Why Us?

We specialize in small liberal arts colleges awarding generous scholarships to most students.

What we offer families approaching the college years is different from what you’ll find at most other college consulting services. 

• We are parents of two college age children.

• We put affordability of college first.

• We place quality of education over prestige and name recognition.

If that sounds good to you, please read on to better understand what we do and why.

To begin with, we are not just college scholarship consultants. As parents of two college age children, we know first-hand the thrill and excitement of seeing your children growing into promising young adults and going off to college. But we are also well familiar with the uncertainties and financial pressure this process can entail for us parents. In fact, our personal experience with the college application process – and seeing other parents and students struggle with this process, especially the financial aspects – is what gave us the idea of sharing our hard-learned lessons and professional know-how with other families. 

Informed by our parental experience with the college application process, our approach recognizes – and puts center stage – that the affordability of college is the main challenge for most families. Too often, the question of how to pay for college is put off until the end of the college application process – when it is usually too late to change the outcome. Instead, parents, as well as some college consultants, tend to be laser-focused on applying to the most prestigious institutions at which the student stands any chance of admission, hoping that, somehow, they will find a way to pay for college in the end. In our experience, the result in too many cases is that students end up attending a college that is far from their first choice, often large public universities, and that both students and/or parents incur more student loan debt than expected. This is true especially for families that are not eligible for enough need-based financial aid, i.e., aid based on the parents’ income and assets. You will find a more detailed account of how this process typically plays out for families in this blog post.  

Clearly, there must be a better way. Enter the Merit Scholarships Consultants.

We turn the standard college application process on its head and start out with the question of how a family will pay for college. 

• If we determine that your family will most likely not be eligible for sufficient need-based financial aid, as is the case for many middle class families, we will recommend a strategy focusing on merit-based aid, i.e., college scholarships awarded solely on the basis of the student’s academic and non-academic record. 

• This strategy will focus on our shortlist of small, mostly private liberal arts colleges, many located in the Midwest or on the East Coast, with acceptance rates well above 50%. 

• These liberal arts colleges routinely award generous scholarships, not just to a handful of stellar, highly exceptional students, but to ALL of their good students. Even B students can still fare well.

• Thanks to their generous scholarships, these private liberal arts colleges in many cases end up costing less than attending a state school, such as UCLA or the University of Michigan.

• As added benefits, unlike need-based financial aid, college scholarships don’t fluctuate with the parents’ income and assets every year, parents don’t have to go through the stress, and unwanted suspense, of reapplying for financial aid every year, and students feel valued and appreciated, not just (barely) accepted, at the place where they will spend the next four years. 

Just as important, many liberal arts colleges offer a much higher-quality undergraduate education than public universities, as is widely recognized among higher education experts. The reason is that their one and only mission is to educate undergraduate students. You can find more information about the unique benefits of small liberal arts colleges in this blog post.

In summary, our unique services would be a good fit for you if 1) your family may not be eligible for enough need-based financial aid, 2) your student has a B average or better, 3) your family prioritizes quality of education over prestige and name recognition, and 4) your family is open to having the student attend college in various states of the U.S.