"The merit aid is so confusing because I don’t know what to tell my child the cutoff amount is for applying to schools. Realistically we can afford mid $30s (in-state rates) so do I tell my child a school over $50k is off limits for applying? Since he wants a larger school, most of the ones that seem to offer big merit are small. His grades are average, so I can’t imagine why a medium size or larger school would offer merit as I’m sure they’re getting lots of applications. Hopefully I’m wrong. Child would like to go to school out of this area, but cost is certainly a factor."

I think the best thing to do is set the limit on how much you can contribute, and be clear about whether you'll let them take out student loans. (Max is $27K in the aggregate.) They can then use the NPCs to figure out which schools with a high sticker price might give enough merit to them to meet your $35K out of pocket limit.

Join the Paying For College 101 Facebook group. There are lots of people there who are experts in this and can suggest schools if you share enough info about what you're looking for. There's an off shoot group for Higher Incomes but the regular one gets the most traffic.

I think merit aid is getting much harder, based on my own experience. I have a 2020 and 2022 student, and the 2020 student received more merit than the 2022 and they both had similar stats.

Your best bet is to evaluate your in-state options. They will likely still be less than any OOS or private with merit.

Anonymous wrote:I have an average child grade wide who doesn’t play sports or have any other hooks. And we’re white and middle class. Am I to assume child won’t receive any merit aid or scholarship? I’m looking at the college price tags and trying to figure out what’s realistic. If merit was a miracle, would it only be for like $5k or something hardly worth considering for OOS or private?

My kid who had a 3.7 unweighted (from a good public high school) and 4.2 weighted got into 7/10 schools she applied to (all small liberal arts colleges). Those that were "2nd tier" (think SLAC ranking between 30 and 90 on USNWR) all offered her at least $20,000 merit aid. Actually, the one exception was SMCM, which only cost $25,000 to attend at the time, they offered her 5K.)

So, don't lose hope but do cast a wide net.

Anonymous wrote:Generally, in state public schools offer the least amount of merit.

Because they are already discounted

Merit is definitely a possibility. Do you or your child have a preferred size or location?