Schools known for good merit aid

[sunkist184]

I believed someone earlier ask to see what scholarships people received.
My scholarship info:
Boston University- University Scholarship(half of tuition) $15765
UC Berkeley- Cal Bears Scholarship $5580
Alumni Scholarship $1500
UCLA- University Scholarship $1500
Whitman- A.J. Anderson Scholarship $6000

[JVP1]

My son received a $15,000 scholarship at Pratt w/ a $6060 grant.
NYIT offered him $14,000 in scholarship
University of Hartford offered $12,000

His sat score is 1260 and his gpa is 4.0

[deb922]

I don't know if this is of any interest to anyone but Michigan Tech offers in-state tution to anyone with a 3.5 average. They also offer in-state tution to children and grandchildren of alumni. Once you receive the merit scholarship, you will receive it for all 4 years. No min. GPA requirements.

Nice engineering school in the UP of Michigan. It is *really* in the middle of nowhere. Very good forestry school. Goes without saying but no one goes home on the weekends-lots of intermural sports. Nice campus, about 7000 students.

[cubed]

I got scholarships to the following schools:

U of Delaware - $15k/year
George Washingotn - $18k/year (I think they're known for giving lots of merit aid, but its really expensive to begin with)
U of Richmond - $17k/year (automatic scholarship b/c national hispanic recognition of PSATs)
Scripps College - $16k/year (they give out ~40 of these, 1 full)
Villanova - $4k/year (but they give bigger ones, as someone above said)
William and Mary - instate tuition (~$7k/year) paid (I would have had to pay the difference, since I'm out of state).

[crash]

No time to review nine pages of posts - so sorry if this has been posted before but I just stumbled across it and thought low income families interested in Williams might be interested:

http://www.williams.edu/admin/news/releases.php?id=868

[jazyurm]

were u nhrp hon mention or scholar finalist/ spsat/at- if u don't mind; my son wants delaware and is hispanic with 192psat/2060sat/3.7 wtd gpa-just trying to guess chances-thxs

[FloridaToNYC]

If you are a merit finalist, you should consider the University of Florida Honors program, especially if you're pre-med.For reasons I can't fully understand, they are obsessed with have the most merits in the Country(they are currently No.2). UFisranked about with BU, and they offer close to a full ride to merit finalists.Honors students have their own new dorm, where you live like a human being. Honors classes are 15-20 and are taught by tenured staff. classes are innovative and seminar style and system is fixed so the honors students pull most of the A's. Example--Freshman calc at UF is a class of 500. Thehonors program will be a class of 20, but they take the same final as general prgram and are in the general class curve. Also, if you go into the 7 year med school program they pay for the first year of med school. They also give extra money for ind. research or study abroad.

[carolyn]

Just wanted to mention that I have been working on a research project that actually looks at merit aid at all of the colleges in the U.S. by:
-- percentage of students who actually receive some merit aid,
-- average award amounts,
-- average award compared to total tuiton costs.

I have been surprised to see that many of the colleges we've identified here as "good for merit money" are not quite as good as we think they are by these standards. I'll be posting highlights of the results on my website in the next few weeks and will let you know here when that information is up.

[dudedad]

Carolyn --

Terrific site -- just posted to favorites. Thanks for being here!!!

[chrisd]

For a prospective engineering student, look at Olin College. Full four year tuition scholarship for all who are admitted.

[mol10e]

It seems that an analysis of merit aid money should not be undertaken from the point of view of averages. Part of the merit aid issue is the availability of that aid for students who are "superior" academically to the median student at the college or university. Certainly some merit aid awards are designed to bring down the costs of attendance by a large percentage of the upper quartile of applicants (See University of Rochester as an example of this approach), but other schools are trying to attract the HYP crowd. My point is that merit aid money averages don't mean much. What would be more relevant would be to find out how much the average upper quartile applicant to a particular college is awarded in merit aid and how colleges compare on this measure.

[FloridaToNYC]

I think all academic merit aid falls into on of three categories:

1. Those looking to "Buy" HYP crowd, merit finalists, high sat performers on unlimited basis. i.e. University of Miami will give 50% discount to those with Xsats, 75% to those with Y sat scores. and 100% with Z scores. The amount in the fund is unlimited, and you can pretty much know what you will get before you apply.

2.Those who like to spread smaller amounts of money to large numbers of students (most of whom could probebly afford to go there anyway.i.e. put NYU in this category. Here, for instance, the test taking and academic stud who would typically get a full ride at olin, cooper union, Miami or Florida would probebly get 10 grand or so off the $45,000 ticket.

3. Those who give specific scholarships to students with specific qualities and/or backgrounds that the university gives to meet its desired freshman class composition.Maybe Hopkins falls here.

[dudedad]

I disagree with your statement about Miami. First, I don't know this, but I doubt if "the amount in the fund is unlimited". Also, even if you meet UofM criteria with test scores and class ranking,their merit aid awards are not a slam dunk, and are awarded at the schools discretion. This is spelled out on the UofM web site.

[Northstarmom]

Miami also is rated lower than is University of Florida, which in addition to having more merit aid (particularly NM scholars) also is much cheaper, even for out of state students.

[FloridaToNYC]

Miami scholarships DO require corrosponding GPAs.i.e. the full ride also requires a weighted 4.33 (.5 honors and 1.00 AP). Why would anyone with 1460 and a 4.33 want to go there--usually it's the pre-med or oceanogrphy programs) The U of Florida package for merit finalists is of course a great deal--which is why they are second only to Harvard in merits. One day this PSAT Merit thing will blow up. At least they should give the thing twice and take an averge--or use the best of two.