<p>Thanks Cathy. I’m not really here by choice. I was drafted (recalled?) to help with this merit aid “stuff”. 
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<p>There are some schools like South Carolina that , as you know from our time on the board, have exceptional programs for great students at Doctoral Uni’s that for whatever reason didn’t make the list. Again the list was just a starting point - not intended to be complete or even qualitative. Just 20 “Top 100” schools (“Top 100” as chosen by USNews, not me) that I knew had good merit programs.</p>
<p>I’m a real big fan of the of Arkansas Honors and all that Wal-Mart money for travel and “enhancement” and maybe the most generous merit program of all, U of Alabama Honors -Tier One Scholarships, and of course U of South Carolina Honors - especially the McNair. The truth is that any state Flagship honors program is going to be chock full of kids who could have been elsewhere but chose to be at the flagship for $, geography, opportunity, rah-rah, special programs, and I guess too many other things to list. While I’m not that happy with the limited merit awards at UTexas- Plan II and Ole Miss-Barksdale, both programs are fantastic and the Dean at SM Barksdale Honors College is still my favorite person I met on the whole admissions “trip”. (O.K… Dave Wottle, my teenage hero being Dean of Admissions at Rhodes was too cool but other than that , it’s Dean S-G at Barksdale.)</p>