Purdue scholarship chart clearly spells out basics, but the devil is in the details

Basic information about Purdue University merit scholarships is clearly spelled out in an easy-to-read chart.  However, understanding important details below the surface calls for further scrutiny.

Here is Purdue’s chart.

Click to enlarge.

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I like charts.  They’re quicker and easier to use if I’m trying to pull out key information about how much college is going to cost.  Click the image on the right to see another chart showing all categories of financial aid at Purdue.

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Purdue is a state school ranked #62 on the USNews list of national universities.  It is particularly strong in engineering, included in the top ten of USNews Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs Rankings.  Other well-regarded areas include business, education, and health sciences.  Cost of attendance is $23,468 for Indiana residents and $42,480 for non-residents. (The maximum Trustee scholarship of $16,000 would put a significant dent in that non-resident tuition bill.)

Some details about Purdue scholarships

• Apparently merit funds vary considerably among departments, with the school of engineering reportedly having the largest budget.
• Applicants and students who switch majors may lose their scholarships, important to know since engineering is notorious for weeding out students.
• Purdue grading is tough, so maintaining the grades needed to renew a scholarship each year could be especially challenging.  Getting an A is hard for the Boilermakers with an average GPA that has hovered around 2.8 for over 30 years. Purdue doesn’t even seem to know that grade inflation exists in America. 

Considering the risks of losing merit financial aid, I would think long and hard before encouraging an out-of-state student to accept a scholarship to attend Purdue as an engineering major.  The stress of keeping up good grades in that environment could be overwhelming.

Psst – one of Duke’s so-called merit scholarships is actually need-based

Be wary of merit scholarships that take financial need into account.
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THE DUKE UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS award is listed as a merit scholarship, but it is actually based on financial need.

In one section of their website, it is described as completely merit-based.

Merit Scholarships
Duke University also offers a limited number of merit scholarships. All applicants for admission are automatically considered for any available merit scholarship; specific applications are not required, and are not available. Our merit scholarship programs do not require that the winner demonstrate need; merit scholarships are based on the student’s academic and personal profile.

But if you read further on the University Scholars website, you see a contradiction.

As University Scholars are selected in part on the basis of financial need, it is imperative to file any required financial aid forms as early as possible, preferably by mid-February.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS take financial need into account in a more subtle way.

From the University of Rochester website:

Merit-based scholarships … are awarded to students who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and potential, regardless of financial circumstances.…

We distribute merit-based aid regardless of a family’s demonstrated financial need.

However, in candid blog post Jonathan Burdick, Rochester Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, wrote about the curious correlation between lower income and increased merit award amount.

We had a “progressive tax” in our merit. On average, each four dollars less in family income increased merit awards one cent. Not much impact per student, but noticeable overall.

Hmm, the lower your income the more merit money you receive.  In defending the correlation, Burdick explains that financial need is incorporated in a camouflaged way.

… needier students were on average more likely to have earned larger merit awards from the committee review process. I expect this result reflects the sympathy most reviewers might have for students whose essays and letters of recommendation describe tougher life circumstances. You don’t have to see a tax return to admire someone who has both achieved in school and comes from a single-parent home, or will be the first in the family to attend college, etc.

This was exactly my thinking, that the reviewers sometimes give extra “points” to students from families with lower incomes, euphemistically described as tougher life circumstances. Parents must decipher this information on their own, since colleges may claim that financial circumstances are not a factor in deciding merit awards.

Be forewarned.  Sometimes even when colleges insist that a scholarship is awarded solely on merit, family income does matter.

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Related articles:

• Only two of the top ten universities give out merit scholarships
• Family income matters for ‘merit’ awards at the University of Rochester

Only two of the top ten universities give out merit scholarships

While all the top ten ranked universities offer generous need-based financial aid, only two – University of Chicago and Duke – award merit scholarships.

First, here are the top ten universities as ranked by US News & World Report.

#1         Harvard University
#1         Princeton University
#3         Yale University
#4         Columbia University
#5         California Institute of Technology
#5         Massachusetts Institute of Technology
#5         Stanford University
#5         University of Chicago
#5         University of Pennsylvania
#10       Duke University

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Chicago offers less aid to more students

Chicago awards merit aid to about 10% of its freshman, averaging about $8,000 per recipient.  Here is the description from their website:

Merit awards are determined by the Office of College Admissions regardless of financial need and are guaranteed for four years of undergraduate study. They include the following:

• University Scholarship: Partial scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, renewable for four years
• Chicago Public Schools Scholarship: A full-tuition scholarship to selected students who have graduated from a Chicago Public Schools high school
• Police and Fire Scholarship: A full-tuition scholarship to selected students who are sons or daughters of active-duty Chicago police officers or firefighters
• The University also honors National Merit Finalists with a renewable award of $1,000 to $2,000.

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Duke offers more aid to fewer students

Duke gives merit aid to about 3% of its freshman, averaging about $25,000 per recipient according to US News reporting.  This excludes their athletic scholarships.  More information is available at their website, but you have to wade through the details to learn that some of these “merit” scholarships actually have a need component.  (I’ll write about this messy detail in a future post.)

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Scholarship information for both schools from USNWR, based on 2010 data

University of Chicago Non-need-based Scholarships/Grants
Average non-need-based scholarship or grant award (freshmen)	$7,772
Average non-need-based athletic scholarship or grant award (freshmen)	$0
Average non-need-based scholarship or grant award (undergraduates)	$12,854
Average non-need-based athletic scholarship or grant award (undergraduates)	$0 …

Duke Non-need-based Scholarships/Grants
Average non-need-based scholarship or grant award (freshmen)	$24,985
Average non-need-based athletic scholarship or grant award (freshmen)	$39,470
Average non-need-based scholarship or grant award (undergraduates)	$21,158
Average non-need-based athletic scholarship or grant award (undergraduates)	$38,398

Hybrid learning breaks down geographic barriers for Northeastern University

Northeastern University is expanding its brand of co-op business education across geographic regions by investing heavily in hybrid education, with its first branch campus in Charlotte, NC.

The goal is to offer master’s degrees in industries like cybersecurity, health informatics and project management, matching programs with each city’s industries and labor needs, through a mix of virtual learning and fly-ins from professors based in Boston (tuition will be the same as at the main campus).

And it’s not doing it on the cheap

Northeastern, which is spending $60 million to support the expansion, is perhaps the most ambitious of a handful of brick-and-mortar institutions looking to broaden their footprint in new markets and with new methods of instruction….

Northeastern has hired 261 tenured and tenure-track professors in the last five years, about twice as many as in the previous five, and plans to add 200 more in the next three years — all of whom will be based at the home campus in Boston.

Examining traditional assumption that face-to-face is always better than online

“This is a time of huge transition in an industry that hasn’t changed much since the Middle Ages,” said Charles P. Bird, a former vice president of Ohio University who helped develop the institution’s online offerings and now works as a consultant. “Higher education is going from traditional face-to-face delivery, and the unexamined assumption that that is good, to thinking about delivering a high-quality online experience, whether fully online or hybrid.”

Drexel University has struggled with a similar enterprise it began in 2009, perhaps miscalculating the importance of local relationships.

“Bill Gates says place is going to matter less and less for universities in the future, but I think that’s wrong,” said Mr. Aoun, Northeastern’s president. “I think a successful university has to be part of a community.”

Savings for students, and the question of quality

Tuition costs for Northeastern’s new hybrid master’s are the same as those for its Boston campus program, but the savings for students will be in time, convenience, and living expenses.  I remember years ago when my husband was planning his return to school to pursue an MBA.  Since online was not an option, we had to price out the potential costs in terms of my lost income and moving expenses.  Today, that equation is quickly changing.

An important question that remains unanswered is about how the quality of online education compares with face-to-face.  Northeastern, ranked 56 on BusinessWeek’s list of business schools , would seem to have a good chance of serving up a high quality experience with its hybrid approach.

Related:

• The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School is taking its brand online.
• M.I.T. adds credentialing to its online course program 

Reed College nuclear reactor operated by students

This is something different, a nuclear reactor operated by college students.

The Reed College Reactor Facility has been used for research and educational projects in the Portland area since its establishment in 1968. . . . The reactor is operated almost entirely by undergraduate students who are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It’s especially interesting to consider this juxtaposed with Reed’s reputation as a place “where students enjoy almost unlimited freedom to experiment openly with drugs”.

In any case, it’s reassuring to know that a “nuclear meltdown isn’t physically possible at a research reactor such as Reed’s”.  (At least, that’s what they tell us.)
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Left: Reed College nuclear reactor. Right: Reed students celebrating at annual Renn Fayre.

SUNY Plattsburgh automatic merit scholarships and more

Although state schools in New York are not known to be overly generous with merit-based financial aid, it is still worthwhile to learn what exactly is available.  SUNY Plattsburgh is one school that publicizes specific merit awards, even offering a scholarship calculator to learn if you qualify for any of their automatic grants for freshman ranging from $2,500 to $5,000.

Plattsburgh awards more than $1.5 million in scholarships to undergraduate students. About one in every five undergraduates has a scholarship of some sort, either funded by the college or foundation. Scholarships do not have to be repaid and are primarily awarded to students based upon academic achievement.

Here are the results for a few hypothetical students based on the Plattsburgh scholarship calculator.

*Assuming parent income of $85,000 with $1,971 in need-based financial aid estimated using the Net Price Calculator.  Competitive scholarships would further reduce net costs.

(You can read more about the preferred status of out-of-state students here:  SUNY wants ‘D’ students, as long as they’re from out of state)

Students can continue to receive these scholarships after their freshman year by demonstrating satisfactory academic progress and meeting other criteria.  In addition to the automatic scholarships (based solely on GPA and test scores) SUNY Plattsburgh students can apply for the competitive full-tuition Presidential Scholarship and for acceptance into the honors program.

BusinessWeek labels Plattsburgh as “selective”, with a rank of 91 on their list of Regional Universities (North).   Undergraduate enrollment is 5,906, with the most popular majors being business/marketing, education and communications/journalism.  Homeland security and related protective services majors are also popular.  It is located on the shores of Lake Champlain, about an hour’s drive from both Montreal and Burlington, VT.

SUNY wants ‘D’ students, as long as they’re from out of state

How else would you explain that the State University of New York Plattsburgh automatically awards out-of-state ‘D’ students $2,500 scholarships?

If you manage to graduate high school with a D-average (as low as a 68% grade) and you are NOT from New York, you will be offered a $2,500 “merit” scholarship to attend SUNY Plattsburgh.  In-state students with similar credentials receive no such merit aid.  Now, if you’re a real “standout” and graduate high school with a B-average, you will automatically receive up to $5,000 in merit money.   Admittedly, even with these awards an OOS student’s net cost to attend is slightly higher than that of any in-state (IS) student.

You can check it out for yourself on Plattsburgh’s Scholarship Calculator.

Plattsburgh’s strategy is probably driven by the desire to attract the higher tuition and diversity that OOS students bring to its campus, located on the shores of Lake Champlain about an hour’s drive from both Montreal and Burlington, VT.  Currently, 88% of its first-year students are from New York.  BusinessWeek labels this school as “selective”, with a rank of 91 on their list of Regional Universities (North).

This leads me to wonder if a “selective” school actually accepts D students.  It’s quite puzzling.

With apologies to Emma Lazarus:

SUNY Sonnet to Out-of-State Students

Give me your average, your mediocre students,
Your huddled masses barely passing history,
The wretched slackers of your high school graduates.
Send these, we have money for them, to me.

UPDATED – For more details on SUNY Plattsburgh scholarships, including those for in-state students, go to this post:  SUNY Plattsburgh automatic merit scholarships and more

Berkeley will offer financial aid to ‘middle-class’ families

The University of California, Berkeley, announced Wednesday that it would offer far more financial aid to middle-class students starting next fall, with families earning up to $140,000 a year expected to contribute no more than 15 percent of their annual income, in what experts described as the most significant such move by a public institution.

While Berkeley has been enrolling low-income and wealthy students at increasing rates,  the relative number of middle-class students has declined.

Copying the Ivies

While several elite private universities — including the Ivy League triumvirate of Harvard, Princeton and Yale — offer similar programs for families with incomes up to $200,000, experts said that Berkeley was the first public university to do so. For the most part, public colleges have focused on merit scholarships to lure top students and aid for the poorest families to ensure access, but many now worry that approach has left out a wide group of families.

Details

Berkeley’s definition of middle-class in creating its new financial aid program is a family with income between $80,000 and $140,000 a year. On top of the parental contribution of 15 percent of income, students would also have to pay about $8,000 per year — generally a combination of loans, work-study and private scholarships. At the bottom end of the spectrum, that would make for a total payment of $20,000, a 37.5 percent discount off the $32,000 total of tuition, room and board for California residents. On the upper end, it would be about $29,000, or a 10 percent discount.

(Out-of-state students, who make up 30 percent of Berkeley’s freshman class this year, will get comparable discounts on the first $32,000 of tuition and fees, but still have to pay an additional $23,000.)

Berkeley’s admission rate is 22%, making it clear this financial aid will be limited to top students.

UPDATE:  A commenter on collegeconfidential pointed out that under this new program a family earning $120,000 would pay $26,000 a year for their child to attend Berkeley, a discount of about 19% from the $32,000 COA.  After looking carefully at these numbers, and taking into account that the median household income in California is about $59,000, I have changed my post title from “Berkeley will offer generous financial aid to middle class families” to “Berkeley will offer financial aid to ‘middle-class’ families“.

Truman State University – a rural gem in the Midwest

Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri may be a good fit for a bright kid who needs a financial safety and is attracted to a Midwestern rural location. Described as a  ”public LAC”, it originally caught my eye because, as explained in the chart to the right,  it offers automatic merit aid.

Truman has forged a national reputation for offering an exceptionally high-quality undergraduate education at a competitive price.

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Fast facts, with more information here:

• Automatic scholarships based on GPA and ACT score combination, with one specifically for out-of-state students
• Many other competitive scholarships, including several NMF awards up to full tuition
• 74% admit rate with relatively high student test scores that are in the range of other more selective schools  -  The 2009 freshman class had an ACT midrange of 25 to 30 and  SAT CR of 570 – 710.  Compare this to the same statistics for two other well-regarded schools:  Boston Univ. (58% admitted) ACT 26 – 30, CR 580 – 670 CR; SUNY Binghamton (40% admitted) ACT 26 – 30, CR 580 – 670.
• Ranked 31st by Kiplinger’s and first by Consumers Digest on their “best value” colleges lists.
• Ranked #8 on USNWR Midwestern Regional Universities
• Rolling admission with decisions by October 1 or earlier
• 99% of first-year students live in college housing; 49% of all undergraduates live in college housing
• NCAA Division II sports
• 81% In-state students; 19% Out-of-state students

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Some possible downsides

• Rural - Located in the rural town of Kirksville, Mo., Truman State University is about a three hour drive southeast of Des Moines and four hours northwest of St. Louis.  85 miles from Columbia,195 miles from St. Louis.  In addition to a possible downside of Truman’s distance from airports,  Kirksville has been described as “very lackluster”.
• Unusual service requirement of 60 hours per semester for scholarship recipients receiving more than $1250 per semester – may include work as a research assistant.

Here are Net Price Calculations for a hypothetical student who qualifies for automatic scholarships with top grades and test scores.  The three different levels of earned income scenarios are $50,000 (low), $80,000 (medium), and $150,000 (high).  These net prices would be even lower if this student were to be awarded one of the many competitive merit scholarships offered by Truman State.

University of Chicago early applications increase 25% over last year

University of Chicago’s 25% increase continues an upward trend and may be one of the largest among all colleges this year.

This continues a period of steady growth in the number of prospective College students of high ability who aspire to attend the University of Chicago….

Students who choose to apply early often view UChicago as their first choice, said James G. Nondorf, Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. Last year the College experienced similar growth in early applications, with an increase of 18.5 percent over the previous year. This year’s increase suggests that a growing number of highly accomplished students consider the College their leading option.

“This is a fresh indication of the passion that students around the world have for the distinctive academic culture at UChicago,” Nondorf said. “I am often struck by how well applicants of many backgrounds understand our traditions of open inquiry and diversity of thought. Our constant goal is to find students who would benefit from and contribute to the College’s legacy of intellectual adventure.”

Is it a “passion” for academic inquiry or is it a realization that an elite education can significantly increase their chances for future financial success?

2011 Early Application Trends:
1.  UChicago up +25%
2.  Duke up +20%
3.  Northwestern up +15.2%
4.  Brown up +4%
5.  Dartmouth up +3%
6.  Georgetown up +1.4%
7.  University of Pennsylvania down -1.3%
8.  Princeton reports 3,547 for SCEA (first year of accepting early applications since 2006)

UPDATE:  More schools listed at The Early Line on Early Applications for the Class of 2016 – NYT, 11/16/11