| Here’s How to Find Merit (Free) Money for College |
|
Because no one knows where the economy is going to be next week, or the year after for that matter, more people are starting to shop for college as they shop for any other big-ticket item. They’re looking for a great bargain. People, and that includes me a father with one more to put through college, want to pay as little as possible for college and with good reason. We have fewer dollars today than we had two months ago. As it becomes more difficult to pay for college, I encourage you to do what more and more students are doing: tracking down some of the $11 billion in merit scholarships that colleges seek to pay incoming students. Merit money is the money that colleges offer students based on academic performance and standardized test scores, and contrary to what you might assume, there are plenty of colleges that award students money for less than spectacular transcripts and SAT scores. An easy way to start to see if a student is in line for merit money is to identify the schools that offer merit money. A quick way to do that is to go to the Connecticut Student Loan Foundation’s Web site at www.cslf.com for a comprehensive list of schools that offer merit money. Once you find a school that appeals to you go to www.collegeboard.com and plug the name of that school into the window that allows you to search by college name. Then click on SAT which can be found under the heading, Admission. Merit money is offered to students who score above the school’s mean SAT score. At Marymount Manhattan College, 50 percent of the students scored between 500-610 on the math, and between 500-620 on the critical reading. Twenty-five percent scored below those spreads and 25 percent scored above. If a student has scored 550 on the math and 550 on the critical reading he or she should give Marymount a call to learn about specific the criteria for merit money. Once you’ve identified a school or two that interests you that offers merit money, a good way to expand your search is to go to www.carnegiefoundation.org. Click on Classifications, then Lookup & Listings, and finally Institution Lookup to get rolling. Plug in the name of the school you already chose and click on the button to find Like Schools. This will broaden your list of schools that offer merit money. My dear and brilliant friend, Al Hoffman, founder of the College Funding Service Center in New London, walked me through the Carnegie site the other day. Years ago, it was Al who told me about another site, College View, which helps students to identify how much schools actually pay out in merit money based on student scores. You can go in and see just what you stand to get based on last year’s awards. Go to www.collegeview.com. and click on College Search. It’s at the top of the page on the left hand side. Now scroll down to the bottom of the page and plug in the name of the college you’re thinking about. Once you’re at that college, scroll below Key Facts and click on Financial Aid. Now scroll down until you see Financial Aid for Freshmen & Returning Students. It will note the average merit based amount awarded. Then, of course, there’s www.meritaid.com, which just came out this fall to enormous fanfare. It has a terrific page that lets you identify schools that offer scholarship money within a certain number of miles from your zip code. It also permits you to enter your scores, which they in turn send to schools, and the site promises to advise you of the schools that will offer you scholarship money. There is no cost for the service. The graduating class of 2009 I believe will be the first class which not only “suffers through high school” but also “suffers through figuring out to pay for college.” Prior to the end of the long, economic boom that began in 1983, the job of suffering to pay for college was largely left to parents who found ways to do it. Parents borrowed, helped their kids to borrow, broke into savings, took equity from their homes, cashed 529s, tapped their retirement funds or were doing well enough in the marketplace to absorb the exorbitant cost of college. But times are different. College funds that were invested in the market are reduced, the cost of college is rising, and loans are drying up. This fall Finaid.org, a website that tracks the student loan industry, reported that 36 lenders have stopped writing student loans completely over the past year, and the situation has become worse in recent weeks. Most students who receive merit money learn about it once they’ve been accepted to college. That’s because they didn’t know about merit money, how colleges use it and how to tap into it. Colleges and universities notify students of merit awards once they’ve been accepted in a bid to entice those students to attend their schools. I’m suggesting that students now take the lead on this. Identify a few schools that will offer them merit money and then put those merit schools on your list. Your list might comprise of two reaches, four schools you can expect to get into, a couple of safes, and three merit schools.
|