What is your expectation of Merit during this economy ?. It is it more likely increase or reduce. Looks like top schools are offering more fin aid. What about Merit? Especially, northeast region. I am looking at OOS public colleges.
I think merit is mainly baked but you never know. I’m watching the Pitt thread and it’s certainly seems like more than past years. Maybe it’s not but seems like more kids.
Merit, in and of itself, isn’t important.
Overall cost is important.
So you build a budget and go from there.
For example, U of Colorado with merit is in almost every case more expensive than U of Florida or Purdue full pay.
So saying - who has merit - really isn’t the question.
The question is - who can hit my price point - so state that price point And where you are from.
Why I ask? New England states have a consortium which offers discounts to residents of other New England States and Maine and New York schools both match tuition from certain other states.
Best to do is a chance me where you can list schools of interest and the budget plus your stats and we can better assess.
But people who look for merit really are looking at things, in my opinion, the wrong way.
They should look for schools who will hit the price point they want. Some may do without merit while others can’t get there with merit.
I’d look on the websites to see if you qualify for automatic merit at any college of interest. Other than that, it could happen but I would not count on merit aid as an OOS student.
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I’ve had kids in public universities for over 10 years, anecdotal evidence but it seems like merit has been going down.
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I think it’s school dependent - but the student needs a budget, not a list of who gives merit. For the budget, then one can assess who might work.
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None of the schools my kids applied to had auto merit, so the only way to find out was to apply.
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for certain majors, unless I missed something this year (though a good deal and some majors are easy to double in and have it count).
To OP - I think it will vary by school/state and I don’t really expect this year to be very different than last, now 2-3 years in future maybe..
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budget is $40,000.00, we have couple of instate application which is affordable. I checked the other website which shows with merit 3 of the other OOS option is affordable. She wants to go out of state. I hope merit comes in. At this moment I just have to wait and see. Thanks everyone.
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Can you share more?
What state are you in?
What is the GPA, SAT/ACT score?
Major?
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Private universities may be less competitive expensive than public ones, OOS.
Public universities that offer merit to OOS applicants that are in the top 10% of their applicants would include (if high stats:34-36 act/1480+ SAT, high GPA) Pitt, Udel ; if slightly lower stats, Temple, Towson, UMaine, UMass Lowell , URI, SUNY Albany, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Geneseo?
Pitt and UDel aren’t coming in at $40,000 unless very very high stats.
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@Butterfly2022 merit aid in the northeast is a tough nut to crack. Yes, it’s offered at some colleges. Often it is highly competitive, and sometimes major dependent.
We don’t know anything about your student…if they even are competitive for merit aid at these colleges. There aren’t very many auto merit awards in the northeast.
Some net price calculators do ask for stats and those might give an estimate if merit aid awards. I’d use these as an estimate only for awards that are not guaranteed.
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Regardless of stats, for Pitt, even with the max regular merit ($20k/year) the OOS COA would still be at least $43k (and higher than that for engineering, business, computing, etc). So it really depends on whether $40k is a hard limit.
Edited to add: actually, I’m not sure it’s even possible to get as low as $43k, because in practice, we only see the $20k being awarded to engineering students, whose tuition is $4k higher…
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I agree. 
But we don’t really know OP’s kid’s stats or the major and this could be a 1580/4.0/10 AP 5s student, ie , exceptional.
It’s a very good price point for the OP to look at because parents of such students may expect high scholarships.
Or seeing the stats needed could help recalibrate the list.
40k is a huge amount and if parents haven’t followed the evolution in college flagship pricing, it’s best if they consider the landscape (especially in the Northeast) now: few automatic scholarships, high stats.
UMaine not UVermont, Towson not UMD, some they may have considered safeties which may be too much financially, etc.
Smaller, private colleges tend to discount much more (except for the “meet need only” colleges).
UDel max has been $17,000 with the exception of 100 students invited to a special weekend.
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There’s auto merit in the NE but do need details I asked earlier. $40k shouldn’t be an issue if flexible with the name.
Could you list some places with auto merit in the northeast?
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The smaller SUNY schools will come in at your desired cost without merit: Oneonta, Oswego, Geneseo, etc.
Are you able to provide us with more information?
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My opinion is the OOS merit aid for public U’s is lower that what used to be common, at least in the Northeast. I can affirm that in the last five-ten years, certainly, colleges that routinely offered substantial OOS merit awards have cut back. BUT, this probably is very dependent on the state and the colleges in question.
As an example, our district had a lot of kids accepted to Penn State as OOS students, with good merit awards. By the time my kid applied in 2019, he was accepted with $0. He had a 93 GPA and a 34 ACT. This has been true in our district ever since.
Run the NPC. And choose a public U in your state that you like and can afford.
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If the student does stay in state there will be opportunities to study either abroad and/or at a college sponsored program in the US. And there will be plenty of time to move out of state after college.
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