Tulane is very generous with merit. They offered my DD $30k per year in merit last year - and she had much lower stats than your DD (although similar ECs and leadership).
@pickelberry7 I also wanted to mention that all our research along the way indicates that law schools do NOT care where you go for undergrad; they simply care about GPA and LSATs. H’s secretary had a 4.0 at UN Reno and did well on the LSAT and was admitted to 3 Top 15 law schools…better to save your $ for grad school!!!
I should mention my D20 was accepted to Sarah Lawrence EA with their Presidential Merit of $35k per year with lower stats than your kid. It is known for very rigorous academics with a focused independent study project attached to every course. Also can confirm that two of her middle school classmates were both accepted ED @ Tulane with very generous merit.
First, geographic diversity can help with admissions and merit offers. I’m pretty sure my high stats D was offered the biggest merit scholarship that Scripps offers in part b/c she was applying from NC. (My D is also a go getter – when we visited Scripps she reached out to a biology professor who to meet b/c her academic interests align my my D’s. Turns out she was the chair of the faculty which she had no idea and so that prolly didn’t hurt, lol.)
Second, don’t assume colleges in the South won’t be a good fit. Emory and Tulane are two examples of great schools that offer merit, are medium-sized and have plenty of diverse, liberal kids. In fact, we know a first-year at Emory who is biracial and gay. She chose it over Wellesley b/c they offered her $$ and b/c she thought it’d be a more balanced college experience. (She found Wellesley great on paper but intense when she did an overnight.)
Pretty much all big cities are liberal today when you’re talking about their urban cores, whether it’s Atlanta, Charlotte, New Orleans, etc. Your D would feel comfortable.
I think this has been mentioned - but Univ. of Miami in Florida is also worth a look – I know less about its student body, however.
Case Western should be on her radar. Very diverse student body (including a lot of Asian Americans) and they are good with merit, though I think merit $$ is getting hard each year.
We made a spreadsheet of the list of colleges for admitted students at T14 law schools and the frequency they are included. Not every school releases that list (and each college is included only once, so it doesn’t account for multiple admits from the same school) but several did for each of the last two years. There are about 500 schools on the list. As long as a school is on that list, we are working on the assumption that it is probably rigorous enough for any law school. My husband went to Stanford law and used to do T14 law school admissions consulting, so we are actually a little more familiar with law school admissions than undergrad.
And I agree about saving our money for grad school! We think she has a better opportunity for personal connection with professors at a smaller school, but if we can afford to help with a year or two of law/grad school then state school might be better. We spent 15 years paying down our own law/grad school loans, so we want to help her (and our other kid who is a very different student) avoid that if at all possible.
@Itisatruth are you 100 percent sure that those Tulane kids got merit and not need based aid ED?
I am going to talk to her about both Emory and Duke, since she does have some preference for prestige (which is not coming from me–though her dad is Asian so she may have absorbed some of that from him over the years!). I don’t think I can sell Texas, but we have friends in both GA and NC she can talk to about the climate for LGBTQ kids.
I actually used to work at Case. If she were science focused, it would be one of her top choices. Since she has much more of a humanities/liberal arts focus, it isn’t currently on the list.
Based on the experiences of the high stats students at my kid’s magnet school, the big merit money is from the named scholarships at tier two schools. We’re in Texas, so we know students who have received full rides at SMU and U Texas Dallas. Some of the scholarships come with many extras including travel abroad and summer programs. U Texas Dallas also offers generous merit beyond special scholarships since they are gearing up to become a tier 1 school.
As you are well aware, the elites only give need based aid. However, elite school will never leave a gap between aid and need. Beyond that, you can read the news reports of how colleges use big data to get a very detailed idea of what your family can afford, what you’d be offered as needs based aid for the elites, and what might entice you to attend. From what we’ve seen, school will try to give you a better deal than the elites or come reasonably close to what you would pay at your in state flagship. Not a lot of these offers outside the special scholarships noted above will feel comfortable.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying that your daughter would be in play for the special scholarships at non elite schools so you should search them out. Otherwise, it may be difficult to get the level of merit you’d prefer.
We have had Sarah Lawrence on our to-research list, but their website doesn’t list how high merit awards go. If they go that high, it would be a real contender. I will call this week and confirm they will be in that range next year. Thanks!
@pickleberry7 can you provide a link to the colleges sending students to top law schools?
Duke and Emory have merit but it’s super hard to get it. Super hard. Those kids don’t just have high stats, they’ve really done something special during their high school years. They are typically big on leadership beyond their high school. And, like I think I mentioned earlier, these competitive merit awards at elite universities many times go to either (a) kids who will get into Ivies or (b) bring some diversity to campus (even though that is not explicitly stated).
I don’t know if either of those are worth spending much time on. We know kids at Duke and they would say it feels competitive there and, at least as freshman, they are not cozy with their profs.
This student will not be competitive for any of the big cohort scholarships because she does not have the extra stuff. Sports isn’t it.
@itsgettingreal21 I agree. And I don’t think Duke is a fit anyway. A student who likes Sarah Lawrence isn’t going to like Duke.
@pickleberry7 If you read through the EA/ED 2024 admitted thread for Sarah Lawrence you can get a sense of the merit ranges. Triangulate that with the CDS data (which only lists avg awards and number awarded) and you can get a rough sense of merit probability and amount. We were surprised by the SLC merit, TBH. A boy in her small high school class also applied EA and also got the Presidential Merit. So it’s not super rare.
@homerdog 100% sure the Tulane package was all merit for at least one of the two boys – full pay family. Other boy (who is LGBTQ by the way and super excited about Tulane) likely has some substantial need-based aid in there as well.
We used lists like this and made our own spreadsheet.
Her community service project is both leadership at her school (she recruited other kids and did trainings) and has a substantial community impact. It also focuses on underrepresented communities of color and the LGBTQ community. I am not going to go into what it is because it is a unique project, but it is has the potential to get her into ivies if she wanted. We will say it is loosely equivalent to starting her own nonprofit. What is also great is that she is not doing it for college admissions. She will probably continue this work in college, just because she really cares about it.
@homerdog my DD19 got $35K merit (accepted EA to Honors) from Tulane last Dec.
Just following up on Tulane. My daughter is home on break and working for a college consultant…the word on the street is that Tulane is shifting away from merit and foucsing on need based aid(for what its worth).
That is useful information about Tulane. My daughter likes it, but the sexual assault rates there are very high, especially for queer kids. That made me less than enthusiastic.