HEllo Wise Ones,
I am spending some time this morning Googling and emailing myself the CDS of sppecific colleges of interest. I never realized how accessible, and valuable, this information is! THat said, I am visualizing a “match” tool where a student could say (for example) show me schools where non-need based aid line H3 is greater than 25, and state is Massachussetts. IS anyone aware of a search tool like this? NOw that I see how regulated the forms are, I would love to use them to search for alternate schools.
Seems like it wouldn’t be extremely tough to do this… Moderators??
Among all the available college search tools, there’s this one:
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search
You can use the “Paying” form to filter by “% Of Financial Need A School Can Meet”.
However, you can set the slider only in 20% increments.
And the tool doesn’t seem to offer any merit aid filters at all.
I can find all kinds of data on need based, but only by manually crunching numbers can I attempt to calculate Merit unless I am missing something.
In the interest of helping someone else, or correcting my own work, here’s what I did with a sample college, Fairfield, that I know gives good merit aid.
First, I looked at the section of https://www.fairfield.edu/about-fairfield/leadership-offices/departments/institutional-research/cds-definitions/cds15-16/ that is labeled H2 - A, which is entitled Number of Students Awarded Non Need-Based Grants and Scholarships. In this case, the number on H2-A - a was 1,309 with an average awarded of $13,500 (excluding athletics). So, given the fact that there are less than 2500 students, and a large number receive need based, this would be an outstanding school for merit based aide. Am I right?
Then, I compared Williams College (dd’s current dream school - today). At Williams, H2-A records a 0, with athletics non-need based also a zero. I see that under grants and outside scholarships, it lists Scholarships/grants-from-external-sources-(e.g.,-Kiwanis,-NationalMerit)-not-awarded-by-the-college as a million dollars plus, and the feds give 8K a year. SO, if I am interpreting this data correctly, Williams gives none, the feds give 8K, and students are outstanding so get outside scholarships. Quite a differential!!!
Am I on the right track? Sorry for the lengthy post, but I haven’t seen this analyzed elsewhere, so thought that someone else might appreciate the info that it took me a while to figure out. If I have this correct, now I simply have to blaze through the colleges she is considering, and record what is in the H2-A lines.
http://provost.williams.edu/files/williams_cds_1516_w_tuition.pdf Williams Common Data Set in case anyone is interested in checking my assumption.
And I apologize for typos - these forms plus typing on an iPad do not lead to accurate typing 
^ The Kiplinger’s “best value” ranking is a useful tool for comparing merit aid numbers for many colleges, including Fairfield (http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php).
You can click-sort on any column, including the one showing average non-need-based aid amounts or the percentage of students who get it.
Fairfield does seem to be a pretty good school for merit-based aid, although not quite as good as some others including Rensselaer, Clark, Trinity University, Clarkson, IIT, or Case Western.
The most selective schools (such as Williams) tend to focus on need-based aid. Many of them give no merit aid at all.
Thank you so much for the link tk!!!