Hello! I’m trying to find some pretty good schools where I have a decent chance of getting a full-tuition scholarship. Here are my stats:
ACT: 35 (one sitting)
SAT: 2210 (will retake, probably won’t submit to too many schools)
SAT II: 800 Math 2, 720 Physics
GPA: 4.0 UW, 5.15ish W (IB classes are on a scale of 6, but it’s impossible to take all IB classes.)
Rank: 6/600 or top 1%
APs: Calc AB (5), US History (5), English Lang (5), Studio Art (5), Physics A (4); the only AP class I’ve ever taken is Calc; the rest were IB but I took the APs anyway.
I’ve taken all the IB classes I can take and am a diploma candidate.
I was in orchestra for three years, IB art all four.
President of National Art Honor Society (secretary last year), President of Spanish National Honor Society, Treasurer of UNICEF Club for two years.
Expecting to be NMSF (228 in TX).
Other than that I have no major awards or anything; I’ve won some minor awards at district art shows and got to state VASE (an art competition), but that’s pretty much it.
Right now I’m looking at URochester, Tulane, Northeastern, UMiami, and Santa Clara for schools that I could possibly get full scholarships at. Are those realistic, and do you have anymore that I could add? Thanks in advance!
Look here
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/
Texas Tech has the most generous NM scholarship Full Ride plus $$ for transportation and personal expenses.
Thank you @3scoutsmom, but I was looking for universities aside from the ones that give automatic NM scholarships; should’ve mentioned it I guess. I am applying to OU and Fordham for that, but I’m looking to expand my search.
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Right now I’m looking at URochester, Tulane, Northeastern, UMiami, and Santa Clara for schools that I could possibly get full scholarships at. Are those realistic, and do you have anymore that I could add? Thanks in advance!
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I don’t think you’d get full tuition from any of them. Partial tuition awards, possibly. Santa Clara has become questionable lately.
Does URoch have any full tuition? seems like I tend to see 1/4 and 1/2 tuition awards for top stats.
Tulane seems to give a good number of @$30k awards, which is about 3/4 tuition…remaining costs would be about $30k per year.
What is your situation? What do you need your net cost to be? A full tuition award tends to leave you with about $15k-17k in remaining costs.
How much will your parents pay each year?
If you’re going to likely be a NMF, why aren’t you also applying to Alabama?
It’s hard to find likely “full tuition” awards outside of the assured awards. So many schools seem to either be going to “need based” aid for large awards, awards targeted for diversity, or extremely competitive (scholarship weekends, etc).
UPitt…maybe. UPitt has become very unpredictable. They do have some free tuition awards.
What is your major or career goal?
The NM scholarships in the list in reply #1 includes some competitive ones.
There are also this list here of competitive full tuition to full ride scholarships (not necessarily NM):
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1461983-competitive-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html
However, assessing the chances of a competitive scholarship is often more difficult than assessing the chances of admission, due to much less public information about the selectivity of competitive scholarships.
It’s funny, we have a lot of the same schools in common! I’m in the same boat as you, where I’m looking for full tuitions.
Rochester does have a full tuition scholarship, but it is not offered to many people. I’ve been looking at that one too, and it seems like a long shot for everyone who has scores like yours, so I wouldn’t count on it.
Tulane offers a significant amount of full tuition scholarships. See here: http://admission.tulane.edu/aid/merit.php. Both the Dean’s Honors Scholarship and the Paul Tulane Scholarship are full tuitions, and about 75 of the DHS are awarded each year and 50 of the Tulane Scholarships. In addition, they weight grades and test scores highly compared to extracurriculars (according to their data sheet), so it’s very likely that you would receive some merit aid and you would potentially be competitive for the full tuitions.
Northeastern offers approximately 75 University Scholarships, which cover full tuition. One of my friends received one last year (didn’t end up attending though), and she had similar stats to yours, although she had many more extracurriculars. You would also be competitive for those scholarships, but I wouldn’t bank on this one either. However, if you are a NMF, you get $30,000 a year from Northeastern, bringing the cost down significantly.
I do not know about U Miami or Santa Clara enough to say anything about either.
University of Pittsburgh is extremely generous with merit aid, and because they primarily look at test scores, it would be likely that you would receive a significant award, potentially full tuition. Their average scores for full tuition scholarships have been lower than yours (33 ACT). I’d recommend applying early if you do end up applying there.
Funny how I’m also applying to Rochester, Tulane, and Northeastern (also Pitt).
Good luck!
You could consider USC http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/docs/Scholarships.pdf
That’s about all I know of in terms of “pretty good schools”, but I know that lots of moderately good schools can offer large scholarships to people with high stats, too.
Thanks to everyone for their responses! I will look into Pitt. As for USC, I may apply, although I think my chances of a full scholarship there are low and a half scholarship probably isn’t enough. My parents are willing to spend 20k, possibly 25k max. After that, I’d be getting into loans, which I’d rather not do.
Here are some suggestions: Beloit, Denison, DePauw, Kalamazoo, Lawrence, Muhlenberg, Rhodes, Wheaton (MA), Whitman.
Also, I’ll just say people regularly take out loans for cars and houses… so loans for higher education (an investment in yourself) doesn’t seem particularly ill-advised to me. Just my two cents.
Have you run Net Price Calculators on the private schools? Tulane, Rochester and Northeastern all have pretty generous need-based aid. It’ll be tough to get to $20k on merit aid at a private school, so check your eligibility for need-based.
I am not sure why you think your chances are low at getting a full tuition scholarship at USC. You are competitive for one of the “nosebleed” competitive scholarships like USC or Duke, or whatnot. I would try for at least some competitive merit. Is there a reason not to consider schools where you will be in the Honors college but are in the top 25% of the admitted class, like Alabama or Temple?
Northeastern! I have a friend whose daughter is going there on full merit award. She turned down Brown and Smith (who offered her a lot of money too) to go there. She’ll be in an elite group which they call their scholars program. It’s limited to about 100 kids, but I think with your great stats you would qualify. Northeastern has become a great school for undergraduate research if that’s something you’re interested in. They also have a great co-op program. Another friend’s daughter was working in Ireland this summer as part of the co-op program. Best of luck.
Case Western Reserve offered another friend’s daughter a $25,000/year merit award. Her stats are similar to yours.
Another friend’s son got a big merit award at Susquehanna. He had a four hour interview as part of the process. Susquehanna is one of the Colleges That Change Lives schools.
The Johnson Scholarship at Washington & Lee covers not only tuition, but also room and board, and gives a stipend for summer experiences:
http://www.wlu.edu/johnson-program/the-johnson-scholarship
The University of Richmond has some full-tuition to full-cost scholarships:
http://scholars.richmond.edu/about/index.html
deleted-realized it was redundant with an earlier comment
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys! I have run tons of net price calculators, and the general verdict is that very few schools have sufficient financial aid for me to attend, so that’s why I’m looking for possible full tuition+ scholarships.
Have looked into Case, but even 25-30k scholarships would not be enough. I would not be 100% opposed to student loans if the school is good enough, but in the particular case of Case and most of these schools that are being mentioned, I don’t think I can justify going into debt when there are some decent debt-free options available (like OU).
@hs2015mom Richmond is intriguing. I’m interested in either biomedical engineering (which I know they don’t have) or a combination of math, statistics, biology, and computer science (bioinformatics, computational biology, etc). I looked at the course offerings in the comp sci and math departments and saw some but not a whole lot of what I’m interested in. Could I still make a self-designed concentration in bioinformatics or something despite that? I’m not sure how much you know about the school, but I thought I’d ask (could always email an admissions officer there, of course).
I don’t know Richmond well, but I think that most schools allow self-designed majors, and a quick google indicates that they do: http://undergraduatecatalog.richmond.edu/curriculum/as-programs/department/interdisciplinarystudies.html
Bummer about the NPCs, but good that you determined this sooner rather than later. The $20-$25k price point is one I know very, very well 
but we were lucky that the NPCs agreed with us. Having been through this just last year - and my kid applied to Rochester, Northeastern, Tulane and Case - I think the answer to your original question is no, there aren’t any privates where you have a ‘decent chance’, interpreting that as meaning ‘reasonably likely’, to get a full-tuition scholarship. You’ll be in the running, but they’re extremely competitive, and often require separate applications and essays, candidate fly-in weekends and such. Northeastern University Scholars is one of the few that doesn’t. The full-tuition scholarships often go to rock-star kids who would have been competitive for the tippy-top schools but looked elsewhere because those offer only need-based aid for which their families weren’t eligible.
Are you male or female? Would you consider a liberal arts college?
I would consider 5.5k in debt for Richmond, case, or tulane “worth it” conpared to OU but that’s a subjective choice. I wouldn’t close it offyet though.
You might also consider which schools will give you credit for the AP exams. It could save you a semester depending on the school.