True or False?
Work hard in high school, get your best grades in the most challenging courses and score well on your standardized tests and you will be well-positioned to receive scholarships at many colleges. True… but what about colleges that don’t offer merit scholarships?
Don’t apply to colleges that don’t offer merit scholarships, because they will be more expensive. False.
Private colleges are too expensive. It depends.
Confused Yet?
The truth is that for most students, a college’s sticker price is meaningless. The only students who pay the sticker price are students who are not eligible for financial aid at colleges that don’t offer merit aid (Don’t assume that that’s you.) For everyone else, your net price will depend on these things:
- your family’s demonstrated financial need
- how much of that need your college will meet
- whether your college includes loans in its financial aid package
- your academic profile
- the extent to which you might help a college to meet its’ own institutional goals
In this article, I want to talk about how your academic profile can enable you to receive what is essentially merit aid at colleges that don’t offer any.
Huh?
Here’s how it works. The most selective colleges typically do not offer merit-based aid, because they consider all of their matriculating students to be meritorious. But they do meet 100 percent of your demonstrated financial need. Simply by virtue of being admitted to one of these schools (by virtue of your academic merit,) you have access to some of the most generous need-based financial aid in the nation. This is essentially merit aid through the need-based aid door.
All of these colleges with full-need policies are competitive, some ridiculously so, with single digit acceptance rates. As these things usually work out, the ultra-selective colleges are typically the most generous. But some of these colleges are within the reach of a student with a combined CR/M SAT score in the 1200s who is in the top 20% of her high school class. In fact, many of the “full-need” colleges in this category – selective but not impossibly so – also offer merit aid! The sweet spot indeed.
Here’s an example of how full-need policies can work.
Assumptions:
- Family Adjusted Gross Income $120,000
- Parental Assets – $10,000
- Student Income – $1000
- Student Assets – $3000
- 2 married parents, 2 children (student plus a 14 year old sibling)
- $200K in home equity
Here’s what this family would encounter at three colleges: one ultra-selective full need school (Yale), one less selective full need school (Trinity) and one private college that does not meet full need (Roger Williams.) Sticker prices below include direct costs (tuition and room/board) as indicated on current Net Price Calculators.
Sticker Price Versus Net Price
|
Yale
|
Trinity College
|
Roger Williams
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost of Attendance (Sticker Price) | $59,800 | $61,756 | $46,296 |
| Need Based Grant | $45,142 | $32,604 | $4,300 |
| Merit Scholarship | 0 | 0 | $11,000 |
| NET PRICE | $14,658 | $29,152 | $30,996 |
Interestingly, you can see how Trinity’s net price for this student turns out to be lower than that at Roger Williams, even though Trinity’s sticker price is much, much higher. That’s the power of a full-need financial aid policy.
Your grades and the rigor of your coursework is not the only factor considered by admissions committees at a selective college, but it is generally the most important one. Although many high schools no longer provide rankings on high school transcripts, the admissions committee can often derive your approximate rank by examining your transcript in the context of your school profile. Either way, your calculated rank is typically derived by weighting your courses, with more weight given to honors and AP courses, to the extent they are available at your high school. Generally speaking, you need to be taking some of the more rigorous course options available to you in order to end up with a rank in the top deciles of your class.
Here is a compilation of all the full-need colleges together with the standardized test scores of their enrolled freshmen and the percentage of enrolled freshmen in the top decile of their high school class. You’ll want your academic profile to be the best it can be to give you the best chance to be admitted to one of these colleges and have access to the most generous need-based financial aid policies.
Academic Profiles at Full-Need Colleges
|
College
|
25th-75th Percentile SAT CR
|
25th-75th Percentile SAT Math
|
25th-75th Percentile ACT Comp
|
% Top Decile High School Class
|
Notes
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amherst College | 670 – 780 | 680 – 770 | 30 – 34 | 84 | |
| Barnard College | 630 – 730 | 620 – 710 | 28 – 32 | 82 | |
| Bates College | 640 – 720 | 640 – 710 | 29 – 32 | 69 | |
| Boston College | 630 – 720 | 640 – 740 | 30 – 33 | 81 | |
| Bowdoin College | 690 – 760 | 680 – 760 | 31 – 34 | 86 | |
| Brown University | 660 – 770 | 670 – 780 | 30 – 34 | 92 | |
| Bryn Mawr College | 600 – 710 | 600 – 730 | 27 – 32 | 65 | |
| California Institute of Technology | 730 – 800 | 770 – 800 | 34 – 35 | 100 | |
| Carleton College | 660 – 750 | 660 – 760 | 30 – 33 | 70 | |
| Claremont McKenna | 660 – 750 | 690 – 770 | 30 – 33 | 78 | |
| Colby College | 610 – 710 | 620 – 720 | 28 – 32 | 61 | |
| Colgate University | 630 – 720 | 650 – 750 | 29 – 32 | 72 | |
| College of the Holy Cross | 610 – 690 | 620 – 690 | 28 – 31 | 56 | |
| College of William and Mary | 640 – 730 | 630 – 740 | 29 – 33 | 81 | |
| Columbia University | 690 – 780 | 700 – 790 | 32 – 35 | 98 | |
| Connecticut College | 620 – 710 | 620 – 700 | 29 – 31 | 52 | |
| Cornell University | 650 – 740 | 680 – 770 | 30 – 34 | 87 | |
| Dartmouth College | 680 – 780 | 680 – 770 | 30 – 34 | 93 | |
| Davidson College | 610 – 720 | 620 – 720 | 28 – 32 | 74 | |
| Duke University | 670 – 760 | 690 – 790 | 31 – 34 | 90 | |
| Franklin and Marshall College | 590 – 680 | 630 – 710 | 27 – 30 | na | |
| Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering | 690 – 760 | 720 – 790 | 32 – 34 | na | |
| Georgetown University | 660 – 750 | 660 – 750 | 29 – 33 | 92 | |
| Grinnell College | 630 – 740 | 660 – 760 | 30 – 33 | 69 | |
| Hamilton College | 650 – 730 | 660 – 740 | 30 – 33 | 75 | |
| Harvard University | 700 – 800 | 710 -800 | 32- 35 | 95 | |
| Harvey Mudd | 680 – 770 | 740 – 800 | 33 – 35 | 88 | |
| Haverford College | 670 – 750 | 660 – 740 | 31 – 34 | 94 | |
| Lafayette College | 580 – 680 | 620 – 720 | 27 – 31 | 63 | |
| Macalester College | 640 – 730 | 630 – 735 | 28 – 32 | 65 | |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 680 – 770 | 740 – 800 | 33 – 35 | 97 | |
| Middlebury College | 630 – 730 | 630 – 740 | 30 – 33 | 74 | |
| Mount Holyoke College | 610 – 720 | 610 – 730 | 28 – 31 | 56 | |
| Northwestern University | 690- 770 | 700 – 790 | 31 – 34 | 90 | |
| Oberlin College | 640 – 730 | 620 – 720 | 28 – 32 | 61 | |
| Occidental College | 600 – 690 | 610 – 700 | 27 – 31 | 55 | |
| Pitzer College | 610 – 700 | 610 – 700 | na | 60 | Only 14% submit SATS |
| Pomona College | 690 – 770 | 690 – 770 | 31 – 34 | 91 | |
| Princeton University | 690 – 800 | 710 – 800 | 31 – 35 | 96 | |
| Reed College | 660 – 750 | 630 – 730 | 29 – 33 | 52 | Reed not full-need for waitlist |
| Rice University | 680 – 760 | 710 – 790 | 31 – 34 | 88 | |
| Scripps College | 640 – 750 | 620 – 710 | 28 – 33 | 83 | |
| Skidmore College | 560 – 670 | 570 – 680 | 25 – 30 | 43 | |
| Smith College | 620 – 730 | 620 – 740 | 28 – 31 | 62 | |
| St. Olaf College | 560 – 700 | 570 – 690 | 26 – 32 | 52 | |
| Stanford University | 680 – 780 | 700 – 790 | 31 – 34 | 95 | |
| Swarthmore College | 680 – 770 | 680 – 770 | 29 – 34 | 88 | |
| Thomas Aquinas College | 590 – 700 | 570 – 640 | 23 – 31 | 29 | |
| Trinity College | 570 – 660 | 580 – 680 | 25 – 29 | 23 | |
| Tufts University | 680 – 760 | 680 – 760 | 30 – 33 | 90 | |
| Union College | 590 – 680 | 630 – 720 | 28 – 31 | 64 | |
| University of Chicago | 720 – 800 | 710 – 790 | 32 – 35 | 98 | |
| University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill | 600 – 690 | 610 – 710 | 27 – 32 | 78 | |
| University of Notre Dame | 660 – 750 | 680 – 770 | na | 90 | |
| University of Pennsylvania | 670 – 760 | 690 – 780 | 30 – 34 | 94 | |
| University of Richmond | 600 – 710 | 620 – 720 | 29 – 32 | 59 | |
| University of Rochester | 600 – 700 | 640 – 760 | 29 – 33 | 72 | meets 97% of need |
| University of Southern California | 620 – 720 | 660 – 760 | 29 – 33 | na | |
| University of Virginia | 620 – 720 | 630 – 740 | 28 – 33 | 89 | |
| Vanderbilt University | 710 – 780 | 720 – 800 | 32 – 34 | 91 | |
| Vassar College | 670 – 750 | 650 – 740 | 30 – 33 | 69 | |
| Wake Forest University | 590 – 690 | 620 – 730 | 28 – 32 | 77 | |
| Washington and Lee University | 660 – 730 | 660 – 730 | 30 – 33 | 81 | |
| Washington University in St. Louis | 700 – 770 | 720 – 800 | 32 – 34 | 92 | |
| Wellesley College | 650 – 740 | 640 – 740 | 30 – 33 | 78 | |
| Wesleyan College | 650 – 740 | 640 – 740 | 30 – 33 | 78 | |
| Williams College | 680 – 790 | 670 – 770 | 31 – 34 | 95 | |
| Yale University | 710 – 800 | 710 – 790 | 31 – 35 | 95 |
Data above is for class entering in Fall 2014, except for the following colleges for which data is for the class entering in Fall 2013: Connecticut College, Duke, Georgetown, Pitzer, University of Pennsylvania, Yale. For Middlebury, the % in top decile is for the class entering in Fall 2013.
