Colleges generous with aid are offering money from the school itself, called institutional grants. These grants can be made up of money based on need or merit qualifications. Since this is money from the college, they can define who they want to give money to and how much.

Colleges generous with aid money can be defined in a few different ways. This list shows the top 5 colleges, by region, in two categories.

Colleges in the first category provide the largest average institutional grants to freshman. These colleges tend to be schools with large endowments and are usually more selective in their admissions process.

Colleges in the second category offer institutional aid to the most number of students, as a percent of the freshman class. The schools listed here offer some amount of money to almost 100% of all freshman.

To learn more about how to research and find colleges generous with need and merit based aid, consider taking our online course Roadmap to Cutting College Costs.

This e-course with live Q&As will show you step by step the process how to target schools for financial aid. This includes both need-based and merit-based aid. We’ll explain how understanding the financial aid process and different factors (such as college rankings, location, supply & demand) can affect your financial aid award. We’ll also walk you through a specially designed tool to show you how to do your own personalized college search based on your specific needs and situation.

We think about this as a Moneyball approach to paying for college. If you want to figure out how to pay less for a quality college education, this class is for you.

A start date for the next course will be set for sometime in November. You can sign up to be notified when the date has been determined.

Related Articles:

Using Data To Research Merit Scholarships

“Follow The Money” To Find More Generous Colleges