Which schools pleasantly surprised you in terms of merit aid?

Paying for College
21

Based on our experience and feedback from others, Case appears to be generous with aid for strong students.

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22

Smith College gave my daughter a lot of merit aid in the form of their STRIDE program scholarship, plus research stipend. On top of that her demonstrated financial need was met through institutional grants, as Smith is now loan-free.
The total package made attendance less than our state flagship university and less than the other two private colleges/universities that gave her large merit awards (Gettysburg and University of Denver)

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23

Absolutely!! Furman has been generous with otherwise full pay students that have shown interest and whom Furman sees as contributing to their community in a positive way. They seem to value leadership and I have seen students that fall beyond the top 10 or 20% receive a decent amount, but I agree depending on where else a student has applied they may still end up on the high end.

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24

My D21’s experience
 Furman offered the most non-competitive merit of any school she applied to. Other than our instate publics, which were free tuition, and a competitive merit scholarship she was awarded elsewhere, Furman had the lowest COA (with no need aid, just merit). It was around $22k after merit.

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25

I wonder if Furman has changed since 2012 (S’s Freshman year) or if they merely didn’t want him. They accepted him - super high stats, leadership, chess champ of our state, etc, so a rejection would have been really out of line, but 33K annually higher than Pitt, Rochester, and U Alabama definitely stunned us. My only guess is they felt he simply wasn’t their type.

Fortunately, he fit in extremely well at Rochester and should have made them happy with their “investment” since he won awards and was featured in a couple of their publications, etc - some from academics and some from juggling fire (literally).

But then, the opposite is true for other students where X school offered them the most and Y school didn’t. I even know one gal who had NYU her least expensive - who would have guessed?

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