Has your kid or any kid you know won a full-ride scholarship to an elite college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC's law school classmate was a Gates Scholar -- full ride at a top school. She is an amazing young woman.

How did she get it? Is she an URM? I think Gates has restrictions. What makes her amazing, and where did she go to college?

First college graduate in her family, founded a not-for-profit focused on educating girls.

[Anonymous]

Swarthmore: full ride.

[Anonymous]

Yale 3/4. First generation immigrant. Very very smart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not talking about Banneker-Key. I mean the biggies, like to Duke, Hamilton, Johns Hopkins, U Chicago, UNC Chapel Hill, etc. as well as the foundations (Stamp?) that offer four-year full rides.

I'll start. I know one kid who got a full ride a few years back to U Chicago. I can't remember the name of the scholarship. He played an instrument at a near-professional level and was studying an unusual language (like Serbo-Croation?) which he'd learned in high school, had lived in the country and did some other community service like starting a food pantry in a poor neighborhood which he stocked by getting donations from his private school friends' parents. Top grades and scores of course from a private school.

I'm curious if any kids who are not so accomplished on paper ever win these awards? Good grades are a given, but does ingenuity or intellectual curiosity or creativity count? Do any geniuses who sit in a corner and solve math problems in their heads ever win? Or kids who create amazing art (or science projects) in their basement studio or on their computer ever win?

I went to Duke on a full scholarship and got partial scholarships to Harvard and Yale. I was at the top of my class and also had a good enough personality that I interviewed well and it probably didnt hurt that (at the time!) I was a good looking girl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite colleges don’t offer merit scholarships. So the answer is no.

Not true. Looks at the Stamps Foundation. The Ivy League doesn't offer merit scholarships, but many other elite colleges do. https://www.stampsscholars.org/our-program/partner-schools/

That’s a foundation. The schools themselves are not offering the aid. (And most of the partner schools listed there are not need blind/meet full need, so they likely do offer merit scholarships on their own.)

[Anonymous]

My friend got a 50% merit scholarship to Duke business school. It wasn’t something he applied to, it was just a pleasant surprise with his admissions package it’s an alumni funded scholarship to help attract top students. My friend is the smartest person I know and was a TA for about every class at Fuqua.

[Anonymous]

Yes. My kid. Full ride to Emory. Very happy.

[Anonymous]

I know a kid who had all 4 years at MIT paid in full by the Gates Foundation. He is a prodigy from a working class house, African American. I am not sure what you are looking for but it was an academic scholarship (not sure if need had any role maybe it did) and MIT is certainly elite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yale 3/4. First generation immigrant. Very very smart.

No not a merit scholarship. See comments above about Brown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swarthmore: full ride.

Two people I know were awarded full rides to Swarthmore (my sibling and a friend from high school).

It’s the McCabe Scholarship and yes, there are two McCabe scholars annually from the area where I grew up. I didn’t realize there were also McCabe scholars from all over the US. It’s described as a merit scholarship.

https://www.swarthmore.edu/mccabe-scholars

[Anonymous]

I dont know if you consider Vanderbilt elite, but I think they give a certain number of scholarships to smart TN kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My friend got a 50% merit scholarship to Duke business school. It wasn’t something he applied to, it was just a pleasant surprise with his admissions package it’s an alumni funded scholarship to help attract top students. My friend is the smartest person I know and was a TA for about every class at Fuqua.

Same for the law school. Part of the admissions offer package - most people receive a scholarship.

[Anonymous]

Both of my DCs got full tuition scholarships at a Top 20 school...ROTC scholarships. While not "full ride scholarships," having the tuition covered makes a huge dent. With the stipends and book allowance, it comes to an amount that is just below a "full ride." They both feel called to serve our country after college, so money is not the driver for ROTC, but is an advantage.

There are different levels of ROTC scholarships, with the full tuition being very competitive. But many times, if a student has the stats for an "elite college," then they also have the stats and qualifications for the full tuition type ROTC scholarship (vs. partial tuition ROTC scholarships).

[Anonymous]

A friend of my daughter got the full ride Trustee Scholarship at USC. 36 ACT/4.0 GPA type kid, and was really into psychology, mental health advocacy, and neuroscience. Did a bunch and won a bunch of awards in that realm. She'll be at Yale this fall - her mom is a teacher and dad isn't in the picture so I'm assuming the fin aid was good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't Harvard automatically offer a full ride to anyone whose family income is less than a certain threshold?

Yes, but that's FA, not merit aid. These full-ride scholarships to highly ranked schools (read upthread) are not based on financial need.

If you are getting into Harvard and not paying for it, it doesn't matter what you or they call it, you got there on merit.

You get into Harvard on merit, you get the aid based on need. The point is, there are plenty of kids at Harvard with higher stats than some of the kids who get a full needs based "scholarship".