Reply to What colleges give really good merit aid?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "What colleges give really good merit aid?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Your DC have extended time? What % of kids in class have them? If no to first and high percentage to second, then difficult unless your DC managed to still be top 1% of class.[/quote]

My kid wasn’t in the top 1% of her class and she received a lot of merit aid. She had a 1540 SAT and 4.2 GPA, 9 APs.

OP: if your child is above the top quartile in stats at the college in question, your kid has a decent shot at schools who offer aid.

[b]Check the common data set and it will tell you the number of kids who receive non-need based financial
aid AND the average award[/b].[/quote]

How does one find the common data set? [/quote]

Google the name of the school + Common Data Set.

I recommend the book, The College Solution, which lays out the strategy for finding the right school at the right price.[/quote]

This. Common Data Set is the place where you’ll find the answer to this question. It’s not an efficient process by any means (think of college, find CDS, copy key data) but I haven’t found any resource that compiles it. I’ll give you an example from a recent CDS hunt that’s illuminating. Bowdoin and Oberlin both do merit aid. Cool. Both are yes. But Bowdoin awards merit aid to 2% of incoming classes at an average of $1000 each year. Oberlin also does merit aid, but it awards same to 33% of incoming classes at an average of $19,000 each year. Very different. [/quote]

Yes.  Searching through the CDS for each school is time-consuming and tedious, but worth the effort.  Ditto re: the Net Price Calculator.

My DC got a $34K/year scholarship from Oberlin and no financial aid of any kind (other than the $5500 student loan) from Bowdoin or Williams, where she was admitted.  That is a huge difference.[/quote]

Which makes sense. Both Bowden and Williams (and Amherst and Colby and Bates...) say that they do not give merit aid.  Period. Oberlin and Kenyon do. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics