<p>Which type of colleges or universities provide the most generous financial offers for its students, in terms of scholarships and financial aid? Large public state schools, private schools, prestigious and ivy league schools, or LACs?</p>
<p>As matter-of-fact, I know you can get a full ride to Rutgers, NJ state college, solely based on SAT(1500+) and class rank(top 5% or higher). It also offers several other scholarships for lower qualifications.</p>
<p>The schools composing the Ivy League do not offer merit-based scholarships. However many schools do offer merit-based scholarships. With an "A" average and 1500+ SAT score, you can get a full ride at St. Joseph's University (Philadelphia, PA). The UC system in California has the Regent's Scholarship - it provides a full ride at the UC which awards the scholarship (and accepted the student in RD). Many other colleges offer scholarships, some based on community service, others based on your academic record; your best bet is to narrow down your list of colleges and then look specifically at each college at what type of aid they provide.</p>
<p>Of course, as a general rule, the more competitive the college, the harder it is to get a scholarship. CalTech is probably the most selective school to give merit awards (or at least disclose that they do in public), but most of these go to minorties. I know that UChicago, WashU, and Rice are all some top schools that give merit aid, but of course it is very competitive. As far as good state schools go, UNC is decently generous with merit awards, and is the only public university that I know of which meets 100% of need-based aid for OOS students as well. Of course less selective schools, like Rutgers as described above, frequently give auto-scholarships to students with high stats.</p>
<p>For the best merit aid, try the state universities in the south. I know most offer a large number of near- full-rides for national merit finalists and at some like Georgia and Alabama, it's possible to get a full ride plus 3-4k a year. Most have pretty decent honors colleges too, so they're definitely worth a look if you're looking for merit aid.</p>
<p>Yes, like UChi gives out 15-30 full tuition scholarships...so yea, it's slim pickings. Publics and mid (known, but not as recognized) LAC's give the best merit aid, or so I've been told</p>
<p>Many Catholic universities also offer full tuition scholarships to selected students. Southwestern University and Trinity University in Texas are also two schools that I know have full tuition scholarships.</p>
<p>about the UNC and University of California scholarships, are those for state residents only? If not, u know what the qualifications are for those schools?</p>
<p>I suggest looking at the USN&WR list in their Ultimate Directory to get a statistical sense of which colleges give the most financial and merit aid. But like all lists, you need to know where you are on the list at a particular school. Though a state school may give generous financial aid statistically, it could well be mainly for its own residents which will not help you if you are out of state for instance. If a school has great merit awards, and you read up on their requirements and you don't fall into the category of what they are interested in promoting, that is not going to help you either. </p>
<p>A good example of how this may work is with non need blind schools such as JHU and WashUSL. Though they are not need blind, if you get in, you are likely to get a generous package, more generous than, say NYU which is need blind but tends to gap. And there are merit awards at all three of these afore mentioned schools that can help those kids with the highest stats and are in categories that these schools want. It is entirely possible to get more from any one of these schools than from an ivy league school which would be need blind and give 100% of aid. So things are a more complex than just looking at a list. You also do better with merit aid if you apply to schools out side of your area where so many kids apply to the same school. One year I saw a kid in Pittsburgh get one of the coveted BC scholarships with a resume that was probably not as spectacular as some kids in the NY area where there are so many applicants, that BC feels little need to pay for a kid to come from there.</p>