As college costs rise, many parents are looking for ways to bring down their family’s expense – and merit aid is one way to accomplish this. The average cost of attendance (which includes tuition, room & board, books, transportation and other expenses) for a student living on campus at a public 4-year in-state institution is $26,027 per year, or $104,108 over 4 years. Out-of-state students pay $27,091 per year, or $108,364 over 4 years. Private university students pay an average of $55,840 per year or $223,360 over 4 years. Many private universities have an even higher sticker price – USC just announced a tuition increase that will bring their total cost of attendance to just under $100,000 per year.
Most colleges and universities offer need-based aid – although their grants are based on their calculation of your financial need – not yours. No one will ever ask YOU what YOU think you can afford for college – a federal formula will determine what you can afford, and the colleges to which your child applies will tell you how they will fill the gap between their sticker price and the number the formula says you can afford.
Spoiler alert: the number is ALWAYS higher than you think it should be.
Which Colleges Give Merit Aid?
So how do you bring costs down? Apply to colleges that offer merit-based scholarships. Not all colleges give them, but some are very generous. In the webinar above, Magellan founder Evelyn Jerome-Alexander talks about merit scholarships with admissions officers from Elon University, Hofstra University and the University of Denver.
In general, most public universities are not very generous with out-of-state students. For example, a California student who attends the University of Oregon could pay their full cost of attendance – nearly $63,000 per year. If the formula finds you can’t afford that amount, Oregon will offer some student loans and work-study assistance, and possibly a small grant to help fill some of the gap, but they won’t fill all of it. If the formula says you can afford their cost of attendance, and you’re academically in the top of the pool of the students they admit, you may get a merit scholarship, averaging about $7,000, and that amount would be renewable for all four years.
But private colleges, which usually have a higher “sticker price,” are often much more generous. For example, if you’re admitted to Wheaton College, a small liberal arts college just south of Boston, you could receive a merit scholarship closer to $35,000 to $40,000, also renewable for all four years. So despite the higher cost of attendance, about $78,000 including tuition, room & board, transportation, books and expenses, with that scholarship, you’d be paying about $40,000 – close to what a UC campus would cost if you’re a California resident.
Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, is also very generous with their merit aid – they give the same amount in merit aid as they do in need-based aid, which is unusual for a more selective college (Trinity’s admit rate is about 28%). Trinity’s average merit award is about $26,000 – and they give merit aid to about half their admitted class – but with a lower starting cost of attendance – about $69,000, you could be paying that same low-$40k price for four years.
We talk in the webinar about merit aid opportunities at public universities as well – they are usually much more limited. You can download the brief slide deck from the webinar below, but you can access a more comprensive discussion of college cost and financial aid here.
There’s a hidden cost here that you need to consider: graduation rate. If a college’s graduation rate is low, it’s not because students aren’t motivated – it could be because the college has too much demand for certain introductory courses, and if you can’t get into that intro level course, you can’t take the next course that has it as a prerequisite. Your student may not be able to graduate in four years – and that means another quarter, semester or even another year of paying tuition and room & board to get to the diploma.
We source our data from multiple places, but you can check colleges’ track record for giving merit aid on the College Data website. You’ll find all of the information mentioned above – aid awarded to students with no financial need (we call this “merit aid”) as well as four-year graduation rates on that site.
We love helping students and families find the colleges that fit them academically, socially and emotionally – and financially! If you or your child need some help working through the college search and application experience, please feel free to get in touch with us.