Merit Scholarships at T20

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it a good decision to attend a low ranking T20 for partial (20-30k per year) if you have acceptance to a an Ivy and parents can pay but with with significant stretching?

At this level ranking difference is insignificant, Ivies have a solid brand recognition so they'll always get more applications hence higher ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it a good decision to attend a low ranking T20 for partial (20-30k per year) if you have acceptance to a an Ivy and parents can pay but with with significant stretching?

It makes sense to stretch if they go to investment banking or business consulting.
But not if they go to professional graduate school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it a good decision to attend a low ranking T20 for partial (20-30k per year) if you have acceptance to a an Ivy and parents can pay but with with significant stretching?

If you get a scholarship at a top 20 you can get into HYP. There's no reason to forgo 30k at Emory to pay full at Cornell, Dartmouth, or Brown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it a good decision to attend a low ranking T20 for partial (20-30k per year) if you have acceptance to a an Ivy and parents can pay but with with significant stretching?

If you get a scholarship at a top 20 you can get into HYP. There's no reason to forgo 30k at Emory to pay full at Cornell, Dartmouth, or Brown.

I don't know. If you have the money I think I would pay it for any Ivy my kid really wanted to go to. I wouldn't take out a substantial amount of loans for an Ivy vs Emory though. And it depends on the kid and what they want to do (if they 100% wanted to be a doctor, I'd just save the money for med school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it a good decision to attend a low ranking T20 for partial (20-30k per year) if you have acceptance to a an Ivy and parents can pay but with with significant stretching?

If you get a scholarship at a top 20 you can get into HYP. There's no reason to forgo 30k at Emory to pay full at Cornell, Dartmouth, or Brown.

I don't know. If you have the money I think I would pay it for any Ivy my kid really wanted to go to. I wouldn't take out a substantial amount of loans for an Ivy vs Emory though. And it depends on the kid and what they want to do (if they 100% wanted to be a doctor, I'd just save the money for med school).

Notre Dame offers some merit scholarships and I believe it is specifically to lure students away from ivies. I know someone who was accepted to Yale that took the ND scholarship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Received UC-Berkeley Regent's Scholarship OOS.

How much?

About 61k to 68k per year - varies year to year.

Isn’t the non need based (merit) part of the scholarship $2,500 per year?

[Anonymous]

There are full-ride merit scholarships at some highly competitive colleges like Duke and Vanderbilt, Hamilton, Hopkins, a few others I can't think of right now. Google it and you'll find the list. But these are offered only to exceptional students who are headed for HYPSM.

[Anonymous]

Swarthmore offers 3 a year, I believe, full rides, but extremely competitive. Good luck getting one.

[Anonymous]

GT and UNC offer VERY limited merit scholarships but do have a few full-ride but are exceptionally hard to get. They're usually used to poach from ivies, to give you an idea of the caliber of student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Received UC-Berkeley Regent's Scholarship OOS.

How much?

About 61k to 68k per year - varies year to year.

Isn’t the non need based (merit) part of the scholarship $2,500 per year?

This. Merit is fixed offer for four years. Financial aid varies according to your finances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nephew lives in Texas and ended up at Rice with a $100k. He is an outstanding student and had acceptations from Columbia, U Chicago and Princeton with $0 financial aid. He had a full ride offer from his state's non-flagship school.

$100k per year or for 4 years?

[Anonymous]

Top twenty don’t give merit because they can fill their classes without having to do so. You must drop down to second and third tier SLACs and offer something that they need in exchange for reporting to USNWR like extremely high ACT or SAT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Top twenty don’t give merit because they can fill their classes without having to do so. You must drop down to second and third tier SLACs and offer something that they need in exchange for reporting to USNWR like extremely high ACT or SAT

Not completely true, Ivies doesn't because their brand name and PR gets cross admits to pick them but many T20 offer really limited numbers of merit scholarships to snatch cross admits they really want to select them over Ivies. Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, USC come to mind.

[Anonymous]

There is no race based merit money. Don't be silly.

[Anonymous]

Vanderbilt gives the most merit awards among the top 20. You can look at those scholarship descriptions on their scholarship page on the website. Also look at the their CDS and see the line item for number of non-need based and non athletic scholarship students and the average award.