Merit Scholarships

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter got $40,000 ($10,000 a year) at University of Florida. We were Florida residents so she also got the Bright Futures Scholarship. She was a National Merit Scholar finalist. She graduated last year and is teaching in DC! I have a son at Univ. of Colorado. $8,000 a year merit. I have another at Ole Miss. Full ride.

Nice!

Thanks Those three were our easy kids. We have one that enlisted in the Air Force right out of high school. We are super proud of her. She wasn't a great student, but she has turned out to be a really good Airman. We're hoping she'll be more ready for college when she gets out. The military will pay which is nice. Our youngest wants to go to MIT. He had better pray for merit aid.

He'd better pray pretty hard. MIT does not offer merit aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD got lots of merit at schools she didn't want to go to.

Why on earth did she apply to schools she didn't want to go to?

I told my kids to apply ONLY to schools they want to go to. Waste of time and money otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is a really dumb question, OP.

+1

OP, if you want to guesstimate what kind of merit aid your child will receive at a given school, use the Net Price Calculator to get that info. In our case, it proved to be fairly accurate.

The Net Price Calculator will estimate financial aid, but it is silent on merit aid.

I don't think it's a dumb question at all, OP. It's very difficult to get an answer, though, because merit aid is all over the place and depends on the college and your child's desirability for that college. If you have a superstar kid, merit aid, including a free ride, is available at very competitive colleges like Duke, U of Chicago, Hamilton and many others.

My child got merit offers at Lehigh, Dickinson, GW, and several others. Most of the Colleges that Change Lives www.ctcl.org offer merit aid because they are not top schools in terms of competitiveness for admissions. They are all great schools, though, and your child will get a great education at any of them.

Look at the links a PP posted. There is lots of information on the web about which schools offer merit aid. But awards are very unpredictable. Financial aid, on the other hand, is predictable. Use the Net Price Calculator on each school's website, and you'll have a good idea of how much FA to expect from each school.

true for some, not true for others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grinnell College 15K per year for total of 60K
Luther College 22K per year for total of 88K
Mt St Mary's: 22K per year total 88K
Macalester: 12K per year for total of 48K

Our HHI knocks us out of any aid besides merit from the schools.

He's going to Grinnell.

Grinnell is a top choice for my DD. She hopes to visit through a minority recruitment weekend and I think she'll love it. Can you share your son's stats?

Sure...
unweighted GPA 3.5
ACT 31
5 APs
24 hours college credit from community college (that's max they will transfer in so he didn't even bother with taking AP test and they never asked for scores or asked if he was taking test)
Good EC's including HOBY, Boy's State, board member of local teen philanthropy group, and 2 sport athlete.

My advice is to connect with someone at Grinnell. A coach, an admission rep, etc. and keep in touch. Let them know its your first choice and if accepted DD will attend.

Thanks. She is similarly strong and has connected with the admissions rep. If she gets accepted to the fall program she will have the chance to connect even more. She won't be applying ED, however, because we want to see what options she has from a merit standpoint even if we might end up choosing a place that is full pay. Hoping that won't hurt her.

[Anonymous]

Sat 2160
Gpa 3.8 ish
A lot of AP and honors classes
NHS, good ECs (long duration tutoring, community home repair-not overseas)
Held a job through most of HS
I think his essay helped him a lot

Tulane-25k/yr
UVM- around 10k/yr
Michigan-8k/yr
NYU-10k/yr
Wisconsin-8 or 10k/yr

This was our first kid applying and I was surprised at the merit money offered. I was told that you just don't know and so be brunt with them about what we could afford and let them apply where they want with that firm knowledge. For example, Tulane was out of our budget but with the merit money it was in range. NYU remained out of range even with some money , and he never considered it at that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grinnell College 15K per year for total of 60K
Luther College 22K per year for total of 88K
Mt St Mary's: 22K per year total 88K
Macalester: 12K per year for total of 48K

Our HHI knocks us out of any aid besides merit from the schools.

He's going to Grinnell.

Grinnell is a top choice for my DD. She hopes to visit through a minority recruitment weekend and I think she'll love it. Can you share your son's stats?

Sure...
unweighted GPA 3.5
ACT 31
5 APs
24 hours college credit from community college (that's max they will transfer in so he didn't even bother with taking AP test and they never asked for scores or asked if he was taking test)
Good EC's including HOBY, Boy's State, board member of local teen philanthropy group, and 2 sport athlete.

My advice is to connect with someone at Grinnell. A coach, an admission rep, etc. and keep in touch. Let them know its your first choice and if accepted DD will attend.

Thanks. She is similarly strong and has connected with the admissions rep. If she gets accepted to the fall program she will have the chance to connect even more. She won't be applying ED, however, because we want to see what options she has from a merit standpoint even if we might end up choosing a place that is full pay. Hoping that won't hurt her.

I don't think it will hurt her. They did take a pretty sizable portion of first years from ED1 and ED2 but I think most schools understand the need to weigh options.

[Anonymous]

Is it true that merit aid is more frequently awarded to male students? (perhaps because so many campuses are majority female)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it true that merit aid is more frequently awarded to male students? (perhaps because so many campuses are majority female)?

No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sat 2160
Gpa 3.8 ish
A lot of AP and honors classes
NHS, good ECs (long duration tutoring, community home repair-not overseas)
Held a job through most of HS
I think his essay helped him a lot

Tulane-25k/yr
UVM- around 10k/yr
Michigan-8k/yr
NYU-10k/yr
Wisconsin-8 or 10k/yr

This was our first kid applying and I was surprised at the merit money offered. I was told that you just don't know and so be brunt with them about what we could afford and let them apply where they want with that firm knowledge. For example, Tulane was out of our budget but with the merit money it was in range. NYU remained out of range even with some money , and he never considered it at that point.

3.8 GPA, that's unweighted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is a really dumb question, OP.

Why? This not the same as need based aid. I want to know what schools are good at discounting the full sticker price with merit aid.

+1.

I believe it's a brilliant question. I'd love to see a ranking of the most generous schools at Merit Scholarships -- I suspect that my kids would take that into account when they decide where to apply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is a really dumb question, OP.

Why? This not the same as need based aid. I want to know what schools are good at discounting the full sticker price with merit aid.

+1.

I believe it's a brilliant question. I'd love to see a ranking of the most generous schools at Merit Scholarships -- I suspect that my kids would take that into account when they decide where to apply.

That's a really dumb post, PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is a really dumb question, OP.

+1

OP, if you want to guesstimate what kind of merit aid your child will receive at a given school, use the Net Price Calculator to get that info. In our case, it proved to be fairly accurate.

The Net Price Calculator will estimate financial aid, but it is silent on merit aid.

I don't think it's a dumb question at all, OP. It's very difficult to get an answer, though, because merit aid is all over the place and depends on the college and your child's desirability for that college. If you have a superstar kid, merit aid, including a free ride, is available at very competitive colleges like Duke, U of Chicago, Hamilton and many others.

My child got merit offers at Lehigh, Dickinson, GW, and several others. Most of the Colleges that Change Lives www.ctcl.org offer merit aid because they are not top schools in terms of competitiveness for admissions. They are all great schools, though, and your child will get a great education at any of them.

Look at the links a PP posted. There is lots of information on the web about which schools offer merit aid. But awards are very unpredictable. Financial aid, on the other hand, is predictable. Use the Net Price Calculator on each school's website, and you'll have a good idea of how much FA to expect from each school.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it true that merit aid is more frequently awarded to male students? (perhaps because so many campuses are majority female)?

No.

I don't have any facts at hand to back this up, but I think it is true that some colleges (less prestigious) who have high percentage of female students DO offer merit aid to young men who fit their profile. We're "donut hole" people so were very involved in the process, filed the FAFSA and educated ourselves. DS got into all his EA application schools, but no merit aid (many schools do not give merit aid, as pointed out above). Our of the blue he received several offers of scholarships at schools we had not even heard of. I got on the phone with a few of them and learned that these schools had bought the list of males with ACT scores over 32. When I said DS's score was actually a 36 combined, the merit scholarship immediately grew. These particular LACs had 65% women and ACT spreads more in the 22-28 range. Those schools deluged DS with emails and calls - not because they wanted him - but because they wanted his stats for U.S. News & World Report. So when your child fills out that info sheet for the first PSAT, all that info that they post, including zip codes (very important - schools will buy just zip code lists knowing parents in those areas might have the money to pay full freight), know that schools will purchase those lists and solicit your child if your child has something they want. I do know this happened to several young men, but they were all from small, less-known LACs.

[Anonymous]

Thus far, my DD has received merit aid offers from:

Miami (OH) - $58,000
University of South Carolina - $78,000

Stats; 3.56 GPA, IB Diploma, ACT 31, SAT 1420

Those were her two safety schools, but I'm not saying money is not going to be a deciding factor in the end, esp. since Mom just said she wants a divorce.

[Anonymous]

Pretty much every college outside of top 40 gives really generous merit awards. This is why I don't understand parents bitching about college costs. Like sorry, I guess you should have made your kid earn more As and prepped for the SAT instead of six day per week travel sports, iPhone & Netflix all day.