List of SLACs with Generous Merit Aid
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Anonymous
St. Mary’s College of Maryland is public, not a private SLAC. |
Anonymous
| I'd add Harvey Mudd for the engineering types. They do award scholarships. Olin College (of Engineering) awards automatic half-tuition scholarships to all its students. |
Anonymous
PP again. On that note, St. John's College should be on the list for cutting its published tuition to $35,000 per year. The standard $50,000+ per year tuition most private colleges and universities charge is more of a "prestige" tuition pricing, appealing to parents who believe full pay is a requirement to attend first tier schools. |
Anonymous
So...if everyone gets the scholarship why not just make that the price? All these list prices are games but that one is absurd. |
Anonymous
Thank you! This is a very helpful list. |
Anonymous
It does seem absurd. But some of it is "games" but other aspects are more just how college budgets work--they get donations for certain categories such as scholarships, and some things are built into the bylaws that would require changing and board approval. It's easier to build a scholarship endowment from a donor base and then recruit more donors to keep it going. It also can be less permanent--you can adjust the boundaries of a scholarship a lot easier--it's currently "all students" but if the donor base fell, you could likely adjust it to the top 25% entering students or whatever, where tuition adjustments are more fraught. |
Anonymous
Isn't Harvey Mudd the most expensive college in America. At least it was a year or two ago when we were looking.... |
Anonymous
Agree, but please keep in mind the actual costs of the school. Some are 75K and others are 20K or more less to start. |
Anonymous
Thoughtful answer. Thanks. |
Anonymous
|
Grade afterwards is 2017 Forbes Financial grade (take with a grain of salt). Number after that is US News World and Report Ranking. All colleges listed are ranked "National Liberal Arts Colleges"
LIBERALISH Grinnell (IA) A 11 Mount Holyoke (MA) A 30 St. Mary’s College of Maryland (MD) A 95 Kalamazoo (MI) A- 65 St. Olaf (MN) A 61 Beloit (WI) B 68 Lawrence (WI) A 56 Kenyon (OH) A 30 Oberlin (OH) A 30 Wooster (OH) A 67 Lewis & Clark (OR) C 68 Guilford (NC) C 168 Allegheny (PA) B 76 Bryn Mawr (PA) A+ 27 Juniata (PA) B- 86 Muhlenberg (PA) B 81 Swarthmore (PA) A+ 3 Ursinus (PA) B 90 MIDDLE OF THE ROAD Dickinson (PA) A 51 Denison (OH) A 43 Davidson (NC) A+ 10 Union (NY) A 39 St. Lawrence (NY) B+ 56 Lafayette (PA) A 36 CONSERVATIVISH Bucknell (PA) A 36 Hobart (NY) B 68 Wofford (SC) B 72 Rhodes (TN) A 51 Sewanee (TN) A 49 |
Anonymous
| Just to underline the risk of conflating the presence of merit aid with the reasonable likelihood of same, Swarthmore’s latest CDS reflects exactly four first-year students earning merit aid (if I’m reading the table correctly). Swarthmore should never be listed in a thread where generous merit aid is being discussed. They have enough to be able to say they offer it but little more. Not picking on Swarthmore, which is fantastic, but they don’t really do merit aid. |
Anonymous
Is the number the number of students with merit aid?? |
Anonymous
No--see the heading above, it's the USNWR ranking as a rough indicator of how hard it is to get in these schools. Swarthmore, Grinnell and Davidson might give have some generous merit-based scholarships, but you've got to be at the tippy-top to even get in, let alone get the merit aid. |
Anonymous
| ^^Thank you |
Anonymous
Whereas a school not listed above, U. Richmond, had 74 recipients of comparable award value, nearly 10% of incoming vs. Swarthmore’s 1%. There are other schools not listed above that could be considered generous. Washington and Lee offers full ride (and then some) to top 10% of incoming via its Johnson Scholarship. Very competitive though. They don’t just hand it to the top applicants for shits and giggles. There are campus interviews and elimination rounds and lots of work to earn it. Lots of hard work by previous posters but it should serve as a starting point only. You have to dig deeply into the CDS data of each school to truly grasp the merit (and other) aid story. |