<p>Trying to find out some schools that we should be learning about.</p>
<p>Kid still has a long way and has no definite idea at what he would like to study or where.
His interests are a wide spectrum. He is a very high performing student and has several well developed ECs. If things continue the way they are going right now he might be a candidate for some of the top schools. He might be interested in some Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, University of Chicago. Those schools however do not offer merit money.'
So my poorly worded question is this - what are the schools that might give good merit scholarships to kids that are Ivy League caliber, as in sort of trying to persuade those kids to come their way, to steal them away.
Any personal or anecdotal stories would be appreciated.</p>
<p>I believe other very selective schools that offer them include Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Washington University in St. Louis. So do many of the midwestern liberal arts colleges (such as Grinnell and Oberlin).</p>
<p>University of Chicago offers some merit money. The last I heard, so does CalTech. Those are quite limited, though, both in number and in amount of money.</p>
<p>I personally know kids with so-called “Ivy caliber” high school records who have accepted merit scholarships to Wash U St. Louis, Rice University and Vanderbilt. I don’t consider it theft, though. Only those with a very limited notion of high quality undergraduate education would assume that The Ivies have some natural right to the most promising students.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure “steal” isn’t the verb you’re looking for. There are lots of kids at Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, Davidson, Emory, Furman, Georgetown, Haverford, … (if you get the drift) who have Ivy League profiles but who chose to attend a different type of school. It’s usually not a financial decision, though obviously finances can be a part of the decision. If you’re looking for “extremely selective” and “fabulous FA” I can suggest Cooper-Union.</p>
<p>Kelowna, there have been plenty of CC posters who denigrate merit scholarships offered by highly selective schools on the grounds that they use them to “steal” top students from non-merit awarding schools. I am relieved to hear you don’t really think of the offers as “theft”.</p>
<p>I sent you a PM with some anecdotes about my son’s experiences. They are all positive, but I don’t want to expound on the open board.</p>
<p>My daughter got wonderful merit scholarships at University of Michigan. She’s out of state and wouldn’t have been able to attend without the scholarships. AFter her freshman year she was awarded another substantial sum based on freshman grades.</p>
<p>This is a great question–and I look forward to seeing all of the inside cc anecdotes…
as we have a student who has nice stats and finances are part of the equation.</p>
<p>My student just recently commented that some of the top students at the hs have in the past chosen state flagships and other places…even some a few tiers down–because they got great fin aid and could also get into honors programs etc…</p>
<p>The list of schools that give very large merit awards to Ivy caliber students is almost endless. Some of those schools are themselves highly selective (In addition to the others that have been mentioned, Washington and Lee comes to mind). However, as a rule of thumb, the more highly selective the school, the more difficult it is to get the merit money.</p>
<p>Surprised Duke hasn’t been mentioned. USC another good one. But looking at those that give NM scholarships would be way too broad.</p>
<p>I think there are lots of schools that have at least some students that had a shot (meaning probably better than 50%) at getting into one of the Ivies, and so the question becomes which ones have more than a few. For example, Truman State in Missouri (which don’t get me wrong, it is a fine school, a hidden gem, but not at the level of the Dukes, Vandies, Chicagos, etc. when it comes to overall student profiles) had a whole ad campaign featuring one student that got accepted to Harvard but went to Truman. Probably it was because of money; someone like that would go to Truman for free, including room/board, books, everything. Or maybe also parents didn’t want daughter going so far away. Hard to say. The point is that to mention a school like Furman (again, not denigrating it, but…) in the same sense as the Chicago and Wash U types is distracting from what I think was the intention of the OP.</p>
<p>If I am right and the intention was to look for a school that has a significant number of high caliber (Ivy or near Ivy quality) students while either being affordable or giving merit scholarships, then the best way is to find the threads that show which schools have the highest average SAT/ACT scores, students in top 10% of class, and any other academic criteria (but probably those 2) and then find the ones that give merit scholarships. I think that would be the most systematic way to answer your question.</p>
<p>Most good state universities attract kids who have ivy caliber grades and scores. This is particularly true for those state universities that give lots of financial aid for top kids such as University of Maryland etc.</p>
<p>Also, a number of schools offer full rides and even much more for national merit kids. Examples would be University of Alabama, Oklahoma State, etc.</p>
<p>There’s probably quite a few (colleges) actually or at the very minimum a couple in every region of the country. More in states like Michigan and California that have powerhouse globally known flagships as well as strong private regional colleges. My guess is, though, it’s not going to be a strong contingent of kids and parents posting on CC.</p>
<p>Why, flagship state schools “steal” Ivy-league profilers, obviously.</p>
<p>And I would indeed call it “stealing” ;). </p>
<p>My friends all go to privates of varying selectivities, but I have never met more people who have turned down Ivy league educations than here…</p>
<p>Most (but not all, lol) are receiving nice merit scholarships, full ride or close to it. Though some got pittance…(ex. I know a Harvard admit who got only $1,000 for two years!)…and were still stolen away, anyway, since even without a significant merit scholarship state schools are less than half the price :P.</p>
<p>a real rough first pass … look at the non-IVYies in the USN top 30 or so research universities and the top 30 or so LACs … cut this list by geography / size preferences and you’d probably have a pretty good initial list to check out.</p>