Resources for Researching College Merit Aid?

Start at financial aid office. All scholarship and grant info should be there.

Regardless, narrow down the school she wants to go to and visit often. Make sure the admissions record each visit. The more interest you show - especially with high gpa, ACT, and National Merit status - the better consideration.

You will get offers and upgrades along the way. It may be on April 30 (deadline is May 1 of senior year) before you get the final offer. Don't panic if the #1 school waits until the last day.

One of my kids went through the same process 3 yrs ago. Three out of state targets and it worked out quite nicely thank you.

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College Merit

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Hope she's a minority.

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You're more likely to find assistance with the change in your car cup holder than from FAFSA... frick that nonsense. It was a waste of time every year.

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Remember back when great grades and scores was the ticket to a scholarship?

Nope...most of the aid is for broke-dicks and their kids now.

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. The timetable helps to know.

Definitely going to check out the resource that Dorothy linked.

Haven't received the last ACT scores yet. She's in the range mentioned, hopefully have a better handle on that in a few days.

Any more feedback on this "interesting" process is very welcomed.

Go to google and search for (for example)

"Louisiana State University merit scholarships"

Change LSU to the schools that interest her.

The information is not really hard to find. Put what you find in columns in Excel so that you can compare amounts awarded automatically or available to applicants with certain test scores.

GI Bill

What is her PSAT/National Merit Score? Semifinalists won't be announced until this fall but you can Google previous years' score cutoffs for your state. There are a number of places that once offered supposedly full ride scholarships for finalists, not sure if they still do. IIRC back in 2005-2006 Oklahoma, Tulsa, Baylor, and Florida did.

I’ll give you a little feedback. We worked with Dana at UGuide to help our son who just graduated top 1% in his class from dutchtown and she was very helpful.

First thing I will say is that guidance counselors in large high schools like dutchtown are really not as invested in the launchpad success of any one individual as they should be, but more rather just trying to cover all the basis from the top ranked to the bottom ranked students. Because of that, the top tier probably won’t get the attention they really should get and would likely get in a small school with fewer students. I don’t necessarily blame those GCs, but I do think they could do a better job for their high potential students.

In lieu of that, Dana was a really good resource to help in situations where the guidance counselor isn’t really providing the personal attention that a high potential student should get. We were really happy with her help and it helped our son get a bunch of scholarship offers.

Hope that helps...

If she has the GPA and test scores, Harvard has more money to give away than any other university, 20% of the students get full rides, and all students graduate debt free.

I know Dana at UGuide personally. She has several price options depending on how much help you need. She has a comprehensive package that gives you a full assessment of needs, her research on colleges that fit your student's profile, help with admission and scholarship applications, essay writing assistance, deadline management, and unlimited access to her for questions and advice. She also has an hourly rate for people that just need a little guidance or targeted packages for people who only want help with one thing (like essay writing, for example). Give her a call and she'll walk you through the options. Her number is 225/205-8696.