It depends on the definition of “top”.
Also “entire COA” is not the usual definition of full ride. If you are looking for that I doubt it exists anywhere.
Texas has merit aid but not much.
40 Acres is a full ride:
http://scholarships.texasexes.org/scholarships/forty-acres-scholars/
The McNair Scholarship at University of South Carolina is a full ride. Applicants must complete the scholarship application (which is a doozie…the most challenging I’ve seen) plus apply for admission by December 1 (you will need to check to see if that deadline has changed).
If you make the first cut, you are invited to interview on campus, and the school used to paywall of the expenses for this weekend. Both finalists (all invited) and McNair winners receive generous awards. This school also allows stacking of scholarships up to the cost of attendance…so you can add any awards together…and they do give an award for NMF and also some departmental awards.
OP, your D may find the story of the one-time poster curmudgeon’s daughter of interest. Long story short: his pre-med D was admitted to Yale for undergrad back in the days when their financial aid wasn’t as generous. The D decided to take a full ride at Rhodes College over being full-pay at Yale with the understanding that her parents would pay for med school. D did very well at Rhodes, including receiving one of the top science research awards given to undergraduates nationwide (the name of which escapes me). She then went on to attend medical school…at Yale.
@thumper1 Thanks for all the information. Grass is always greener on the other side. Ivies look great for a kid from California.
I went to an Ivy for grad and have to completely disagree with a lot of posters about prestige etc. I found tremendous value in my ivy which I paid full cost for (and got paid back multiple times over) when compared to top flagship state school I went to and it was worth it for me for the field I am in. I, however, don’t think ivy undergrads are worth paying full price if your major is something like premed. It is worth it for finance etc.
@bobwallace My D16 made the NMSF cutoff so she is looking at potential full rides at UA etc. Plus her GPA/SAT would get her the top awards at automatic merit award schools. My question was related to California. BSMD programs is something she is considering but I think they are as tough as ivy admissions. I think she should go a traditional bs route and then apply to med school. No disrespect to Duke or any other schools intended but she thinks what she thinks.
Thanks to all for their comments.
I think this is pointing to one path for any other future kids who are in the same boat as my D16 and looking at premed. Try living in a state where there are good state schools with good merit aid. Don’t waste time on doing too many courses or kill yourself if parents are above the need cutoff/ want you to go to med school with their money and you are looking at premed etc. Keep a 4.00+, do really well on PSAT and go to a full ride NMF school. SAT and extracurriculars really don’t matter in this path.
Texas Tech is a true full ride even offers money for transportation and personal expenses
http://today.ttu.edu/posts/2015/02/texas-tech-announces-scholarship-program-for-national-merit-finalists
doesn’t say anything about having to be instate
I think the OP is asking the questions many of us had when we first started looking into colleges and how to pay for them, and how to deal with a very bright student who wants to go to the ‘best’ school without even knowing what that ‘best’ school could be. OP is looking for info, and just learning the lingo of full tuition, full ride, full COA. There are a few COA scholarships I know of that aren’t athletic, but very few and very competitive.
I know a family who had a very bright daughter who aimed for Harvard. She got in, but this was 30 years ago before the financial need of all was met, and her middle class parents couldn’t afford it. Luckily she also applied to MIT and got a great package there. Of course she came to realize that Harvard wasn’t the only school for her, has a wonderful career through the opportunities she had at MIT but she was very disappointed at the beginning. She had focused on Harvard, and worked for it, but it just wasn’t affordable.
OP needs to work it all out with his daughter, steer her toward the many opportunities that they don’t even know about yet. If she focuses on Ivies only, she’ll miss many of those opportunities because they might be at USC or UC-Berkeley or Santa Clara. If she’s smart enough for 20 AP courses, she’s smart enough to understand the financial aspects of education.
@SlitheyTove . I am hoping for a similar end to my daughter’s quest as your story.
@twoinanddone I think you have a very valid point and I have tried to convey that to her. When kids set out on their high school path, they are aiming for the top schools without knowing what it is. They are looking at rigorous school work, class rank, SAT, extracurriculars and they do a whole bunch of work and think they are there in the cusp of getting in a top college but the reality of finances v use in the right stage of post grad funding hits and this varies which part of the country you are at. It is not something that most parents and kids think of when they start in freshman year. Hopefully this helps some of the other parents. I was hoping some of you had figured out a path.
I think, in the end, she will be fine wherever she goes but it is painful to go through this.
I guess if you are from Texas it’s about half since tuition is about $10K and R&B is about $10K and the scholarship covers roughly tuition. From OOS it is way more than half (around 75%), since it covers the almost $30K OOS tuition.
Unfortunately the full ride scholarship curmudgeon’s daughter won at Rhodes no longer exists, and I hate to imagine the reaction to Rhodes from a student who turns up her nose at Duke and Chicago.
And FYI, Yale offered very generous need based aid. But it is a Profile School, and I don’t believe she qualified for need based aid. So she went for the merit aid…and did very well!
Some fallacies that are better abandoned now than later:
- Ivy League is automatically granted to all high achieving students. OK - so you made CA PSAT cutoff - so do thousands (probably 10s of thousands) and thousands have fantastic ECs or other academic credentials on top of that. So … decide now … life without an Ivy League school is worth living… if it happens, it happens, if not … still have a whole life to achieve great things …
5.10,15% acceptance rates mean that of the say 50% that are fully, highly qualified, most are being turned away … It can happen, and you could be turned away from all 8 ILs.
- Somehow this dreadful work “rigorous school work, class rank, SAT, extracurriculars” is all just to get into college and otherwise it’s been a massive waste of time. Premed = 4.0 in rigorous program so rigorous school work in high school is just the beginning and absolutely necessary (if you don’t have high school background, you won’t get an A unless you are at podunk U in a particularly bad year, there is LOTS of competition in any top 100 college since lots of people go to bottom 50 to save money. Class rank = rigorous school work + As. SATs, if you got high PSATs, high SATs are given …
ECs are where your kids learn to be adults … leaders, teammates, service oriented, well-rounded people who will succeed in college. Pre-meds do LOTS of ECs in college or they don’t get in.
For a really talented child to sit and wait for their free ride - what a dang waste of 2 or 3 years of life. You don’t have to be obsessive or doing ECs you are not interested in, but do something … school is not stressing you out, so do something outside of school.
- Finances are simple. OK, so Ivy League full-pay is too much, but how about a nice top 40 school with 25K in merit aid? How about UC-Berkeley around 30K ? worth it over Alabama ? Maybe … Or did you do all the work to get say 100K of scholarships or even a full ride worth … 160K or more ?
Obviously there is a lot of conflict now, already, between the dream at 65K and the dream at 0K and all the other alternatives. You can prune your options or explore many, but at some point it is just a short list to decide from.
And I am not sure it makes sense to have a plan with a semi-random outcome with no rules … so you decide you are only interested in a full-ride or that you will pay 65K a year and then … oops … options or sudden realization by you or even your child that 100s of 1000s is a lot of money to throw at prestige (and what if it between UCB #20 and say #18 or #10).
- Good luck getting into the final rounds of any competitive scholarship if you rest on PSAT laurels and a 4.0. Remember statement 1, you are not the only special one.
“I think, in the end, she will be fine wherever she goes but it is painful to go through this.”
I think that’s really sad. ‘Going through this’ is her life. Should the only joy come from getting into an Ivy? Should playing a sport be sad unless you win the championship? Can’t just playing be enough? Does every class have to be taken with the goal of getting into the highest ranked college? If she took 20 AP classes just to get into college, with no joy of learning the subject, then the college process will be painful.
I didn’t like the stress of the college search, or the stress of figuring out how to pay for it, but there was a lot of excitement in finding the right school, of having my kids treated like rock stars by the schools that did want them.
@PickOne1 I don’t think we are assuming that she is going to walk into a top school because of her psat. My daughter can apply to ivies but I don’t see any point in applying if she is not going to go because of the lack of merit aid. My original question that was answered by all is that there is very little merit aid at the ivies.
@twoinanddone My point is she would be in the same place college application wise (same merit OOS nmf options) if she had done 5-8 APs instead of loading up.
Thanks again for all for your comments. I can see that you have to look further down the list or at different options and make some changes in the college list if you want merit aid.
I don’t think anyone should assume that someone with 20 AP does this just because it looks good on a college application. My California junior will be graduating with 15 APs, few DE classes, probably NMF and good EC. In highly competitive state of California this is not unusual. And it does not make any sense for bright kids to take regular classes if they can handle the rigor of AP classes, whether they will make it to their top choice school with single digit admission or not.
Many parents say no to the ivies for the same reason that you have. I did not even have D apply. Off of our list were all schools that did not offer merit aid without need. So no Vassar, Tufts, and Williams either. But being realistic helped a lot. In the end D got accepted to all the schools she applied to and go the merit aid in each that we had hoped for.
(at least 10K in merit aid per year.) D was awarded between $11K and $22K in merit from her list of schools. Once we were realistic with her and set parameters, she had a wide choice of schools to decide from.
And it is not a question of there being “very little in merit aid at the ivies.” Be clear about this. There is none! To understand what each school offers, I would suggest you search for the common data set for each school you are interested in. It will show very clearly in black and white whether any merit aid is given without need, how much and to what percentage of students. When you see the big goose egg for the ivies and most schools that meet full need, it will bring home the point clearly.
Given quality and prestige of UC Berkeley and UCLA, which are as unaffordable to OOS people as most private schools, hard to justify an Ivy.
I think some smart kids enjoy being accepted by their dream school even if they attend a different merit aid school and some get caught up in a woe-is-me type of thinking.
I’d also consider whether you think going to 'Bama or similar full-ride school would fulfill their dreams or whether paying 20-40K elsewhere is worth it (range from small merit, to UCx, to large merit at private school).
UChicago gives 4k a year for national merit finalist, and has a lot of other merit scholarships as well.
Both UCLA and UCB are trying to increase their revenue by accepting more and more OOS kids every year. I think it might be easier for California residents to get into second tier ivy league schools then to those two, especially UCLA if applying for impacted majors.
Big merit aid is analogous to admissions. You want some “safety” merit schools with big guaranteed aid that you know you will get. You want some “match” merit schools where you have a good chance for big competitive merit awards (lesser known LACs like Rhodes may fit here). And you want some “reach” merit aid schools with big competitive awards where you might get lucky (maybe your daughter can “stoop” 
to apply for Vanderbilt, Duke, or Chicago).