Experience from applications last year: regarding private colleges, we found that the ’ full retail’ tuition varied considerably from one to another, but room and board fell within a narrower range. D deliberately applied to schools with excellent theatre depts but somewhat less selective academic ranges, and the majority of made offers for D’s academic stats (ACT 31, top 10% of class at comprehensive public HS) that brought the tuition down to what one of our California public universities would have cost. (D applied exclusively to schools from Chicago eastward). What I want to emphasize is that the dollar amount of the merit awards varied according to the ‘retail’ tuition, but the net cost to our family was very similar.
Private colleges that made additional offers were: Lindenwood University (stacking merit and acting scholarships that more than covered tuition), LIU (upped an existing merit scholarship offer after audition to almost cover tuition entirely), and North Central College (stacking merit and artistic scholarships; this was D’s ‘safety’ non-audition program that she would have been happy to attend, had she not received auditioned BFA admittances).