Different Scholarship Results for National Merit Finalists

I graduated from Bates College with an 85% free ride through grants, scholarships, work study and loans. My parents saved nothing. My roommates parents saved for her education and they paid full price.

Son was a National Merit Finalist with perfect SATs, and subject tests, artist, competent diver and strong sailor, a Renaissance man, with a lot of compassion and integrity. He was never interested in attending any of the colleges that provided National Merit money, even though he qualified for merit at Wash U. and Rice. Because he has the luxury of doing so, he packed a school by virtue of the college being a holistic match–size, geography, high collaborarive spirit among the students, political sensibility, food (!), “soft lines” between engineering and Arts, collegiate feel to campus as opposed to a too urban campus, whose campus is the city, etc. We didn’t benefit from the money attached to being a finalist, but I believe my son benefited from the NMS finalist status in that he got two, crazily competitive, generously-funded internships (he had mentioned the status on the applications). Likely, the status did not inform acceptances at Williams, Brown, Yale, Wash U., Rice, and Tufts. He is a thrilled sophomore at Tufts, where the National Merit scholar finalists are a dime a dozen.

A word on being accepted to elite schools and having a child that is a National Merit Scholar etc. Full disclosure – our oldest son will be starting at Princeton this fall as a recruited athlete. He had exceptional SAT, ACT and AP exam scores and a very good, but not great, GPA in honors and AP classes.

Here’s the deal – kids with perfect or near perfect SAT scores, National Merit Scholars, etc are the proverbial dime-a-dozen in the applicant pools for these schools. Around 90% of the applicants meet the admissions standards when there are spots for less than 10% of them. The “well-rounded student” of yesteryear is NOT what the elite schools are looking for these days. My niece was rejected by Duke (and her father is an alumnus) because as she was told she was too well-rounded (despite great grades and test scores) and they are looking for “angular” students. I’ve heard essentially the same thing from admission officers at a few Ivies.

What does “angular” mean and what’s wrong with being well-rounded? Angular means a student has taken a particular interest/passion and gone deep with it, shown a lasting interest and taken it to a high level of expertise. This could be sports, music, government, public health, engineering, pottery, you name it. Doesn’t really matter what it is as long as the student excels at it (as evidenced by awards, invitations to special camps, seminars, speaking engagements, etc) and a lasting interest in it. THE TOP SCHOOLS ARE LOOKING FOR A DEDICATION TO EXCELLENCE AND PASSION.

What’s wrong with being “well-rounded”? The student who does everything but really doesn’t pursue any with passion and depth is seen as too divided, no focus, etc. Being a JV athlete (or even marginal varsity) AND on student gov’t AND volunteering at a soup kitchen AND playing cello AND being in 65 different school clubs shows no real commitment and passion.

Granted, you still need good grades and test scores, but it’s what the student does with their extra time that counts.. While you can sign your kid up for every activity and encourage them to join every club, it’s really hard if not impossible to make them have passion for one. What you can do is early on in life is to expose them to a lot of things and let them gravitate to those that really interest them. Your job as a parent is to support that interest fully.

If you fear that messing around fixing cars instead of playing violin mean he/she might wind up a mechanic instead of at Yale, look at it this way – 250% of Ivy League applicants play violin (an obvious, but not-too-far-off exaggeration), but how many applicants to MIT or Princeton Engineering spent their high school years working at a garage and racing cars they built themselves? Probably very few. Assuming your child has the grades, those endless hours spent with greasy hands learning to engineer a car from the ground up which has resulted in all kinds of trophies and awards for automotive excellence?……THAT’S what the top schools are looking for.

At the end of the day, being accepted to an Ivy/MIT/Stanford comes down to a crap shoot. As I mentioned above most of the applicants are academically well-qualified. A student needs to stand out by showing dedication and passion to excellence in something. Even that might not be quite enough as the school might’ve admitted several kids from your region who race hand-built cars last year.

Thanks so much for your blog and to all those who have posted comments. It’s been incredibly helpful as my daughter has developed a list of schools to apply to. After reading your blog, the first thing I did was run a few calculators. It was a reality check to see that we weren’t getting a lick of aid. We can ‘afford’ to pay full by using savings, but are not so sure that’s a good idea. In any case, knowing this ahead of time and using your advice we’ve done the following:

1) my daughter choose 2 ‘safety’ schools that will offer a lot of merit aid. One was picked from the state schools that offer a full-rides for Nat. Merit Finalists (she’s currently a semi-finalist). The second is an out-of-state school that offers a big 4-year scholarship to kids with ACT of 33+. The school was recommended as a ‘safety’ school by her college counselor and I dug around to find that it offered a big scholarship for high test scores. She really wants to go out of state, and this school gives in-state tuition for high test scores.

2) Matched schools she applying to with a similar school that offers more merit aid. For example, she’s wants to apply to Carleton and she’ll also apply to St. Olaf’s which is similar but offers more merit aid. Carleton might be first choice but who knows maybe St. Olaf’s would give a lot more and she might discover she like it just as much or more.

3) She is applying to Yale and Williams, and I know they don’t offer merit aid. In the unlikely event she gets in, we already know the sticker price and should have some alternatives to weigh against it. We’ll cross that bridge should we need to.

It’s hard to know ahead of time how we will weigh the costs. Right now everything is hypothetical, and yet decisions have to be made about where to apply. I’m a research scientist and I will say that where my colleagues went to undergraduate school has no correlation whatsoever with their success (measured in terms of publications, status, seniority, etc). None whatsoever—except that everyone did their undergraduate degree at a 4-year college or university. Those with state university bachelors are as common as those which bachelors from the Ivies. The best, brightest and hardest working out of each school got into the best graduate schools and basically everyone out of these grad schools went on to some form of professional science career (academia, industry, government or consulting).

Nonetheless, should my daughter get into Yale or Williams, we’ll probably drain the savings for it. Kind of crazy, I know. Fortunately, these two schools admit few full-paying students so we’ll probably be saved from this.

Here’s the thing–my “smart kid” went to NYU. Wasn’t a Merit finalist, but good schools don’t need to give money. They will still have “smart kids” attending. If you go to a lesser school, you will get aid. The trade off is obvious.

Can I ask what the 11 schools were that Lauralee’s child applied to?

University of Louisville gives this generous scholarship to National Merit Finalists.

National Merit Finalist – Full in-state tuition, plus a stipend for room, board and books ($7,000). Qualification as National Merit Finalist – Must list UofL as first choice with National Merit Corporation.

We went through this process and our high-achieving Finalist got wait listed at many schools and flat out rejected at other schools. Like many parents we found it shocking that our salutatorian would not be selected to attend, as he was tops in his class, had almost perfect ACT and SATs, college credits, and 8 AP tests with almost all 5s. But we soon found out that schools are not need blind, and that as a non-minority he did not fit the profile of high achieving lower income student. He did get into one of his top picks with scholarship and grants and with the help of a few small loans we are making it work. Of course we encouraged him to apply to schools that offer full scholarship but are happy with his choice. After some thought some things are clear:

1) Schools are businesses and would not survive if they admitted only the most qualified students. They must have paying students so they will accept lesser qualified students that can pay more.

2) Diversity is important to schools. Many of the slots for diversity are filled by the needier students. Your white high achieving student better be able to pay something. A high achieving minority candidate that is more affluent will be accepted before all other students.

3) Schools like to have a geographical mix of students. Part of the reason is that out-of-state students pay more at most schools. Given an equal applicant the out of state or international student will get preference. A student from a less populous state will also get preference with all things being equal.

Try not to take it personally. Schools are businesses and must operate as a business to survive. On any given day your student’s application will be in a pile with 100 (or 1,000) similar students and it is not clear how one is better than another. Just put forth the best effort in an application package and apply to several schools.

i saw the list of colleges that award nat. merit scholarships to finalists, but is there a way to find out which ones truly grant full ride tuition?
Thanks!

I am truly puzzled by high income families who assume that their children will be given merit awards by elite colleges. We are a one-income family with an income that has risen from the 80 K range to the mid-100K over the last 12 years. We knew from when he was young that at least our oldest would be want and be qualified to attend an academically elite college, and we have saved fairly aggressively for college since he was 8 and his brother was 3. When I opened college savings accounts, I went online and read about the costs and projected future costs of various colleges. I will say that ALL the projections for future costs have proved to be low, but we were able to save more than I originally planned.

Our older son was admitted to Princeton this year and did receive some need-based scholarship money (because Princeton’s endowment and policies allow the school to offer need-based scholarships in our income range). The University of Michigan has an even (slightly) better offer, given that tuition there is a little lower. MIT offered somewhat less, so that we or our son would have perhaps needed manageable loans for him to attend there. But if we had not saved none of these would be affordable. If we had another $50 – $100 income a year, we could easily have saved enough to pay full tuition.

I’m sorry, but “angry mom” seems to have a sense of entitlement that isn’t going to serve her or her daughter well. If her daughter attends an elite college, choses her major wisely, and works hard, most likely her parents’ investment in tuition will be more than adequately returned — both monetarily and in the relationships with people she meets in college.

(The reason we are single income is that I homeschool our two kids. The older has gone to public school part-time in middle and high school but also has taken some rather expensive online courses. The private schools in our area are not better than the public schools. If I had worked full-time and sent the kids to public school, there’s no question that we’d have saved enough to pay full tuition for our son anywhere he could get in.)

And full tuition is probably only about half of the full cost of an education at most colleges, perhaps less — I expect my son will be making annual contributions to Alumni Giving the rest of his life and hope he will be happy to do so.

If you were not aware that accrediting commission for schools have pushed colleges to award more need-based aid vs merit-based aid as to attract a more diverse student population. All of this has become merit vs need debate, there will be winner and losers.

All because you were a straight A student why should colleges be forced to give you money (discount your tuition). Shouldn’t you strive to a be a straight A student naturally without believing you deserve something. Shouldn’t the success of your accomplishments be the reward.

Wake Forest gives merit scholarships, but it seem they might be hard to get.

I agree with the elite (or near elite) colleges that promise to meet 100% of need pricing themselves out of the range of middle class families. We did save and plan for such a college but it really seems disingenuous when the aid package that “meets” need includes substantial loans and the non-direct costs such as books and travel are low-balled. We could have done it. But when we found a college that met need loan free first and then stacked merit on top without reducing the need based aid it made no sense to go to the more prestigious school that would have been $25k a year more. Could we have made it work? Yeah, but not comfortably. The first school priced itself out of competition compared to the value of the second.

HI, Lynn–
I guess we’ve all had friends, students, parents, etc.tell us about the kid they know who received a full merit scholarship to (fill in name of highly prestigious school here). What I noticed a couple of years ago is that some of these colleges call the need-based award a “merit scholarship….” and when you look at the financial aid package, it’s clear that the scholarship is, in fact, need-based as the “merit scholarship” award is, to the penny, the same amount as calculated need. I don’t have an issue, of course, with the notion that the student has merit, but it sure seems to fuel the fire of misinformation on the streets and leads more and more parents to say, “Well, let’s just see what happens….maybe Stanford will give you a full merit scholarship.”

You have taught me more than any other professional that, with the schools you have described, we don’t have to wait and see. No merit money means no merit money.

Thanks for keeping us all on top of the information.

Best,
Leigh Moore

Lynn, I too want to thank you for your informative blog and workbook. I have learned so much and, as my eldest starts looking at colleges, I feel so much more calm and confident than I thought I would. Knowledge is power!

Thank you Lynn, I have been reading your blog and your 2 books for the last year and am thrilled to say that with your advice on this exact topic, my daughter applied to 11 school, got into every one and with a high GPA, great ACT score, and more, received in total, over 4 years: about 800,000 in MERIT and TALENT scholarships including 3 full rides. She did apply to 3 ivies JUST to see if she was strong enough, and only 1 gave a loan. The other two, not a cent. None of this was a surprise to us because of the research I did based on YOUR advice. We cast a wide net and her hard work sure payed off! I feel badly for angry mom. Perhaps others will be spared the same fate. Take Lynn and Michele’s course!

Someone commented in your last post that reach schools are not an option for families that cannot pay $60,000/year for college. Is that true? Last year a friend’s daughter was accepted to Cornell but the aid package was weak and she had to decline and go to another school. Are elite institutions no longer an option for middle class kids if they cannot pay full freight?