What colleges give really good merit aid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And are any of them in VA?

My Classes of 2019 thru 2023 kids, nieces, and nephews received substantial merit aid covering 4 years/8 semesters* -- from 50% of tuition to "full rides" (100% of tuition, 100% of standard room&board, and stipend) -- from Duke, GWU* (*merit scholarship is for 5 years/10 semesters), Tufts, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, UMBC, and UMD. Some of these colleges required a separate merit scholarship application (e.g., Vanderbilt) but some awarded the scholarship based on the admission application (e.g., Duke). I don't know of any VA colleges but I believe that a neighbor's kid turned down the Banneker-Key scholarship at UMD in favor of a comparable full ride scholarship to UVA (Class of 2020). Hope this helps and good luck.

Tufts does not give merit scholarships.

https://admissions.tufts.edu/tuition-and-aid/types-of-aid/

Unless you count NMFs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And are any of them in VA?

My Classes of 2019 thru 2023 kids, nieces, and nephews received substantial merit aid covering 4 years/8 semesters* -- from 50% of tuition to "full rides" (100% of tuition, 100% of standard room&board, and stipend) -- from Duke, GWU* (*merit scholarship is for 5 years/10 semesters), Tufts, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, UMBC, and UMD. Some of these colleges required a separate merit scholarship application (e.g., Vanderbilt) but some awarded the scholarship based on the admission application (e.g., Duke). I don't know of any VA colleges but I believe that a neighbor's kid turned down the Banneker-Key scholarship at UMD in favor of a comparable full ride scholarship to UVA (Class of 2020). Hope this helps and good luck.

Tufts does not give merit scholarships.

https://admissions.tufts.edu/tuition-and-aid/types-of-aid/

Unless you count NMFs.

$500 year, unless a student qualifies for need-based aid, in which case it is $2000/year.

Effectively, Tufts does not give merit scholarships.

The others listed above give very very few.

[Anonymous]

My kid got a bunch from Kalamazoo & Wooster, & wasn’t even in the upper quarter for scores. That makes me think CTCL schools may be generous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Juniata. A solid safety for STEM majors.

Good info. I never hear of liberal arts or colleges that change lives as STEM school safeties, or anything STEM. I looked up the school and they seem to have a department for physics/ engineering and one for CS/IT.

Are there more smallish schools like this, stem oriented, and give lots of merit aid? Or was that a unicorn?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Juniata. A solid safety for STEM majors.

Good info. I never hear of liberal arts or colleges that change lives as STEM school safeties, or anything STEM. I looked up the school and they seem to have a department for physics/ engineering and one for CS/IT.

Are there more smallish schools like this, stem oriented, and give lots of merit aid? Or was that a unicorn?

On the whole, Colleges That Change Lives schools are generous with merit aid, especially to high achievers.

I think the science department at Ohio Wesleyan is good, as is Denison's. (Ohio Wesleyan has an outstanding computer science department.)

The College of Wooster also has great science departments as does Oberlin.

[Anonymous]

Also, Ohio Wesleyan has a 3/2 engineering program in coordination with other schools:

https://www.owu.edu/academics/departments-programs/department-of-physics-and-astronomy/

We offer 3-2 engineering opportunities, where students spend three years at OWU and two in an engineering program at schools such as Caltech, Washington University in St. Louis, and Case Western Reserve University, earning bachelor’s degrees from both schools.

Case Western is also generous with merit aid for high-stats students. My DC got a $30K/year merit scholarship from CWR.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about really good schools like Villanova, Wake Forest, Boston College, Michigan — can a 4.0uw, 1550+ student that has no special EC to get into Ivy or top tier get merit at any of those schools or do they need to look for private scholarships?

No merit aid at Michigan.

Wake Forest awards it to less than 3% of incoming class https://financialaid.wfu.edu/merit/

Villanova does https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/enroll/finaid/scholarships_grants.html

BC says they award 15 merit scholarships per year.

+1

If by "really good schools" PP means, "schools ranked in the top 30 by USNWR," then with limited exceptions, none of them give merit money.

My DC was admitted to BC, but was not invited to compete for one of the 15 full merit scholarships. (BC selects a larger group, invites them to campus, and has them compete for those scholarships.) DC has a perfect GPA in an MCPS magnet (all As, all four years), SAT=1580, has hundreds of volunteer/service hours, is an athlete, and invented and marketed an app for use by disabled people (omitting details for privacy). We hoped that DC would at least be invited to compete for a scholarship at BC, but nope.

University of Rochester

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about really good schools like Villanova, Wake Forest, Boston College, Michigan — can a 4.0uw, 1550+ student that has no special EC to get into Ivy or top tier get merit at any of those schools or do they need to look for private scholarships?

No merit aid at Michigan.

Wake Forest awards it to less than 3% of incoming class https://financialaid.wfu.edu/merit/

Villanova does https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/enroll/finaid/scholarships_grants.html

BC says they award 15 merit scholarships per year.

+1

If by "really good schools" PP means, "schools ranked in the top 30 by USNWR," then with limited exceptions, none of them give merit money.

My DC was admitted to BC, but was not invited to compete for one of the 15 full merit scholarships. (BC selects a larger group, invites them to campus, and has them compete for those scholarships.) DC has a perfect GPA in an MCPS magnet (all As, all four years), SAT=1580, has hundreds of volunteer/service hours, is an athlete, and invented and marketed an app for use by disabled people (omitting details for privacy). We hoped that DC would at least be invited to compete for a scholarship at BC, but nope.

University of Rochester

My class of ‘18 kid had stats similar to those of the above PP’s and got $12k from the U of Rochester.

[Anonymous]

^ it’s called “token merit” or “discount merit” given to donut hole families to make sure little more attractive. Even with 10-15 discount, you got a lot of ground to cover.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ it’s called “token merit” or “discount merit” given to donut hole families to make sure little more attractive. Even with 10-15 discount, you got a lot of ground to cover.

In my DS' case, the 'token merit' was far greater than 10-15%. More like 30-45%. High stats, which probably made a difference.

Sample of colleges (DS applied to 12) - Grinnell, Brandeis, Wooster, Oberlin, St Mary's of Md, Pitt, OSU.

[Anonymous]

Agree, Wooster is another strong CTCL school for science.

[Anonymous]

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. St. Mary's College of MD (which is a bit less than half the price of the privates) offered her only 5K. Remember that financial--versus merit---aid is more iffy, depending upon your future earnings. We know ours went up, so felt more secure with merit aid.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I thought Duke only gave out Robertsons, no other merit awards only financial aid...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Florida gave my daughter a full academic scholarship.

Wow, congrats, UF is great school. Is she OOS?

She is. She had a great experience and loved her time at UF!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ it’s called “token merit” or “discount merit” given to donut hole families to make sure little more attractive. Even with 10-15 discount, you got a lot of ground to cover.

In my DS' case, the 'token merit' was far greater than 10-15%. More like 30-45%. High stats, which probably made a difference.

Sample of colleges (DS applied to 12) - Grinnell, Brandeis, Wooster, Oberlin, St Mary's of Md, Pitt, OSU.

My kid (class of '18 per above) was also high-stats and got the $12K from U Rochester. SAT 1560, Weighted GPA 4.6. Eight AP classes (all 5s), two SAT IIs (800 on both). The NPC estimate was wildly at odds with the $12K pittance that U Rochester awarded.

Other schools awarded between $25K and $35K/year.