Good liberal arts colleges that give merit scholarships

Google “colleges that meet full financial need.” You will find several top-ranked LACs. Unfortunately, most of these are the most competitive schools. Also, they might not in actuality meet your full financial need, and might be “need aware” in admissions. For example, Williams is a tip-top LAC. It is very wealthy and really does meet full financial need, I believe, and has need blind admissions. But is extremely competitive. The College of the Holy Cross is one that offers academics as strong as anywhere. It claims to meet full financial need, although I don’t know how it would work out in any specific case. It definitely is very competitive in admission, but not as extremely so as Williams.

In terms of merit scholarships, several excellent midwestern LACs offer generous merit aid to a wide range of students. These include Denison, College of Wooster, and Kalamazoo College.

Also, check out Colleges that Change Lives. It’s a pretty large list and financial aid policies will obviously vary. I get a sense that many often offer substantial aid packages but still cost a fair amount, if that works for you and your family.

https://ctcl.org

Rhodes College is an outstanding LAC. It’s also competitive in admissions but offers as much as lots of schools that are much more insanely competitive. I’m not very knowledgable about financial aid policies there.

https://www.rhodes.edu/about-rhodes

If any of these schools look good to you, run the Net Price Calculators on their websites to get good estimates for how much you’d be expected to pay.

Good luck!