50-50 Highlights: 41 Best Financial Bets for Public Universities

I’ve created two lists of colleges to target for merit aid, one consisting of only 50-50 schools and a more general list taking into consideration test scores. Since all the colleges on the lists are private schools, I thought I would create a list best financial bets for 50-50 public universities. As I started looking at the schools, I realized that the criteria I used for the private colleges didn’t exactly apply to the public universities.

With the private schools it is pretty much a matter of following the money and to a certain extent, geography. The same process didn’t work for me when looking at public schools for several reasons that I won’t bother with speculating on here. The point is that I had to come up with a different approach.

I started by awarding points for different categories and then used the totals to rank the public 50-50 schools. I did something similar when looking for colleges for my son. For example, a school received one point if at least 70% of freshman received institutional aid. Schools lost a point if they had more than 10% of freshman taking out non-federal loans with an average over $10,000.

I ended up with nine categories. Basically I kept adding categories because my “top” list was either too short or too long–nothing scientific I assure you. At nine categories, I finally got what I considered a useful list of best public universities for financial aid without being overwhelming.

As I was looking at my final list of 41 50-50 schools, I realized that “negative” categories had virtually no effect on the selection with the exception of two schools. Inclusion on the list was based on three categories.

The first was almost mandatory except for one school, the average net price after gift aid had to be less than $15,000. Out of 157 public 50-50 schools, 76 met this qualification.

However, while low average net price was necessary, it wasn’t sufficient to make the top 41. The universities that made it into the final list of best public universities for financial aid also either had a high percentage of freshman receiving institutional aid or had an average federal loan for freshman below $5,500. There were only three institutions that had these qualifications and didn’t make the list because of high non-federal loans.

Of the 41 colleges on the list, 26 may be good possibilities for merit aid since 70% or more freshman received institutional grants or 50% or more received an average institutional grant of $5,000 or more. When over 70% of students are receiving institutional aid, it’s not likely to be all need based and $5,000 makes a significant dent in state tuition.

This isn’t going to be true in all cases. When public institutions have a high percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, there’s a good chance that the money is pretty much being awarded based on need.

I looked up the actual percentage of freshman without any need receiving merit money on CollegeData.com for the five schools with the highest average institutional gift aid.* All except one school were providing merit aid to non-need students.

The exception was the University of California Merced were 63% of freshman are receiving Pell Grants. This means that while it may not be a likely choice for merit aid, it’s probably a great opportunity for those with financial need. According to CollegeData.com, UC Merced met 89% of freshman need, which is excellent for a public institution.

The 15 schools that didn’t have notable institutional aid still had average federal loans below $5,500. For whatever reason, even though freshman at these universities aren’t getting as much institutional aid, they aren’t taking out larger loans to make up for it.

I’ve listed the 41 schools in the table below. These are 50-50 schools only. You may take a look at the schools and think of 10 better schools to replace those already on the list. That’s fine with me. I’m making no claims that this list is in any way definitive or statistically significant. All I’m saying is that I found the numbers for these schools to be interesting enough that they’re worth more investigation.

*The data I use for my spreadsheet is from the Integrated Postsecondary Education System. It does not separate institutional gift aid by need and merit (non-need). The Common Data Set used by CollegeData.com provides this information.

41 Best 50-50 Financial Bets for Public Universities
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Name	State	Full- time Under- grads	5 yr Grad Rate	% Freshman Receiving Pell Grants	% Freshman Receiving Institutional Grants	Avg Amount of Institutional Grants for Freshman	Avg Net Price After Gift Aid (2012-2013)
Appalachian State University	NC	15115	64	24	34	3384	10203
Arizona State University-Polytechnic	AZ	2789	51	31	74	6459	12611
Arizona State University-Tempe	AZ	34989	55	29	85	8049	12380
Arizona State University-West	AZ	2694	50	47	88	7344	10072
Central Michigan University	MI	17880	51	35	67	6571	12936
Colorado State University-Fort Collins	CO	20400	59	24	45	5169	13487
Indiana University-Bloomington	IN	31050	74	19	46	8682	11361
Iowa State University	IA	26177	63	21	75	5397	14095
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts	MA	1353	54	48	61	3767	13600
New College of Florida	FL	793	64	25	100	4652	12018
North Carolina State University at Raleigh	NC	21469	68	21	52	6118	12129
Oklahoma State University-Main Campus	OK	17793	55	27	72	6075	14415
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Lehigh Valley	PA	719	51	41	47	2278	12539
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State New Kensington	PA	524	51	32	72	3172	14754
SUNY College at Potsdam	NY	3596	49	46	73	1542	13364
Texas A & M University-College Station	TX	39641	75	26	58	5917	11323
Texas State University	TX	25683	51	36	6	2745	12358
The Evergreen State College	WA	3766	53	32	73	3897	13147
The University of Texas at Dallas	TX	10635	59	26	72	10377	8064
Towson University	MD	16588	61	22	34	5582	13945
Truman State University	MO	5375	70	23	98	5009	13060
University of Arizona	AZ	28401	58	30	72	8957	14070
University of California-Merced	CA	5776	49	63	73	9886	11649
University of California-Riverside	CA	18205	62	56	76	8392	11351
University of California-Santa Cruz	CA	15323	69	51	71	8287	13748
University of Delaware	DE	16852	79	14	51	7671	14398
University of Georgia	GA	24746	80	21	18	7162	12862
University of Illinois at Chicago	IL	15402	51	54	65	6479	11645
University of Kentucky	KY	19884	55	25	59	7531	14839
University of Maine at Farmington	ME	1783	53	49	73	3141	13649
University of Maryland-Baltimore County	MD	9508	59	21	50	7489	14321
University of Minnesota-Morris	MN	1815	61	34	82	4294	14536
University of Mississippi	MS	15628	54	26	57	6543	14409
University of North Carolina at Asheville	NC	3129	56	26	59	3900	11263
University of North Carolina Wilmington	NC	11408	68	21	43	2461	12089
University of Northern Iowa	IA	9330	62	25	59	3129	14299
University of Vermont	VT	9764	75	20	90	11976	15793
University of Washington-Bothell Campus	WA	3432	61	39	45	6026	9400
University of Washington-Seattle Campus	WA	27050	78	22	31	8361	9559
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire	WI	9508	60	26	41	1105	12940
Western Washington University	WA	12942	64	23	36	4151	14253