howitworks

The graphics with this NY Times story are the best tools I've seen for finding the most generous schools for merit aid:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/ed...it-awards.html

Click on the graphic link to the left of the story and you can can sort each column and see which of the more than 600 schools offer merit aid to the highest percentage of freshmen or give the highest average awards. You can also see whether each school has raised or lowered its awards since 2007-08, right before the recession.

The graphic is at: Colleges and Universities That Award Merit Aid - Graphic - NYTimes.com

It's also worth checking the Education Life section in the Sunday NYT paper for another graphic that filters out most of the small colleges and lists the top 100 merit-aid schools that have at least 2,000 undergraduates, give awards to at least 10% of freshmen and provide average amounts of at least $5,000. The data all comes from the College Board.

cmarshall497

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Murray Scholars Program at the College of William and Mary. It gives scholars ~$20,000, which is in-state COA (OOS won't get the full ride, but they'll have a big chunk of it taken care of.) And you can study abroad at Oxford!

jushyosaha604

That graphic is nice, but they should have added a column to sort by average percentage of tuition met. For example, when you sort by Average merit aid (descending), Johns Hopkins is near the top with $29,000. It's tuition is $43,000, so that's an average of about 67%.

A few spots below it, Campbell University's average scholarship is $22,000, but it's tuition is $23,000, so that's around 96% of tuition.

I'm not saying one or the other is better (in fact I know nothing about Campbell University)... Just saying it would be nice if we could sort it that way

Thanks for the link though

keetseel

According to the NYT article, the Art Institute of Chicago gives away an average of $6610 each year. When my daughter was there for a tour last fall, she was told that a few students get their whole tuition paid and the rest get nada (i.e., whatever they can get from the Federal gov't plus loans). So even though the average looks generous, it's not a good deal for the majority of the students. I assume that this is the case with all the schools on the list; looking at the average award doesn't mean anything. Unlike need-based aid, it's all or nothing.