1. These Colleges are King Kong
As I said in previously, merit money was started about 40 years ago to raise the academic level of a college and university, much the same way that colleges use athletic scholarships to recruit the best athletes. However, the following colleges listed below do not offer any academic, or fine art scholarships based on merit. You could have a 2400 on your SATs or a 36 on your ACT, be teaching a high school class and have just co-authored a textbook with your high school math teacher, and you still would not get one cent in merit $$.
Knowing this is very important because for some middle class students whose families have a high EFC (Estimated Family Contribution that the feds and the institutional financial aid methodology, (see previous post) will simply not be able to pay their sticker price (EFC) because even with financial aid, the price is too high.
This is why it is crucial that you know your EFC (the price you really will have to pay for college not the sticker price) before you apply.
These colleges are my gorillas, my king kong, because they stand above the other 7000 who receive federal aid (and the 3000+ who give merit money) and you pay them, dearly. You have to decide if they are worth the price and if you can beg, borrow or borrow (remember, blog #5, the most money you can ever receive from college is in the colleges themselves and not from outside, national scholarships that are almost impossible to get).
Anyway, here is the list. Don’t cry your heart out when you see it because there are hundreds of amazing, interesting and fabulous colleges that do give great merit scholarships. I will go into them in Blog #8 “Where the $$$ is or 10 Ways to Become a Terrific College Consumer.”
These Colleges Offer No Merit Scholarships for Academics or anything else
| Amherst College | Cornell University | Princeton University |
| Bernard College | Dartmouth College | Reed College |
| Bates College | Goddard College | Saint John’s College |
| Bennington College | Hamilton College | Sarah Lawrence College |
| Bowdoin College | Harvard University | Stanford University |
| Brown University | Haverford College | Swarthmore College |
| Bryn Mawr College | Julliard College | Trinity College, Connecticut |
| Bucknell University | Marlboro College | University of Pennsylvania |
| Colby College | MIT | Vassar College |
| Colgate University | Middlebury College | Wellesley College |
| Columbia University | Mount Holyoke College | Wheaton College, Mass. |
| Connecticut College | New England College | Williams College |
| Yale University |
2. This is not an exhaustive list.
But it does give you an idea that a lot of the most popular schools do not recruit students via academic scholarships. The point is for you to make sure to check that the colleges and universities you apply to will listen to and pay good merit $$ for your compelling academic story. This is especially true if you are a middle or upper middle class family with a high EFC that is hard for you to pay.
This is exactly what I am going to go into in blog #8 “Where the $$ Is or 10 Steps to Becoming a Terrific College Consumer.”
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Stay tuned for blog # 8 “Where the $$ Is.” Leave a comment for me on this blog. Or, ask me a question by email. I can’t promise I will answer every one but I will carefully read them because you are teaching me where you need my support and expertise. Thanks for listening!