My son is a junior.
Presently, he has 3 years of Latin and 2 years of Greek.
Next year he will have 4 years of Latin and 3 years of Greek.
He is an IB student. His current GPA is 4.57.
He took the ACT in October and got a 31 and a 9 on the essay. Not great but that was his first attempt. He should be able to get it up to a 33.
Extracurricular:
He is Vice-President of two school clubs.
He does volunteer work for a non-profit organization.
There are schools that offer The Classics that award large merit no matter what the major is.
How much merit do you need? How much do you want your remaining costs to be?
Is your concern that you won’t qualify or get enough need based aid?
What is your home state?
Have you run the Net price calculators on a few schools’ websites?
How was your son’s PSAT?
I would like for him to get as much as possible. We will not qualify for need based.
We are in California. I can not remember what his PSAT score was. He did not qualify for National Merit.
ACT is 31. He is taking it again next Month. I have not run the net price calculators but will do so.
Oops. ACT was 31 not 3…
Pick a variety of schools to run the NPCs. Warning, schools like Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and Yale are unique because they offer “super aid”. So, don’t think that their results would apply to other schools.
If you own a business, take business deductions, own rental properties, or if your child has a non custodial parent, then the NPCs won’t be accurate.
You could run the NPC on UCLA, Santa Clara, some LACs, and some OOS schools to get an idea.
What kind of school would your son like? weather? small? big? quiet? rah rah? rural? city?
Try Catholic schools
Holy Cross has 2 full tuition Bean classics scholarships
http://academics.holycross.edu/classics/scholarships
You may have to do the hunting. Univ of Cincinnati
https://classics.uc.edu/index.php/undergraduate/ugscholarships
To refine even further on the Catholic schools, specifically try the Jesuit schools for Classics. Boston College and Georgetown do NOT offer merit scholarships, but most of the others have them to some degree, and classical education is highly valued by the Jesuits. Holy Cross is definitely one to check out as mentioned above. http://www.ajcunet.edu/
Yes, Jesuit schools often love The Classics (all that Latin and Greek!!), but as noted, some of the better known ones don’t give merit. That is why I mentioned Santa Clara. With a possible 33 ACT, the student should get an award of about $28k (that is what my nephew got for those stats).
However, we don’t know how much the parents really want to pay. While $28k from SCU is nice, it would still leave remaining costs that would be similar or more than a UC…so that may not be enough merit.
The mom needs to get a better feel for how much they’re comfortable paying. For instance, I often hear parents say that they can/want to pay about $15k per year (either $15k from parents or $10k from parents and $5k from student loan). If that is a goal, then the student needs a full tuition award…so that the $15k can cover room, board, books, fees, travel, and misc costs. The student can work summers to cover “personal expenses”.
If a full tuition award is desired, then those can be harder to get from schools like SCU.
A friend of mine’s child has a full tuition award at Alabama and is majoring in The Classics. Loves the program. He’s a senior this year. He had been home-schooled by a parent with a PhD from Harvard in something with a strong Greek, Latin, Classics emphasis (can’t remember the specifics.)
mom2collegekids - It is highly unlikely that we will get any need based aid. We are hopeful that our son will get offered merit based scholarships. We want him to feel like he is contributing towards his education without him having to get a job. Our older son received a full tuition scholarship at a private school (valued at approx. $200,000 before taxes) and an additional $4,000 per year for four years. And our younger son has almost the same stats.
He doesn’t seem to care about the size of the school or the location. He has an interest in Duke, Notre Dame, Harvard, Princeton, and UCLA. All of which are extremely competitive. We understand that the Ivy league schools do not offer any merit based aid. With the exception of these schools he wants us to pick our preferences for him. I never went to college so this is challenging for me… For selfish reasons only, I would love for him to stay close to the west coast 
So you can afford full pay, and your son wants to feel he is contributing while not working by garnering merit?
Did he apply to older brother’s college? That merit award was fantastic ($200k!)!
He has an interest in Duke, Notre Dame, Harvard, Princeton, and UCLA. All of which are extremely competitive
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ND has rare merit…and typically only for highly desirable students…maybe near-perfect test scores and maybe URM. I doubt an ACT 33-34ish score would matter at all for ND…or for Duke. An ACT 33-34 is “average” for those schools.
Your older son must have gone somewhere where his stats were WELL-WITHIN the upper quartile. For instance, at schools where the upper quartile is 30-36, then an ACT 33 would be strong and might give large merit if that school awards large merit…and then much would depend on whether the awards go to all with those stats or to just a few…and there would be some down-selection process…
So…what is the situation? Would you pay full cost for H, P, ND, and the others?
Your posts seem unclear. You state that you won’t qualify for aid, and that your other son got free tuition. You want your child to get merit. But…how much WILL you be willing to pay?
Our older son received a full tuition scholarship at a private school (valued at approx. $200,000 before taxes) and an additional $4,000 per year for four years
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That is a good bit more than “full tuition”. What school is THAT? Would your younger son want to attend it?
Are you wanting younger son to end up with a similar award? If so, then I wouldn’t have him waste much/any time with schools like H, P, ND, Duke and others because he won’t likely get anything from any of them.
The older son was accepted ED to Vanderbilt for Fall 2014.
Yes. Our older son was accepted into Vanderbilt. However, they did not offer him any type of merit aid even though he applied for their scholarships. Vandy is very competitive…
He didn’t end up going to Vanderbilt. He is at USC. He is a Trustee Scholar. There are approximately 120 Trustee Scholars each year.
We would prefer our younger son attend a different University. We are hoping that he can get somewhere between $10,000 - $20,000 in merit scholarship. Since our older son has full tuition covered (as long as he maintains a certain GPA) we could manage to pay the full tuition for him to attend H,P,ND if he were fortunate enough to get accepted.
Oh! So the $200k value scholarship was from elsewhere?
@ Madison85 - Yes. You are correct. We want him to feel like he is contributing. Our son has worked really hard through out high school. He has maintained excellent grades in addition to playing football and volunteering numerous hours. We understand that some schools offer merit aid. He presently has a 31 on the ACT. We know that if he studies prior to taking the next one (or two) he can do much better. He is a Junior this year so he has a few more opportunities to re-take it.
We were pleasantly surprised last year when our older son was chosen as a Trustee Scholar with full tuition.
@ Madison85 - Yes. You are correct. He is a Trustee Scholar at USC. He wanted to attend Vanderbilt but they didn’t offer him any type of scholarship and we did not qualify for ANY financial assistance. Unfortunately, we would not be able to afford two kids in college paying $60,000 a year plus.
Wow…I am absolutely shocked that your older son got a full tuition award from USC for an ACT 33. That is soooo rare when the student doesn’t have some other hook. an ACT 33 is average for USC. Was he a NMF?
My friend’s D with an ACT 35 and val of her class got NOTHING from USC, and she went to MIT instead.
@mom2collegekids - Wow. I guess it isn’t all about the 33 but maybe the whole package? He was not NMF. He did have exceptional essays. He had to go spend two days at SC and go through an interview process as well. I never said that he didn’t have “some other hook”…
ahhh… a hook of some sort.
congrats on the award. That said, if your younger son has a similar hook, and USC seems to award large merit for it, I would have him apply there, too.
Mom2collegekids - thanks. They have very similar stories. But I can’t imagine SC giving two scholarships to brothers…