In general, the more merit scholarships needed, the lower on the selectivity scale the college list may have to be made from. Merit scholarships are generally used to attract students at the top of the admission class in order to raise the school’s enrolled student profile.
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I note another fairly obvious pattern is that colleges in less popular locations are also more likely to offer merit.
Obviously this is correlated with selectivity, because colleges in less popular locations also get fewer applications, may have lower yields, and so on, and so reject fewer applicants. But I think there are sometimes colleges like this which basically still have very high academic standards, they just reject a lot fewer people with really good numbers due to things like their ECs not standing out, and also don’t get as many applications from people without really good numbers in the first place.
So for a kid with really good numbers who is interested in going to a college with other kids with really good numbers, but is looking for a better chance of admissions without “cracked” ECs, and is maybe even hoping for merit . . . sometimes they can get that by looking at colleges in less popular locations.
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Are you from Maine? If so I would have your kids apply to Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby if they would attend. They like kids from Maine. We are from Massachusetts but I grew up in Maine and two of my kids ended up at Colby. They got into schools such as URochester, William and Mary, Hamilton, Carleton, Colgate, Middlebury and Wake Forest. Your kid’s scores are a bit higher. I would go for some super reaches of whichever ones seem like the best fit for your student. Then a bunch of matches. My kids did fine with UMass and UVM as their safety. Feel free to message me. The whole process is a lot but this can be a really helpful place.
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Where do kids like mine go? Smart but no hooks
Every type of college, every size, every geography - really everywhere.
Boy, I hope you come back with more… 
Everyone has given answers yet no one knows what you are seeking - beyond what you put in a few buckets.
We’re all shooting at a target that doesn’t exist.
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Maybe we should pause until OP comes back with additional information or follow up questions?
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So lots are asking and I’m not sure who to reply to. Let me confirm that need aid is not coming-we are lucky to be very financially secure.
This doesn’t mean that 100000 yearly for four years and two kids, then law and maybe grad is what we want to do no matter what. My husband and I have said they get 50k yearly for however many years they need as a gift-the rest they will pay us back. The point is for them to think about savings and practicality but not be so limited. Can they apply to schools with 400000 cost of attendance? Yes-but down the road 200k is getting paid back.
We live in Maine but I grew up in the midwest and there’s plenty of family there who go to Iowa State, Indiana, Wisconsin. State universities are great! My husband did BS 2x, once in Maine at the flagship, then to one of the typical top schools-where we met. He says the quality of the education was about the same-but at our top school the students around us pushed us. In Maine, no matter how motivated he was, he could still drift around. At Top School-only his best would do. So he got more out of it.
The other thing about the student body is that my daughter is shy-even if she makes friends easily when she wants to. Last year her school offered a new class for lit in translation. After analysing translated works, the final project was to take a short story from one language and translate it to another. The idea was that kids would be able to apply a world language learned in school or use their heritage language. She liked the teacher and met some new friends-but half the kids were just not engaged, took the class without enough competence in the language, goofed off, made the experience less fun. That’s what she wants to avoid. A more motivated and academic student body than in high school would be better. (According to my husband-granted, this was thirty years ago-his BS classmates in Maine were treating college like hs 2.0. And my brother, who’s faculty at a smaller campus, says that most of his students are the same.)
As for what my D is looking for-small to midsize university, region unimportant, near or in large town, greek life/religion fine but can’t dominate, few gen eds. I wish she would be choosier-I can’t give you more to work with, sadly.
No national merit, by the way-school never talked about it. Seems like that would have opened some doors.
Thanks to everyone who offered opinions/advice. Linked posts have been useful. I hope I’ve answered questions and clarified. Disagreement is welcome-not me you have to convince, though!
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Sounds like the realistic budget is 50K/year. Obviously, you can set your finances anyway you’d like, but I would be hesitant to say, “We will pay up to 100K a year, but (teenager) you’ll be paying back $50k/yr of that…eventually”. 17/18 year olds really don’t understand how much money that is, how much the payments would be and how expensive it is to live. Also, potentially having $200k of undergrad loan obligation really hampers a person’s options going forward. Just something to think about.
At $50k/yr, there are plenty of schools your child can go to. Most LACs outside the Top 40 easily meet that budget with the merit money your child would receive. There are also plenty of OOS publics that also meet that budget; SUNYs, Miami of Ohio, Purdue…if they decide they want a larger environment, they will have many options.
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So I’m thinking more open curriculums - from a Brown to a Rochester to a Vassar. Too safe - but Kalamazoo as a safety and cost effective. Brown and Vassar very pricey. Rochester likely over budget.
Others - not so open - but a William & Mary,and Brandeis would not hit $50K - but Miami Ohio could be a nice hybrid and would…
I’m not sure “gifting” money and having to pay back is great - it still has to pay back - so then you go in at $50K.
There’s still schools (Miami, Delaware, Kalamazoo above). A Rochester or Case likely wouldn’t hit but some secondary LACs might - St. Olaf (maybe not in enough of a town), Dickinson (might), Trinity in San Antonio, Union near Albany, Furman, Rhodes, etc.
These could all be possibilities - many at budget vs. having to pay back.
There would be large publics too - many with Honors - that could hit. Or get close. For example, large could be UGA, U of SC with Honors…or smaller Delaware with Honors, etc.
There’s so many possibilities, etc.
My daughter went to a regional public with a national attendance footprint - College of Charleston - way beneath your students but there’s Honors and then within Honors there’s the Charleston Fellows (a small sub group of highly accomplished kids). Maybe something like that or other schools have something similar?
There’s also consortiums - so Agnes Scott in Atlanta is a small but might women’s school - and yet you can take classes at Emory, Ga Tech and more… Would a Bryn Mawr be of interest - not sure it gets to $50K but they have merit and you are close to Haverford, etc.
So lots of possibilities - and yes many of the southern and some midwest schools are quite inexpensitve.
One option is the expensive highly ranked LACs in Maine (Colby, Bowdoin). Another option is U.Maine. There is the option of looking south and/or west (UVM, U.Mass, a SUNY, …).
However, there is also the option of looking north and/or east. For a small university, Bishop’s (in Quebec), Mount Allison (in New Brunswick), and Acadia (in Nova Scotia) are all options. UNB is also relatively small. Dalhousie (in Halifax NS) is a bit larger, but not huge. Most years Mount Allison is the top ranked “small primarily undergraduate” university in Canada, but it nonetheless is probably a safety for a student with a 4.0 unweighted GPA (admissions is very stats oriented in Canada). The last time that I looked they all would fit well under US$50,000 per year even for an international student.
Edit to add: One daughter attended university in eastern Canada. It seemed to me that she took fewer general education required classes and a lot more classes in her major compared to what would be typical at universities in the US.
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Completely agree. My husband and I are 2 perfect examples (not that we are smart, we’re very hard working).
I went to a law school outside of the US (not even a prestigious one in my home country) and practiced local law for a well-known multinational consulting firm for 3-4 years before applying for an LLM in the US. Got my LLM at Boston U and went on to work for a top 4 multinational consulting firm in NYC in Mergers & Acquisitions. Spent over 20 years in multinational M&A before transitioning to a completely different career in sports and am now a business owner.
My husband attended ASU (not honors), had fantastic grades and internships, and in his first job upon graduation (at 23) he was sent abroad to build a manufacturing facility for a multinational expanding in Latin America. He then got a masters from MIT, held several Director and C-suite positions until starting his own business.
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There are definitely lots of possibilities to consider.
William & Mary is going to be something over $50K, but it sure does sound like an excellent potential fit. if she got the OOS Monroe (which she might with those numbers), that is $10K/year off. So that could be worth looking into.
Forum-favorite LACs like St Olaf and Kalamazoo are also very promising ideas. Lots of academicky kids, likely good merit.
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Can I ask why kids would not want to go to uchicago? Just curious as I think my kid maybe interested
Unless the high school sends nearly all of its graduates to college, many or most colleges will have more academically motivated students than high school, because those going to college tend to be more academically motivated than those who do not.
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Regarding Chicago, some students might not want to work that hard for four years. Some students might be intending to major in a subject where MIT or Stanford or their in-state public university is stronger. Some students might prefer milder winters. Some might not like the location. Some might have a boyfriend or girlfriend who is going somewhere else. Some might have a boyfriend who is going somewhere else, go somewhere else, break up with the boyfriend in the first semester of university, but still like the school where they ended up. There are lots of reasons to choose one university or another.
Where someone goes to university is a very personal choice.
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It can be overwhelming at the start…the U.S. is blessed with an abundance of excellent universities. I don’t think your daughter necessarily needs “hooks”; her credentials are great.
Having said that, the most important thing I learned from this board is not to chase prestige, especially if you have a budget.
My suggestion is to sit down with your daughter and come up with a list of 5 or so factors that are the most important to her.
For example:
- Size
- Location
- Major
- Cost
- Study Abroad opportunities
Then try to plug in schools that meet those requirements. My daughter had one requirement: her college had to have Marching Band. We had a requirement: we
had to be able to afford it. Those two things ruled out a ton of schools.
Then it became clear she didn’t want super cold and dark winters, so that ruled out a lot of the NE and Ohio Valley. Then we figured out that she didn’t want an SEC type of school. As time went on and we visited more and more schools, it became clear that she wanted a medium size school with big school amenities, did not want to be super close to home nor super far away, that she wanted a more conservative student body, etc. Some of these things she didn’t know until half way through the application process.
I think in the end that it is a process of elimination. Start with the two easiest: location and cost.
Then think about the programs. An honors program at a state school with a great literature department might be a better fit for her than a small college. Or maybe a small LAC will be a better fit. Great educations are everywhere.
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Because it’s said to be the place where fun goes to die.
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Hello from the Pacific Northwest, where that describes Whitman College (in Walla Walla, Washington) to a T.
We’re a PNW family and while I can’t exactly remember the GPA of my S23 (around 3.95-4.0 maybe—in honors classes, at a school that doesn’t do AP) and he had a 790/750 SAT score.
The merit award was fantastic, as Whitman is in a part of the country that folks from both the Midwest and on the East Coast would largely not consider at all, since there are so many comparable LACs in their neck of the woods. It’s one of those hidden gem schools as a result, IMO.
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In my circles, Chicago has a reputation for intensity that seems to be a bit too much for most kids. I note the core curriculum feeds into that.
Now if you asked me, I would tell you Chicago is a great city, and the University of Chicago is a fantastic research institution. And I think some kids really thrive in that environment, to the point some have trouble imagining having a better experience anywhere else.
But rightly or wrongly, it seems to be not quite what a lot of the kids I know are looking for.
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I like the suggestion of Whitman. It’s commitment to outdoor activities creates interaction among students quickly and naturally and would help a shy student become easily engaged with others.
Whitman offers immediate feedback on finances. If you submit your financial information, they will tell you immediately exactly what money they will give you and what the cost will be.
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Absolutely. My own kid was not willing to look that far west of us, and in general I will admit I really only know about Whitman from what others have told me about it. But based on what I have heard, it sounds great in general, and even better if you can get a good offer.
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