Kenyon tops out at $25k per year. Brings cost around $50k. Really, for the most options, @pickleberry7 will have to increase budget to $50k and then get the top merit scholarships that more LACs offer which tend to be more like $20-25k
@pickleberry7 Of the schools on your list, I think WUSTL might be a very good fit even though it is a university. It offers up to full tuition scholarships to very high stats kids -and it feels like a LAC but with the resources of a major university.
Would suggest a visit.
Thanks @homerdog for the correction. Did Kenyon get rid of their half and full tuition merit scholarships or am I remembering incorrectly?
@Eeyore123 Those don’t show up on Kenyon’s website any longer. 
Definitely have her apply for the MHC Diversity fly-in. My D was selected and got to fly out this Fall and enjoyed the weekend. For a variety of reasons, she decided MHC wasn’t a great fit and didn’t end up applying, but they have a pretty liberal definition of what qualifies for that weekend (you don’t need to be ethnically diverse). Your D’s LBGTQ status and some of her interests could qualify her (for my D, she wrote her essay about inclusivity and some of her student leadership and teen mental health advocacy work and even though she’s a white suburban middle class kiddo, she was invited to the weekend).
Reading your initial post, Mount Holyoke would have been my suggestion for her. My (biracial Asian / white, has two moms) kid was just accepted ED1 to Smith, but would have applied ED2 to MHC if Smith hadn’t worked out. MHC was by far her favorite at this point last year, but she got more militant over the summer and decided Smith was a better fit for her.
Regarding other schools mentioned:
- I really liked Agnes Scott as a safety. It fell off my kid's list because she thought the marketing emails she got from them were too focused on making white people feel comfortable, rather than reflecting the actual (desirable to her) diversity offered. It's also quite small, and doesn't coordinate academic calendars with the many schools where cross-registration is available. Honestly, I don't anticipate that the top law schools would give an edge to a MHC grad over an ASC grad with similar GPA and LSAT - to the extent that undergrad comes into play, IMHO it's a much narrower list where name matters.
- Lawrence (and particularly Appleton) felt really white to all of us. We went to an open house featuring lunch with a professor, and the parents sat at the table with the Chinese prof, who otherwise would have sat alone. She indicated that the level of student ability / engagement was not sufficient for her to teach traditional characters, only simplified. It's a great school, but I don't see it as being "more rigorous" than ASC - and ASC has guaranteed-for-stats merit.
My kid was a less competitive applicant than it looks like yours will be, and we weren’t specifically looking for merit. So I haven’t necessarily scoped out merit availability at any of these, but they otherwise met her initial criteria (reasonably liberal, reasonably ethnically diverse, reasonable number and percentage of domestic students self-identifying as Asian, reasonably academically challenging, neither tiny nor huge) and had relatively high admission rates at the time I ran the search:
American University
Austin College
Clark University
Connecticut College
Earlham College
Goucher College
Ithaca College
Kalamazoo College
Knox College
Lake Forest College
Macalester College
Mills College
Occidental College
Sarah Lawrence College
Skidmore College
Southwestern University
The College of Wooster
Trinity University (CT)
University of Denver
University of Puget Sound
University of the Pacific
Ursinus College
Wheaton College (MA)
Whitman College
Willamette University
@homerdog St Olaf’s room/board/tuition is just under 61K. It also offers talent scholarships (art/music/dance/theater/service-leadership that can stack with academic merit for up to 50% of COA, so it could meet the OP’s 30K price point.
@pickleberry7 One way to reduce costs at Oberlin is for your child to opt for co-op living/dining, which can reduce R&B costs by about 5-6K. If your daughter prefers a vegetarian diet, it might be worth a look. Best case scenario still would be closer to 40K than 30K, though.
Macalester would be a potentially great fit and it prides itself on its globalism and diversity. However, its maximum merit award last year was 20K. National merit adds another 2K. Current COA is 69K, so probably too expensive.
Somebody mentioned Clark U upthread. IIRC, it strives for diversity and inclusion in its student body. When I looked a few years ago, the merit awards were fairly generous.
While possibly not a great fit for your daughter in regards to diversity, Hendrix offers excellent merit and also extends an invitation to a scholarship weekend to those who meet stat requirements. Hendrix is located in Arkansas, so not a super popular locale, but my entire family was surprised by what a hidden gem the school was. It also has a strong rate of acceptance into grad school.
It might be worth looking into as an option for a financial safety. We really loved it and I’m surprised that it doesn’t get more air time on CC.
I’ve seen Hendrix recommended on CC fairly regularly. I researched it and visited it with my D, and I would not recommend it for the OP’s daughter.
Allegheny College in pa. Two of my friends kids have attended and had very good experiences. I know they give merit and I believe they also start with a lower COA than some of the most elite LACs.
“She is not applying to any ivys or T20s because we can’t afford the tuition”
If you are going to stretch the budget towards $40K per year for four years ($160K total), and she has plenty of 5s in her APs, then I would definitely think carefully about whether Oxford ($45K-$50K x 3 years for non-science subjects) might work.
Lafayette College recently increased the amounts of their merit scholarships:
“The College is increasing the size of merit-based awards, transforming the Marquis Fellowship into a full-tuition award ($54,500) and the Marquis Scholarship into a half-tuition award ($27,250). It expects to enroll 10 students as Fellows and another 50 as Scholars among the first-year students arriving this fall.”
Lafayette’s total COA for 2019-20 is $71,225.
(https://admissions.lafayette.edu/college-costs/)
The half tuition scholarship gets you to $43,975.
Subtract realistic “self help” from that ($7500?) and you’re still thousands over budget. That’s before travel, books, health insurance, a laptop, etc., or annual cost increases.
But among LACs that grant merit to >= 10% of students, Lafayette’s average award seems to be among the highest ($28,900 per Kiplinger’s). So, realistically, I still think that hitting a $30K target, at private LACs as selective as Lafayette, may be tough. Not to say impossible, but you may need to consider some alternatives with lower sticker prices.
I love LAC’s in for the quality of their education, but for LGBTQ students I’d be sure to talk to your daughter about the downside as well, which is the size of the dating pool. Gallup estimates the US population to be about 4.5% LGBTQ, so if a school has 2000 students and half are female, on average there are only 50 lesbians at the school. YMMV school to school, of course.
@pickleberry7 - Has she investigated Rice? Merit alone could not get her to $30K, but well worth running the NPC to see if you qualify for aid - they are known for their generous aid.
It is funny you mention it, because last night after reading this thread, we sat her down and talked about focusing on some of the pros of bigger schools that might be more affordable. We gave her this same information about the actual numbers of potential LGBTQ/feminist/liberal friends (she is dating someone so the dating argument has very little traction right now).
I think the number of more liberal / feminist/ lesbian classmates definitely influences her interest in women’s colleges. She is also particularly interested in schools that have consortiums, which increase the population over really small schools.
I just wanted to thank everyone again for all the suggestions. I am taking notes and will have my daughter start doing research.
I realized we need to go back and reassess our list. We had originally planned on about $10k- $15k need-based aid for the more expensive meets-need schools. My husband got a surprise bonus at the end of the year that likely puts us above any need-based aid at all. I had forgotten that I had used that possible need calculation in our original list. I am glad we know bonuses are a thing now, rather than after we had need included in a financial aid package that might not continue after her first year.
Thinking through other school options, last night we talked to her a little about expanding beyond LACs if they aren’t affordable. She would love to go to school in California and would happily have gone to any UC if they were affordable (we know there is no merit there, but in theory she would trade-off LACs for that location). We are putting a little energy in to helping her think about other options that may have good locations or other appealing features, even if they aren’t LACs.
We are reluctant to send her anywhere in the southeast or south besides Florida, but are wondering about other northern or western areas we don’t know much about like the pacific northwest? Are there non-LACs that aren’t humongous like Washington U we should be adding to our list?
I think one area you should really look at when picking very small schools is the number of courses offered each semester in subjects she’s interested in. We looked at some very small schools (under 2000) and there just weren’t enough offerings in science and math for one daughter. She wasn’t terribly advanced, but was going to do engineering and she needed to stay on sequence. It was pretty clear that she’d have ONE choice for each course each semester and if she got off sequence it would really screw up graduating in 4 years (or even 5). Look at the offerings for the last few semesters, not the course catalog.
My second daughter went to a bigger school (10,000 students) but for the last semester in particular she needed 3 or 4 upper level history courses to graduate and while there were 10+ offered, 3 were at the same time as the required senior seminar she needed, 2 she had already taken, and some of the others she just wasn’t interested in. She talked her way into one that was full and it all worked out and she graduated on time, but all the courses in the catalog aren’t offered every semester (or even every year) so make sure there is a good assortment offered regularly.
There are a lot of catholic schools on the west coast that give good merit (USD, USF, Portland, Seattle) but she’d have to decide if they are too conservative for her.
I think Tulane is generous with merit (correct me, anyone, if I"m wrong), hits a sweet spot in terms of size, and may be one area of the South where she could be comfortable. I went to Tulane for a masters degree, and I think the school (and New Orleans as a whole) is very LGTBQ-friendly.
I see now that it’s on your original list, so just a heads-up that it’s still probably a great option and maybe better for her than a LAC (except, perhaps, a women’s college.
My D20 sounds like a twin to your kiddo with “only” a 34 ACT and less math rigor, but she is in the same boat with being full pay. We can afford to send her anywhere but refused to pay $50,000 a year for college. She concentrated on schools with full tuition or full ride scholarships that had honors colleges. She did receive full tuition to U of Arizona and Temple. Another school I think you should consider is LMU. They do give out 10 full ride scholarships per year and your daughter certainly has the resume. Scripps is on our list but that will only get you down to 50k with their best scholarship. USC is my daughters dream but getting in is a crapshoot, let alone seeing $. Feel free to PM me if interested in her full list.