state tuition.
The kid is a sophomore, so doesn’t really have any stats yet to share, and doesn’t know what he wants to major in, other than something in the STEM array of careers. His primary EC is drama.
Thanks also, @bopper, (Hi bopper!) I have all the lists but that requires me to research each school to find out about its reputation. Which I will eventually do, but was hoping for someone to help me with shortcuts indicating some “notable” schools on those lists.
hi! Probably part of the issue is that those colleges are trying to attract higher caliber students than they normally would with those scholarships…so I am not so sure how notable they will be!
Also look at SUNY schools…they are around 30K full price for OOS
I haven’t found the Supermatch very helpful (because you can’t choose something like “gives lots of merit money” as a criterion – just choosing “I want to have high stats so I’d have a good shot at merit” doesn’t really capture it)
Doesn’t saying how much you want to pay just find schools with low tuition, rather than schools whose real cost would be lowered due to scholarships. What I really want is something through college board where I have saved Net Price Calculator inputs – I want to say “run all the NPCs using these inputs, and tell me what would cost me under $X that also fits the following criteria” or “rank schools meeting the following criteria by net cost based on my inputs”
If you are interested in LACs, here is a table I prepped with the per capita # of alums from a LAC that get a PhD in the hard sciences along with some merit aid info. Might give you some ideas of what schools give a lot o merit aid and have strong STEM programs.
OP- I get what you are trying to do but some of this is premature. For two reasons- 1- you don’t have stats yet (and I know dozens of people who “predicted” their kid would score in the high 700’s on the SAT’s who had to re-calibrate their college list once it became clear that this wasn’t happening), and 2- The merit world changes year to year.
Why not continue to keep an open mind about other parts of the country and let everything else percolate? For my money, Mommdc’s list is a fantastic way to start- and of those colleges, the ones with “stellar” reputations in STEM include Pitt, Case, Ohio State and Rochester. BUT- STEM is not a subject. A kid who wants to study applied math is going to have a very different set of criteria than a kid who is interested in nanotechnology. Applied math is a cheap discipline to teach- you need some very fast computers and some terrific professors. But you don’t need a half-billion dollar building with capital investments in all sorts of equipment, plus an army of grad students to help run the teams and the grants.
Why not let things percolate- at least until you know whether you are looking at engineering/math or bio/theoretical physics? Your kid wants astronomy- put Arizona on the list. Your kid wants mechanical engineering- put Missouri M&T on the list.
I think UT Dallas, even though it’s on the list of merit schools, is frequently overlooked. They offer great merit aid, just a few dollars short of a full ride for National Merit and Full tuition + stipend for high stats kids.
Some people think of it as a regional school or commuter school but now that they have built new norms many more students live on campus. It’s just about as STEM oriented as you can get. Unlike most schools if was founded as a graduate research school by the founders of Texas Instruments. It has an interesting history
UTD grads are getting good jobs in the tech world. My DH works for a very large, well known, international tech company and two of his recent new hires in his department are UTD grads. There was a recent thread that compared certain schools, one of the posters mention doing an internship with Amazon and noted the were the same number of UTD students as UT Austin students interns in the same program.
I’ve had a really hard struggle with “prestige” vs. “merit” Not only will DS18 be an auto admit to UT Austin he will very likely be an auto admit into their CS program.
UT Austin - COA $23K a year (likely no merit) OOP $92K 8 semester VS. UTD - COA $22K a year w/national merit (near full ride) OOP $2K for 8 semesters
I just don’t think UTA is worth $90K more than UTD but people rave about it. Thankfully my kid is not a sports person and loved the fact that UTD does not have a football team!
Rated a Best Buy for science & engineering by Kiplingers.
Very low in-state COA with OOS tuition & fee remission available for “Non residents who are first time students with high school GPA of 3.25 and ACT 27 or SAT 1280” (Note–this are only a limited number of these awarded so apply early.) Other scholarships available, but may not be combined with OOS fee remission.
In-state annual COA (tuition, fees, R&B) under $15K. OOS COA $28K
Small school with a excellent national reputation and number of very unique programs (explosive materials & demolition science–only degree-granting program in the country). Sends a high percentage of its grads onto graduate school each year. Excellent research opportunities for undergrads. Shares its campus with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Abundant internships opportunities at 2 National Laboratories.
Oh, and the college has its own golf course that is open 12 months /year–something you won’t find in the NE.
Or if Soccoro is too much of a small town, University of New Mexico.
The Regents Scholarship (competitive awarded but open to OOS applicants) is a full ride (tuition, fees, R&B plus $1000/year toward books & transportation). Requires 31 ACT (1420 SAT*) and 3.9 Unit GPA
Other OOS scholarships here: <a href="http://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html">http://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html</a>
UNM has TWO golf courses open 12 months/year. One is PGA ranked.
Florida State University offers an OOS tuition waiver (OOS students pay in state rate) for high stats students, plus a “freshman merit” scholarship, last year it was $2400 per year for 4 years. My OOS daughter was offered both of these last year, and since tuition tends to be lower than most NE publics, her COA for this year would have been around $17K. FSU has good STEM programs. Something to be aware of - FL publics require that students must attend one summer session over the course of their undergrad (lots of sessions to choose from, still have time left to work).
2 years ago, another D was offered full tuition merit for Biomedical Eng. from George Mason U, in Fairfax VA, outside of DC. Good STEM programs, with lots of growth in recent years, good opportunities for internships in DC, gets overshadowed by VTech and UVA. Same with Virginia Commonwealth U in Richmond, might also be worth a look, it also has good Engineerong and other science programs, including guaranteed admissons to some of its medical programs. Younger OOS daughter was also offered $16K in merit at VCU with 3.8 UW and 32ACT ( non STEM tho).
I agree to some extent but… I need some time to recalibrate my mindset from my first two where there were several schools they each qualified for full tuition scholarships from within 5ish hours drive from home (and now I’m seeing nothing likely in that driving range). So I need to get some sense of “what’s out there” that might be affordable, and then we can narrow it down more by field, size, campus type etc. once we have a better idea of what he might want.
I do worry about organizing visits if we’re looking all over the country and can’t just do the “drive to 5 schools in 5 days” type of visit trips I did with my younger sons.
Also, this is my third kid, and I am pretty confident I can predict “likely” scores for him. He is very similar academically to my first, and he tests well. So I’m not too worried about being way off on my predictions of what kind of stats he might be able to pull off.
@mommdc My other two were NMFs and qualified for full tuition at Northeastern, Drexel, UVM, I think there may have been one more that I’m forgetting now.
