Unfortunately, he didn’t like URochester when we visited, so that one is off the list.
Outside scholarships are hard to get without financial need and/or a lot of community service. As @itsv points out,t here are a number of scholarships for women in STEM out there; a lot fewer for humanities kids, though…Many scholarships do have a need-based component.
The scholarships that I can think of that don’t have strict financial eligibility criteria are Elks, Coca Cola, Cameron Impact, and the Coolidge Scholars (too late to apply to that one, I’m afraid). There are also some niche scholarships out there and lots for STEM.
My D did much better with institutional merit aid than with private scholarships; she got full tuition scholarships at a number of top 20 schools, but not a lot of private money.
I do know from my older two that institutional money is where most of the money is at, but schools seem to be leaning more and more each year toward need-based aid instead of merit-based.
If you don’t mind my asking @LoveTheBard, which top 20 schools did your D apply to that offered significant merit?
Among research universities, she got full tuition scholarships at Wash U., USC (California), and Vanderbilt; among LACs she got full tuition at Grinnell and Kenyon. Other schools, including UChicago, Rice, Bryn Mawr, and Scripps gave her their maximum scholarships, generally between $25K and 35K. The ones that got away were the full rides: Davidson’s Belk and Duke’s Robertson (she was a semifinalist for both) and the AB Duke.
Her very targeted school list consisted only of schools that gave generous merit, the UCs, and HYPS. For schools that required additional scholarship applications (namely WashU, Vandy, Duke’s Robertson and Davidson’s Belk), she submitted the additional essays and applied to any that she felt qualified for based on academic scholarship, diversity, and leadership.
@mathmomvt - Another top 20-ish (22nd in the latest UNSWR ranking) school with good merit is Emory; their scholarship weekend conflicted with Wash U., so D took herself out of the running for that one.
thanks for starting this thread
Just keep in mind…these top 20 school merit awards have only become more competitive over the years…and less in number as many colleges like this move to increasing need based aid.
And @LoveTheBard had an exceptional daughter with outstanding stats, plus some significant community service and ECs, IIRC. Was she also a NMF? I think so.
No one reading this thread should assume that getting these very competitive awards…or even admission to these colleges…is a slam dunk. It isn’t.
Yes, obviously those are very competitive scholarships, but it’s nice to see that there are still some top schools that offer merit, at least to a few of their very top students. The trend these days seems very much away from merit awards at many top institutions. (And no, I don’t think my kiddo is in range for most of those – he has great stats but lacks significant community service and hasn’t done anything really significant with his leadership positions.)
@LoveTheBard when you say Wash U do you me Washington University in St. Louis or University of Washington?
The SUNYs are more affordable at sticker price.
Coke is merit only. In college, Goldwater.
DD16 was able to earn several outside scholarships (many geared to girls - local woman’s society, girl scouts, one for her STEM major that strongly encouraged girls to apply) DS18 with higher stats (1590 out of 1600 SAT, 800’s on SAT2s, 98.98 unweighted GPA, 113.0 weighted GPA, tons of volunteer work, great LOR’s, a few national level awards) hasn’t earned any of the outside scholarships he applied for even some of the local ones that weren’t gender specific that his sister got with lower stats. I’m very thankful that he’s going to a school that is giving him a near full ride and outside scholarships aren’t as important for him as they were for his sister who picked an OOS school but the gender bias of outside scholarships is still a bit frustrating.
I have three sons, so I totally get your frustration @3scoutsmom – on the other hand, our sons (and indeed society as a whole) will benefit if there are more women in STEM careers, so I can appreciate why there are scholarship dollars targeted toward young women.
Oh I agree @mathmomvt it’s just that it really came as a shock at how few outside scholarships there are for smart upper middle class boys without a hook and because of the school NM scholarship it isn’t problem for us. He did get invited to senior award night and that usually means kids have been nominated for one of scholarships from the high school, these usually are small one time awards. It would be nice to get enough to cover books for a semester and at the very least we should finally find out final rank!
My DS19 has placed highly in a couple of contests this year netting him $300 in cash, a graphing calculator, a book, and a scholarship to a summer math program. But 300 ain’t gonna cover textbooks for a semester, and there’s not much else available to him in terms of scholarship dollars locally (this year or next). If he’s valedictorian, he’ll get offered full tuition at our state flagship, and he’s in contention for that, but obviously not something he can count on. (They used to offer full tuition to all in-state NMFs, but now offer nothing explicitly for that, and the maximum merit one can get in-state is $7K.) Our awards ceremonies include lots of awards without money attached (honor roll, recognition by a subject teacher, etc.) so getting invited doesn’t tell one much.