What colleges give really good merit aid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wooster and Juniata both gave my child approximately 25K in merit aid (per year, for four years). She had a 3.7 UW GPA, very average SAT scores and just a handful of AP's.

She also go aid offers from other, more highly ranked schools.

This is helpful! I am still in shock as I realize that our HHI of $210k (which only recently got that high) means no financial aid on all the net price calculators I run. I can't imagine actually paying $70k/year (!) so we're scrambling to think about options. PP, could you mention the other, more highly ranked schools that also offered aid?

You will not qualify for financial aid. (I'm kind of surprised you would think that you would.)

Higher-ranked schools that award merit aid include e.g. Dickinson, Denison, Grinnell, Oberlin, U. Rochester. Some elite schools, e.g. Johns Hopkins and Washington U. in St. Louis, as well as e.g. Boston College, give a tiny number of merit scholarships to super high-performers.

If your child is a good but not stellar student, you will need to look at schools ranked 40 and above by USNWR. Or, send your child to an in-state public.

What do you mean? Even at $200+ thousand a year (I'm guessing Gross pay before mortgage, saving for retirement, health insurance, etc.), a family cannot be expected to soundly pay $70K/year times 4 years for college. So, yes, I would expect some financial aid.

Wait - it comes as news to you that at $200K+/year, you will not qualify for need-based financial aid?

Did you fall off the turnip truck this morning?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wooster and Juniata both gave my child approximately 25K in merit aid (per year, for four years). She had a 3.7 UW GPA, very average SAT scores and just a handful of AP's.

She also go aid offers from other, more highly ranked schools.

This is helpful! I am still in shock as I realize that our HHI of $210k (which only recently got that high) means no financial aid on all the net price calculators I run. I can't imagine actually paying $70k/year (!) so we're scrambling to think about options. PP, could you mention the other, more highly ranked schools that also offered aid?

You will not qualify for financial aid. (I'm kind of surprised you would think that you would.)

Higher-ranked schools that award merit aid include e.g. Dickinson, Denison, Grinnell, Oberlin, U. Rochester. Some elite schools, e.g. Johns Hopkins and Washington U. in St. Louis, as well as e.g. Boston College, give a tiny number of merit scholarships to super high-performers.

If your child is a good but not stellar student, you will need to look at schools ranked 40 and above by USNWR. Or, send your child to an in-state public.

What do you mean? Even at $200+ thousand a year (I'm guessing Gross pay before mortgage, saving for retirement, health insurance, etc.), a family cannot be expected to soundly pay $70K/year times 4 years for college. So, yes, I would expect some financial aid.

I love that line. Nothing wrong with “expecting” I guess...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wooster and Juniata both gave my child approximately 25K in merit aid (per year, for four years). She had a 3.7 UW GPA, very average SAT scores and just a handful of AP's.

She also go aid offers from other, more highly ranked schools.

This is helpful! I am still in shock as I realize that our HHI of $210k (which only recently got that high) means no financial aid on all the net price calculators I run. I can't imagine actually paying $70k/year (!) so we're scrambling to think about options. PP, could you mention the other, more highly ranked schools that also offered aid?

You will not qualify for financial aid. (I'm kind of surprised you would think that you would.)

Higher-ranked schools that award merit aid include e.g. Dickinson, Denison, Grinnell, Oberlin, U. Rochester. Some elite schools, e.g. Johns Hopkins and Washington U. in St. Louis, as well as e.g. Boston College, give a tiny number of merit scholarships to super high-performers.

If your child is a good but not stellar student, you will need to look at schools ranked 40 and above by USNWR. Or, send your child to an in-state public.

What do you mean? Even at $200+ thousand a year (I'm guessing Gross pay before mortgage, saving for retirement, health insurance, etc.), a family cannot be expected to soundly pay $70K/year times 4 years for college. So, yes, I would expect some financial aid.

I love that line. Nothing wrong with “expecting” I guess...

PP should have a seat while she waits.

[Anonymous]

“Joe Bagnoli has seen price shock from both sides — as a parent and now as dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell College in Iowa. When his oldest child received aid letters from colleges, he said, “My reaction was: I just don’t have this kind of money.” This year, with two children in college, he borrowed $19,000 to come up with the parental contributions.“


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/education/edlife/what-you-dont-know-about-financial-aid-but-should.amp.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wooster and Juniata both gave my child approximately 25K in merit aid (per year, for four years). She had a 3.7 UW GPA, very average SAT scores and just a handful of AP's.

She also go aid offers from other, more highly ranked schools.

This is helpful! I am still in shock as I realize that our HHI of $210k (which only recently got that high) means no financial aid on all the net price calculators I run. I can't imagine actually paying $70k/year (!) so we're scrambling to think about options. PP, could you mention the other, more highly ranked schools that also offered aid?

You will not qualify for financial aid. (I'm kind of surprised you would think that you would.)

Higher-ranked schools that award merit aid include e.g. Dickinson, Denison, Grinnell, Oberlin, U. Rochester. Some elite schools, e.g. Johns Hopkins and Washington U. in St. Louis, as well as e.g. Boston College, give a tiny number of merit scholarships to super high-performers.

If your child is a good but not stellar student, you will need to look at schools ranked 40 and above by USNWR. Or, send your child to an in-state public.

What do you mean? Even at $200+ thousand a year (I'm guessing Gross pay before mortgage, saving for retirement, health insurance, etc.), a family cannot be expected to soundly pay $70K/year times 4 years for college. So, yes, I would expect some financial aid.

Wait - it comes as news to you that at $200K+/year, you will not qualify for need-based financial aid?

Did you fall off the turnip truck this morning?

Seriously, how does anyone who makes north of $200K think they will get financial aid for college. Looking at the country overall, I wouldn't expect anyone making $100K to get financial aid. Our family makes $160K, and we have saved for our three children to go to college - it won't be $70K a year, but we can afford $35K per year per kid. We started saving at birth.

[Anonymous]

Hi, gang, this is the shell-shocked PP. A couple of years ago, I could've written this:

Our family makes $160K, and we have saved for our three children to go to college - it won't be $70K a year, but we can afford $35K per year per kid. We started saving at birth.

So we actually have a lot in common!
Now I'm finding that the raise we were so happy about means that we will have to pay full freight for 3 kids. The savings that we've put aside since before the kids were born only goes so far when paying for 12 years of $70k+/year tuition. To us, that's a huge amount of money. I've been told not to count on getting in-state for College Park, since apparently even some high-stats kids have surprisingly been turned away. Hence my keen interest in merit aid...
Thanks to those who posted merit aid suggestions and sources! If anyone else has any more thoughts on merit aid, I'd love to hear them. I appreciate the guidance from people who've been through this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi, gang, this is the shell-shocked PP. A couple of years ago, I could've written this:

Our family makes $160K, and we have saved for our three children to go to college - it won't be $70K a year, but we can afford $35K per year per kid. We started saving at birth.

So we actually have a lot in common!
Now I'm finding that the raise we were so happy about means that we will have to pay full freight for 3 kids. The savings that we've put aside since before the kids were born only goes so far when paying for 12 years of $70k+/year tuition. To us, that's a huge amount of money. I've been told not to count on getting in-state for College Park, since apparently even some high-stats kids have surprisingly been turned away. Hence my keen interest in merit aid...
Thanks to those who posted merit aid suggestions and sources! If anyone else has any more thoughts on merit aid, I'd love to hear them. I appreciate the guidance from people who've been through this.

There are good lists available if you google 'colleges with merit aid' and 'universities with merit aid.' But narrowing it down to small, liberal arts colleges vs state universities helps

Also, remember that there are more public universities and colleges in Maryland beyond College Park.

[Anonymous]

Whitman in the state of Washington offered my DC good merit aid. Nice small LAC but far away. Also some of the smaller TX state schools, like UT-D. I was worried even about some of the state schools that offered good merit aid, such as UIdaho, since I found on-line some horror stories about kids going to random state schools just to have their merit aid reduced. That would stink.

[Anonymous]

^^ Texas Tech also offered good $$, but DC was NMF so that may have been a NMF thing.