Reply to What kind of colleges can an ~80th percentile kid get merit aid at versus where she'd get in but get none?

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[quote=Anonymous]Asking this before my kid hits HS for financial planning purposes (sorry! this is just really hard to figure out from the outside) but would love to get some insight on:

1). What kinds of colleges give significant merit aid to kids who are smart but not at the top of their class-- typically in the ballpark of 80th-90th percentile on standardized tests (Internet says this may translate to 1200-1300ish SAT), take some honors and AP classes but not all, get many As but also a fair number of Bs (especially in the harder classes), etc?  I am guessing she will also not be the kind of kid who's driven to do things like pick extracurriculars or electives in ways that maximize her college admissions chances.  Feel free to name specific schools or give a general ballpark of rankings/selectivity/etc, whatever's easiest but still gives some sense of what kind of schools we'd be talking about here.
2). What kinds of colleges would she likely be able to get into without any merit aid?  
3). Are the kinds of colleges likely to give merit aid a much worse educational experience than the kinds of schools she'd likely get accepted to with little or no merit aid, enough so that we're likely going to feel like it's worth finding a way to pay the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars?  (It would take some serious sacrifices to try to save that much, but we can try if we really ought to.  We make a little less than $200,000 a year, which I gather means we are unlikely to get much or any need based aid.).

FYI we are in Montgomery County MD (zoned for a non-W school.) Would love UMCP but recently learned that it is very much not a sure bet, especially for kids who are not at the very top of their class, plus for all I know she'd visit and hate it, so definitely does not make sense to have all our eggs in that basket.

Thanks so much for anything you can share! [/quote]

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