Best semi-competitive public schools for OOS merit aid (business focus)?

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UW-Madison does little to no merit for typical OOS students.

University of Minnesota might with high GPA/test scores. More competitive for CSE and Carlson (business). In some cases, can match in state tuition.

From doing a little app help for students and watching the process the last many years, I think a lot of these will be more competitive for OOS than many people imagine, and double that if you are hoping for merit in range of instate tuition. Especially if you are applying from a major metro that may have many similar applicants. Your reach schools are likely to be full price. Michigan was for us and my kid had 99% stats.

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Bit of a tangent so I will keep it brief, but if you dig into the financial conversations at a lot of public university systems, you will see that among other things they tend to view OOS students as an opportunity to generate more net tuition per student, which then operates as a sort of cross-subsidy for their in-state students.

Once you learn this, it is interesting to see how often merit offers to OOS applicants are scaled to make them competitive with full pay OOS at competing publics, but not necessarily to get them all the way down to in-state costs. Which makes sense because they still “profit” on OOS students in that range.

Again, this is by no means a hard rule, some publics also have Big Merit programs designed to compete even with in-state costs at other publics. But such Big Merit programs are far less common, and I think this is a big part of the reason.

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Try the NPC for UNC and see if you would be eligible for FA, given 3 kids in college over a 5 year period. I am not sure how they will calculate multiple kids in college with the new Fafsa changes - you can call and ask.

Keep in mind that there is a 19% cap on OOS students.

I would take a look at Alabama’s merit awards. For many (all?) of the schools you listed it is going to be very difficult to get the cost down to $25,000-30,000 a year.

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Starting with freshmen entering for Fall 2025, Univ of Arizona is ending its program which keeps tuition at whatever the rate is that it was when you first enrolled at the school. They also stated a little earlier this month that they’re going to be reducing some of their OOS auto-merit scholarships as a way to alleviate some of the ridiculous $250M budget short-fall that occurred this year due to university financial mis-management.

This is a long way of saying 2 things:

  1. Whatever the U of A OOS merit awards are this year? Don’t assume they’ll stay the same for future years.
  2. Even for Arizona in-state students, tuition WILL increase each year and your merit scholarship will NOT increase.

I’m not saying to leave it out of the running at all. But be aware of this so you’re not surprised. U of A has a great business school.

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Somebody earlier mentioned Ole Miss. Here’s where you can find info about their OOS scholarships → Office of Financial Aid | NR Entering Freshman - Office of Financial Aid

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Unless he is top of class and very high scores, merit is hard to come by at UMd, at all. And the price starts high. Arizona has some serious financial issues so OOS aid is likely to be an issue.

UDel, Pitt, Temple, and Minnesota would be better choices with high GPA, rigor, and scores. Get those SAT/ACTs as high as you can go. SUNYs are on the cheaper side though Bing will be much more competitive for merit

However, public’s are one end of the spectrum. I know you asked about public’s but also think about the mid-range catholic private schools (ie not Villanova or Fordham). St Joes in Philly, Loyola-MD in. Baltimore, and Fairfield, Seton Hall or Marist all near NYC. These schools had moderate starting prices and give a ton of merit so you can get down at least closer to the value you want. And, they are ‘barely’ catholic (Marist used to be). Since they are all in or near large cities, they have good opportunities for internships and hiring out of school for business majors.

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UMD, UIUC and Purdue are unlikely to provide you any merit aid (or very little, in the event they do) because these are all very competitive and popular public schools. Their overall acceptance rate is below your desired 40-60%, and much lower for business (all three have undergraduate business programs ranked in the top 25 by USNWR).

Rutgers and NJIT may give some merit aid but highly unlikely to get you under $30k.

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FSU with OOS waiver would be affordable. High GPA, no C’s and 1400+ SAT would be in the running. S21 is very happy at FSU.

South Carolina for international business. Great program.

GT could work. Three years is very doable with AP credits or DE credits. S20 just graduated early. Basically 6 semesters of classes plus one and summers on campus with internship and co-op. Cost was about the same as our in-state flagship would’ve been for 4 years.

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Utah still has decent merit for very strong students (~4.0UW with 7-10 APs). For OOS the top merit is $20K plus a further $5K towards room & board (net tuition, room & board cost ~$25K-$30K). Most get instate residency after the first year (by staying for the summer) then the net cost is only $10K-$15K for the remaining 3 years.

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My daughter’s least expensive option was Saint Joe’s, followed by Bing and then Temple I believe, after merit.

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The max OOS merit at UW-Seattle isn’t going to get you anywhere near 30K.

Just to highlight a couple of schools that txfriendly mentioned:

  • Utah may not get you to budget on merit alone, but they do have the path-to-residency option that allows you to pay in-state rates (which are within your budget even without merit) for years 2-4. Both the business school and the Honors College have a lot to offer, and SLC is a convenient travel hub. Lots of local opportunities for business students in SLC.
  • Nebraska is not only generous with merit (off a relatively low sticker price), but also offers strong business honors programs. Nebraska Business Honors Academy | Academics | Business | Nebraska (and also the Raikes School which combines business and CS - but it doesn’t sound like your kid is looking for a CS-heavy program.) Lincoln gets high marks as a college town, and has good internship opportunities for business students.

In general, look at what the honors programs/colleges offer, not just at the school as a whole. South Carolina is another with a strong honors college. UGA also - and the scholarships associated with the Honors College are highly competitive, but great if you can get one.

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He is HS class of 2026? That means he is a currently a HS sophomore, correct?
That being the case, so much could change in terms of his interests, ideas, possible majors, and even places he might want to actually attend college.

If your kid plans to apply to UMD, they need to apply in the early round when over 80% of the incoming class is accepted.

Re: merit aid at these publics. many public universities provide limited merit aid to OOS students as their mission is to assist their residents first and foremost. On this list, I don’t see any that would guarantee any substantial merit aid.

University of Alabama and University of Tulsa would provide solid merit. Tulsa really best if the junior year PSAT makes the kid eligible for National Merit Semifinalist status. Check University of New Mexico for their Amigo scholarship. Check U of Arizona and Arizona State (although word on the streets is that AZ is considering cutting aid to OOS students).

The bigger question here is
how much can you afford to pay annually? This is actually more important than merit aid potential. Your net costs need to be affordable. So
what is your upper limit annually?

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OK - a few things:

Pre Law = any major, great test taker, strong GPA, and at top schools today, work experience

Pre MBA = any major, great test taker in most cases, decent GPA, and at least two - but preferably 3-5 years work experience.

So it really makes little sense to be thinking about an MBA - at this point For both law and business, the where you go to school will matter little. Harvard, for example, has students from 147 colleges this year and last year nearly 175 - schools like Cal State LA, U of Arkansas, Fairleigh Dickinson, Auburn, Drake, and tons and tons of what you’d deem 2nd and 3rd tier schools. Yale similar
schools like Quinnipiac and many more that are not elite.

Yes, they’ll have kids from the top schools in droves - but likely for the same reason they got into top schools to begin with - they’re top students
but the top top schools are showing older kids into law school.

Business - the work experience is almost most critical. In fact, kids that go straight through typically don’t go to great schools
can’t get in. But if you do go straight through - at my old company, we gave a $5K salary bump and before I left they were talking about reducing that
 The reason - a student without work experience doesn’t have life experiences to add to the discussion, don’t have the perspective, etc. At other schools, the average salary undergrad to graduate doubles and more
but having a finance undergrad and then MBA doesn’t necessarily add as much educationally
as say History or even Econ to MBA
it’s too similar.

Now your question can be answered in regards to who provides merit - but you need to determine the UW GPA - because different schools report weighted GPAs differently. So take the students grades - 4 for an A, 3 for a B - and figure the unweighted.

If we assume it’s above a 3.5, those you’ll want to look at schools like, - depending on budget, Alabama, UAH, Ole Miss, Ms State, UTK, Arkansas, Kentucky, Truman State, Louisville, some regionals, Miami Ohio, U of South Carolina, U of Arizona, ASU, W Carolina, the Kansas schools, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Mizzou, SUNY, the Dakotas and much more. and for privates - U Denver, U Miami, some LACs ranked 50 or below, etc.

I can’t tell you who has a 40-60% acceptance rate but I would ask why it would even matter? It wouldn’t.

What you need is a budget - not to worry about merit. For example, W Carolina is $20K all in full cost. So if a school is $60K and gives you $20K merit, it’s double the cost of W Carolina for OOS.

Having multiple kids may or may not help
but bottom line - that’ll be up to the private schools
for what it’s worth, I had two kids at once and it didn’t help.

Any major (management, finance or
art history or journalism or sociology)
whatever interests the student is either pre-law or pre MBA which is really just a direction and potential level of advising.

And you need your unweighted GPA (not weighted) so we can have an apples to apples - and ultimately you’ll need a budget vs. who gives what merit
etc. Merit does not give you a total cost and we need to know the total cost you want to hit. With the PSAT, he’s likely not Natl Merit
but if he were, you could be free full ride. Assuming the SAT is close to as strong and the GPA is over 3.5, you can be as low as $20K full pay and certainly have many options under $40K - including some privates.

You also need to find out - what type of school interests the student - small, medium, large
weather, greek, sports, etc
because cheap is great but kids have to live day after day after day for four years in the environment they select.

Hope that helps.

PS - until you have a budget, there’s no reason to have a list
but another thing to look at - UNC for example - impossible (ok, not impossible but very hard) to get in OOS and their b school is not direct admission
so you apply for it Junior year. If they 100% want business, you want a direct admit
not to have to apply again in two years.

PPS - I just saw $25-30K - so Bama, UAH , Miss State, Ole Miss, potentially FSU, Truman State for small, maybe a W Carolina, Millersville, CNU or Salisbury, some SUNY, some directional. There might be some others - in the middle of the country - like Iowa State, a UNLV
but for big school, likely heading South.

It’s not going to be your Big 10 schools like UIUC, Michigan/Michigan State, Pitt, Penn State, UNC
dont’ even go there.

Privates - maybe York College of PA or you’ll need big need.

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What type of finance are we talking about? I ask because there are some regional differences.

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Yes to everything here, especially about “pre-law” and “pre-business”

  • someone with an MBA married to a lawyer

Law school, btw, is a huge grind of reading and writing. Any major where your writing will be turned from coal to diamond would be helpful.

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Absolutely.

A major which requires analyzing dense, arcane, possibly outdated or even non-native-language texts might also be helpful. Philosophy, Classics, History, Literature, and such. Those are typically writing majors too, so you get development of both of the fundamental skill sets.

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U w madison would likely be almost full pay for oos.

Privates ended up cheaper for us except for oos U of Louisiana Lafayette.

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I think you’ll be close to $30k at Bing. That’s what the total COA came in at for my instate 2023. (Zero need based or merit aid). Your student has higher stats than mine did, so I assume they’d have a good chance at merit that would bring it close to instate COA. Binghamton seems to be interested in building their brand and attracting high stat OOS kids. Good luck!!!
ETA: sorry this was aimed at OP :grinning:

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my kid (not for business though) got decent merit $ from Ohio State and UGA. Both have solid business schools. She is at UGA and Terry business school is really nice!
FSU is also good for OOS merit $.

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The questions that people have posed about what your son wants out of his college experience is really important to figure out, in addition to the budget. Has your family visited any colleges yet? What have been his impressions/preferences?

It sounds as though your son will have very high test scores and a strong GPA, along with solid ECs. Unless you qualify for financial aid (which you believe is unlikely), then this is what I would do:

  1. Get very familiar with all of your in-state public school options. These are likely to be within budget. Look at their honors colleges, research opportunities, special living communities, extracurricular options, etc. Your kid needs to be happy to attend at least one of these.

  2. Your son should look for the road less-traveled if he’s seeking to find a school that will meet his budget. That means areas of the country that are less popular (midwest, western states that are not along the Pacific) or types of areas that are less popular (i.e. small towns and/or rural) or a cool, popular urban location but at a school that not everyone has heard of before. (Then again, many Americans probably couldn’t name more than about 15 “top” schools according to USNWR, so that will be true even if your son attended a “top” program that hasn’t been there for about 100 years.)

Some of the state flagships that are likely to get within budget have already been mentioned, like KU, U. of Nebraska, Ole Miss, etc. If your son associates sports enthusiasm with big schools, then he might want to consider schools like Creighton, Marquette, U. of Dayton, or Xavier. Or look at schools like U. of Cincinnati or U. of Louisville for bigger schools with sports enthusiasm. If he prefers the idea of a smaller college that offers business then consider some like John Carroll, U. of Redlands, Siena, Stetson, Rollins, Samford, Stonehill, Saint Edward’s or Augustana. I could list more.

With a $25-30k budget, there are numerous possibilities. Wish the exception of U. of Washington, it appears as though he prefers the eastern half of the U.S. (unless this list designed by you and these are your preferences). But some questions to help dive into what those preferences might be are listed below:

  • Has he experienced large, mid-size, and small colleges to know his preferences?
  • What about urban, suburban, small town, or rural?
  • Climate?
  • States he would prefer (or prefer to avoid)?
  • How does he feel about Greek life?
  • A high degree of intercollegiate sports enthusiasm?
  • Does he prefer the anonymity of larger classes or does he prefer small, discussion-based classes?
  • What kind of vibe would he like to find on campus, or what kind of vibe does he think he will find his kind of people in?
    Are there any particular interests that he would like to pursue?
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