Hello parents,
My son is a junior in TX. I’m sure he will make the cut for National Merit.Can you help me to identify a list of schools that will give merit aid because of the National Merit Finalist. My family won’t get financial aid .
Other stats: 1500 SAT, 4.9 weighted GPA, looking for a STEM major (ENG or CS)
Thank you!
This document has a list of all schools that give money for National Merit. The amounts vary from a few hundred dollars to full rides.
Alabama. Houston. La Tech. Tulsa. UTD. Some of the Florida publics. Oklahoma and more also have some $$.
Alabama seems the most popular and aggressive of the large. Tulsa for small.
These above are all free tuition and some full ride.
There may be others out there that give you small $$
Tulsa is full ride 4 years. . Bama is 5 years tuition, 4 housing, and a $3500 stipend each year, etc.
Good luck
Also read this thread:
Many schools have decreased their national merit scholarships over the last 5-10 years. The important thing is to set a budget for your student and apply only to schools that can meet that budget.
The University of Oklahoma, also: National Merit Finalist Scholarship
I’m sure this means full ride as there is nothin rude about the Tulsa NM offer! And it’s for NM semifinalist which is even better.
Texas A&M gives what ends up as a 90% tuition scholarship for out of state NMF (10K/year but out of state differential is also waived). We went there last minute on our Texas tour (mainly due to an uber driver) – its a very interesting university and campus. A substantial fraction of engineering NMF get a full-ride scholarship via the Brown program (NMF is an entry criteria).
It seems that Texas A&M realized that ETAM was scaring away some NMSFs in engineering, so they give NMSFs direct admission to major instead of requiring them to start in general engineering and earn a 3.75 college GPA to ensure ETAM admission to their preferred major like other engineering frosh.
The Texas A&M ETAM entry program is interesting. The 3.75 threshold is pretty high, however it appears most/nearly all NMSFs would have gotten their desired major anyway via holistic entry (except for maybe CS). So in practice not a big concession from TAMU, but nice from a psychological perspective.
One negative is that ETAM encourages affected students on a broader level to not use AP credit and retake intro courses. Which is pretty unfair to people taking them for the first time and not great for any parties involved. (Reminds me of my Spanish A course where the average student either had 3.5 years of HS Spanish OR already knew 4+ languages).
In addition to the others mentioned, Texas Tech, UCF, Oklahoma State, and U of Maine are all known for large NMF awards, though definitely check the websites in case amounts have decreased (as has been the case at many other schools). I believe Maine went from full ride down to just full tuition last year, and UCF has a limited number of awards available.
University of North Texas (Denton).