With a 1500 SAT, 3.9 (unweighted) GPA, and a challenging course schedule, can anyone say which, if any, high academic D3 schools offer merit aid?
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Great resources from a very reputable group to review past merit amounts.
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There’s 432 D3s. Looking at the list, and I’m sure many more provide merit but don’t forget some schools with merit cost more than others without. High academic is in the eye of the beholder. Many schools are high academic. Some pay for high stats kids. Others don’t.
Austin College
Beloit College
Case Western
Christopher Newport
Clark
Depauw
Ithaca
Macalester
Montclair State
Rochester
SUNY- many
Trinity
Just a ton of schools but not huge ones.
What do you seek - size, location, weather, environment - urban/suburban, and most importantly not that it offers merit but what is your budget.
Are you looking for merit aid for an athlete (your post has is under athletic recruits)?
Can you tell us what you mean by “high academic school”. Many don’t give merit awards at all.
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You might find this previous thread helpful:
Most of the top D3 schools do not offer merit, only need-based aid. So, Amherst, Williams, and all of the NESCAC schools other than Conn Coll and Trinity do not give merit aid. Haverford, Swarthmore, Vassar, Pomona, Wellesley do not offer merit aid. I’m not familiar with the UAA schools like Chicago, NYU, Brandeis etc. so someone else can step in.
D3s which do offer merit include Grinnell, Skidmore, Denison, Oberlin, Kenyon, Macalester, St Olaf, Dickinson, Conn Coll, Trinity, Wooster.
My D3 recruit’s experience was that both coach and admissions gave him him an estimated merit award, with all the caveats about it was not a guarantee.
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Yes, define “high academic”.
Washington and Lee University offers merit aid.
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Like I said there’s over 400 D3 schools. No doubt many have merit. What high academic is defined as I don’t know.
It’s 3rd party so double check to validate but there’s a lot of fantastic names on this list that offer merit.
A lot of the Pennsylvania and Ohio LACs give merit (Kenyon, Denison, Dickinson, Franklin and Marshall, Gettysburg). My DD also got merit from Rollins and Rhodes. Most of the New England LACs do not give merit.
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Bucknell, Lafayette, and Richmond all offer merit aid and are strong academic schools. It would be helpful if OP shared their budget and if they will qualify for any need based aid at the financially generous high academic schools.
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If you happen to be an engineer/STEM person, RPI and WPI both offer merit aid.
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I note in my view this is more of a locational thing than a “top” thing per se, although within a region there may be some correlation with fame/rankings.
So like LACs in the most popular locations for LACs, like NESCAC territory or the close-to-Philly schools, are apparently less likely to see a need to offer merit to attract the applications and yield the admits they want. There are some, though, including some women’s colleges which are sort of in a different submarket.
LACs in less popular locations for LACs, like basically south of the Mason-Dixon line or much west of Philly, are a lot more likely to offer merit, again with some exceptions–like no merit at Carleton, but yes at Grinnell and Macalester, or no at Pomona, but yes at CMC and HM, and so on.
Anyway, just an observation that if you are chasing merit, it can often pay to NOT just look at the Northeast.
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True – though Bucknell and Lafayette are D1! And random info – while Richmond is D3, it doesn’t have a D3 Men’s Soccer program (not that the OP has said that is the sport they are looking at).
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I hope that @vanillachocolate2 answers my questions upstream.
In 2025 Richmond will be joining the Patriot League for football.
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Are we talking about the University of Richmond? If so, it is DI, largely competing in the A10.
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Maybe they meant Earlham College, a fine school, in Richmond Indiana!!
A D3 school with merit.
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I’m the one who brought up some D1 LACs with merit with the idea of not limiting to D3 if one is seeking merit and relatively high academic schools, as it’s not clear that OP/their kid is an athletic recruit. Hope they clarify.
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Thanks everyone. It sort of confirms what I thought for high academic athletes.
What’s confirmed? You have no info - and there are students and athletes with high academics all over.
And we don’t even know academically, how high you really are.
There’s some high level d3 schools that give $$ and others that don’t.