@Frydaddy A very good book you should recommend to them is “The College Solution” by Lynn O’Shaughnessy. She is a former journalist with a financial background and has been writing on the financial aspects of college admissions. She has a website by the same name as well as a facebook page. She will answer questions on both those forums. The information in the book is excellent and we used her advice to gain a full-ride for our first child and a great college for our second. There are also other good resources mentioned in The College Solution.
As I think others have mentioned, the best merit money comes directly from colleges. Penn State is not great, but some state public schools that are generous with merit money for out of state students are Alabama, Ohio State (National Buckeye Scholarship), Miami of Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, and Minnesota to name a few. It is important to understand that most public universities do not give financial aid to out of state students so if the student needs a lot of financial aid, then the out of state public universities on the student’s list should be those that give very good merit money similar to Alabama’s great merit for high stat students with great test scores.
As far as private colleges, the student should look at those that meet “full financial need.” A good resource for determining what percentage of need is on the website collegedata.com. Look under the “money matters” tab and towards the middle of the page it will be listed the percentage of need met by the college. There is a good search function on collegedata where you can pull up the percentage of the meets full-needs colleges to help the student create her list.
Following the advice given previously, have the grandparents run the numbers to get the student’s “estimated financial contribution” or “EFC”. For each college on the student’s list, they should run the college’s net price calculator. The College Solution can give you detailed information on those terms and how to go about doing those calculations.
It has been my experience that the best merit scholarship money is available during the early rounds of of college admission through students applying “early action” to those colleges that offer that type of admission scenario. Make sure the student and grandparents are aware that some colleges have earlier deadlines for applying for students seeking merit money. I would caution against applying “early decision” where a student has significant financial need since acceptance “binds” the student to attending that particular college.
If the grandparents need more information about helping the student do the actual application then I suggest two resources in addition to CC. One is “Admission Possible” and there is a book and website by the same name. http://admissionpossible.com I use it a lot with my students and it lays out the process really well, has sample items and gives good tips. The author recently wrote a great article in the Huffington Post that basically is a guide for what a student should do this summer in preparing their applications and about the changes to the essays for some of the applications. I suggest the students and grandparents review it. Here is the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-hansen-shaevitz/heads-up-the-3-most-impor_b_10053804.html
The other resource I like is the book “College Admission” and website "http://collegeadmissionbook.com/. It looks like they are not updating their blog as previously done, but the previous posts are still very informative. I would “like” their facebook page since it looks like that is where they are doing their updates. The information, tips and resources from the book, my students have found very helpful. This step by step guide to filling out the common application by the authors is particularly helpful. http://collegeadmissionbook.com/sites/default/files/TheApplicationForm.pdf
OP-you are very kind to help out these grandparents. Encourage them to come to CC to ask any questions they may have since the posters here try to be very helpful. Good luck.