<p>I won't qualify, nor will I need financial aid. However after reading a few posts about schools "gapping" students, I was wondering if these less selective schools gave money to rich students as a sort of incentive to get them to enroll. I don't have the best GPA but I figured that since I have money, a college might want to give me a small discount as a way of getting the rest of my money (or more appropriately my parents' money). Do schools do this with their rich, but relatively average applicants?</p>
<p>Some colleges might. I say might, because I’ve yet to read or hear fo a college that will say that is the case, but looking at common data, it appears that fin aid students get less merit aid. </p>
<p>I can tell you what I think about this, which may or may not be the way it works at some, many or no schools, as it’s my opinion only. </p>
<p>In most cases, merit money is given out by the admissions office to try to "catch " the students they most want. Admissions generally has nothing to do with financial aid, though at the few schools that are truly need aware and at those schools where there is enrollment management in financial aid or full aid not given, Admissions will code those students most desired so the aid packages are put together by financial aid accordingly. A student that is a “5” may get a full grant award, whereas a “1” may get mostly or all self help or get gapped. </p>
<p>But in a lot of schools, when merit aid is given to a financial aid student by the admissions office, that decreases the student’s need, and then less financial aid is given. At schools where full need is met, or close to it, the admissions office money goes further to give it to those kids who are not needy, and let financial aid deal with their own pot of money in meeting the need of those who have need. </p>
<p>Think of how it would work with two separate offices. Admissions admitting on a need blind basis and then sending the fin aid accepted students’ names to fin aid where the bean counters dish out the need based aid. To give a student with need some money would just be reducing what fin aid would be giving him where as it is pure enticement for a full need kid who isn’t getting dime one from fin aid.</p>
<p>And, yes, it is done to entice the kids most wanted and have no need to come as enrollment management. But as a rule, from what I have seen, most kids who get anything more than a token amount are the ones with the highest stats or some thing else the school would like to see.</p>
<p>I thought the way the world works is that rich folks who can write checks for tuition and whose kids are average (as far as admissions stats) then use that bank account as leverage to pay the colleges in order to get their kids admission 
I think you would have to be pretty rich for a college to come calling to recruit you or to dangle a little bit of merit aid (or a discount, as you say) in spite of your grades.</p>
<p>In my kids’ case, we have just enough income to disqualify them for all forms of free grant money or subsidized aid, yet are not rich enough to write a check and certainly not descendants of some wealthy American family (don’t think we wouldn’t love to have some as yet undiscovered rich uncle out there!)</p>
<p>So merit aid is my kids’ path to going to college without taking on debt, and they know that, and so their GPAs are at the top, as are their test scores, and those are the only factors that may open up doors for them. A lot of universities are opening their doors to them, but in many cases, the merit aid is not enough to offset the total cost out the door, and since we are a family that does not use debt, those brochures and emails are getting tossed as soon as we run the net price calculators.</p>
<p>If the universities they’ve picked offer them admission, it may be that they are hoping my kids are successful enough to become valuable alumni in the future. So it is a potentially mutually beneficial relationship - give my top scoring kids some free merit money based on their performance, give them the chance to succeed at the university so that they can start off their careers on the best foot, and then encourage them to support the school in the future. I am sure my kids will be very grateful for the opportunity to attend a great school without taking on debt, and will be glad to pay that forward as soon as they are working in their first jobs.</p>
<p>Scholarship depts often don’t know what a student’s fnancial situation is.</p>
<p>At many or most schools, merit scholarships have specific GPA’s and/or test scores needed to qualify.</p>
<p>True merit awards, that departmental or are going after a specific talent will not take into account a student’s financial situation, and the picks go to the best kids. But the money some admissions officers have to help with yield and to be competitive in luring studients would just offset financial aid if given to a student with fin aid. This is where some enrollment management tactics do come into play.</p>
<p>You can see that something is up with this, as the stats in the Common Data sets show that fin aid kids don’t get the same $ of merit money in many series. If you are a admissons officer at a school that meets full need, you might find it a better use of your sweeting pot to use the money for non need kids, because it just get integrated by fin aid for those kids.</p>
<p>Not all schools do this. There was a case here on the board where a student with financial need won the Marquis Scholarship at Lafeyette College. Very nice. But then, when he got his fin aid award, it still had self help. Clearly that award was used to reduce need, and the financial aid just gave the student a standard package with grant, subsidized loans and work study. It’s worse than getting an outside scholarship, because in such a case, most school, Lafeyette included, would take an outside award that is received AFTER the fin aid award is presented, and first reduce the self help. Since the Marquis is an in house award, Fin Aid knows the student is getting that award, and so it reduces NEED, not the self help. In some cases, it just replaces the grant the student would have gotten from financial aid. </p>
<p>I don’t agree with this practice and what it does is sour some fin aid kids who are top picks for Lafeyette to go elsewhere for better or similar packages. IMO, the scholarship should have been applied last as an outside award would be. But this is typical of how a lot of schools do work with merit awards. So why should Admissions “waste” their incentive money when it is going to be so integrated? Only true blind scholarships like the Marquis are therefore awarded truly regardless of need.</p>
<p>Refusing to at least consider taking on some debt for a college education is short sighted despite what Dave on the radio says…</p>
<p>Refusing to at least consider taking on some debt for a college education is short sighted despite what Dave on the radio says…</p>
<p>A student may want to avoid undergrad debt because he/she wants to go to law/med/business school and that will require large debt.</p>
<p>Or a student may be pursuing a career that has lowish wages…especially during the first few years.</p>
<p>Nothing short-sighted about that…jeez</p>
<p>I said “at least consider” yes very short sighted jeez</p>
<p>My impression is that, at many colleges, a merit award will replace a need-based award to some extent. So, in that sense, someone receiving financial aid will not receive the same benefit from a merit award as someone without need.</p>
<p>The operative word is MERIT. Merit awards are a strategy for schools to buy a better class. </p>
<p>If your stats will not help raise the school’s overall average, then why should they offer u a SIGNIFICANT amt of money to try to tease u to come, over some other “rich” kid whose stats will. It’s not like schools (besides Harvard) have a bottomless pot of money to give away.</p>
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<p>Some have reported that there are colleges that are overpriced at list price, but give nearly everyone they admit a “merit” scholarship to make them feel better about attending. Such a pricing strategy also makes it easier to raise prices by a lot if the school’s financial situation falters – most people will only see the list price go up by a few percent the next year, but cutting back on the “merit” scholarships can result in a much larger price increase in terms of effective net price.</p>
<p>In response to Kctaxguy I agree that for those non-planners who didn’t save one bit for their kids education they should consider loans to finance their kids education. Far better, however is to plan ahead, at least have some money in savings, and fill in the rest with merit money or other financial aid. And look at schools that are in your budget. If you haven’t saved and have little income, but too much to qualify for much aid, consider your good quality state schools. No one “needs” a $60,000 per year undergraduate education to be well educated.</p>
<p>Since I was the first in the thread to mention the word “debt”, it’s a pretty good guess your comment was directed towards me Could be wrong, of course, but I’ll ask anyway: what was it about my post that indicated that I had never considered taking on debt?</p>
<p>Given that I have arrived at a choice of avoiding (or “refusing” as you prefer to describe it) college debt (both on my kids’ part and on my own), it seems far more logical (at least to me) to conclude that I have spent a lot of time considering the prospect of taking on debt. That is, of course, if one does not make an unfounded assumption, thinking that I am some mindless follower of a radio financial guru. If I were a devoted listener of “Dave on the radio” I would not take your comment as the insult it was intended to be anyway. I rarely listen to the radio but, if I did, Dave on the radio has some pretty good things to say. Sure beats Stern (sorry in advance to any Stern fans.)</p>
<p>After considering the pros and the cons, I made a well-considered decision about whether to finance college with student loans. I considered it, and on my own, by my little bitty old self (no thanks to Dave on the radio or any other financial guru), I came to the conclusion, based on life experience, and based on my vision for our family’s future, that there is no four-year undergraduate degree worth $80K or more in school loan debt. Multiple that by three with the prospect of taking on $240K to finance three kids’ college undergraduate educations? That is what sounds totally illogical to me.</p>
<p>But all that means is that it is illogical for our family and goes against our family vision. Other families go through the same well-thought-out process and arrive at an entirely different conclusion, and are willing to take on that much debt for undergraduate degrees. That’s an obvious conclusion given the ramp up in college tuition over the years. If no one was willing to take on so much school loan debt, the universities would have to keep their tuition and fees in check, right? I am in the minority when it comes to this.</p>
<p>My only suggestion is that parents and students write down all of the numbers, make decisions together on what, if any, loans to take, and have a plan in place to pay all of those loans off within a reasonable time (I like 36-42 months max, none of this taking it out to ten years for a 4 year degree, but just my opinion.)</p>
<p>My decision is no judgement on what any other parent or student may choose to do. I don’t consider other people’s choices when I make my decisions (except, in some cases, to learn what worked or did not work for them), and I would never expect any other family to make their choices with any consideration of my opinion. My opinion would be irrelevant - and vice versa.</p>
<p>Whatever problems you may have with “Dave on the radio” are misdirected towards me. And what I infer from that I will keep to myself.</p>
<p>Perhaps not your intention, but I have to disagree with any assumption that someone who has chosen not to take on college debt, is a “non-planner” who has made no provisions for his/her children’s educations. That could not be further from the truth, at least in my case. A lot of planning went into ensuring my kids had the best possible schooling prior to college, and they would agree that, but for their planning (with annual goals, and regular check-ups on their progress), they would not have the stats to be eligible for those merit awards. They worked extremely hard to achieve, and on their own (I never even typed a single paper), and if some colleges want to reward them with merit awards, then that is fantastic. And for those children of other families who qualify for all of the free aid and subsidized loans, gifted to them by the taxpayers, I say congratulations. Take that gift and don’t squander it on an unmarketable degree. Life can happen, and medical expenses, for example, can help to wipe out the savings accounts that could have been used for college. We dealt with that. Yet, even if we had a lot of those funds still available, I know we would not be eager to hand over all of that money to a college to pay over-inflated tuition, especially for an undergraduate degree. </p>
<p>For those “non-planners” you describe who were unable, for whatever reason, to save up any money for their kids’ education - well, the last thing I would recommend they do is take on student loans - unless their kids will soon have the means to support them financially.</p>
<p>My planning has revolved around providing a secure present and future for my kids, one that includes living a debt-free lifestyle. We work hard, and earn salaries that reward that hard work and send Uncle Sam his unearned, hefty portion. We sacrifice things like new cars every few years - when we buy a car, we keep it at least 10 years. Our kids get to live in a paid off house that they can sell when I am dead and take the money and run They won’t inherit any of our debt, since we no longer have any. When they go to college, provided the net cost runs no more than around $10-11K a year after merit aid, we will be paying that cash as it is incurred. For any of our kids who choose the most economical way of going to undergraduate school - two years at the community college honors program then transfer - we will write them significant checks to go into their savings accounts, rather than writing checks to some college.</p>
<p>I think that is a pretty good plan for us.</p>
<p>I apologize for my assumptions and rude comments.</p>
<p>“we are a family that does not use debt, those brochures and emails are getting tossed as soon as we run the net price calculators.”</p>
<p>My real point was if, for example, your child was able to go to Harvard but it would cause you to go in debt, lets say, $5,000 a year, would you consider going into debt?</p>
<p>^^
That depends on what the child’s career goal was: To become a teacher? no. To become a nurse? no. To become an accountant? no. To become an engineer? probably no. There’s a number of careers that having a HYPS pedigree would make no difference.</p>
<p>My impression is that, at many colleges, a merit award will replace a need-based award to some extent. So, in that sense, someone receiving financial aid will not receive the same benefit from a merit award as someone without need.</p>
<p>That depends…if the school meets need, then you may be right (unless the merit replaces loans and WS in the pkg). But, most schools don’t meet need, so such a student could end up with a better pkg because the merit helped make the gap smaller or filled it.</p>
<p>Many schools even have a cut off listed for merit aid. If you meet or exceed the cut off, you get the scholarship disregarding who you are.</p>
<p>Billsho, most colleges I know, do not have auto thresh holds for merit money. They have cutoffs for eligibility. If you know of any schools with such awards, do share them with us. We have a section for some of the bigger merit money that are automatic. Not that many schools on the list. Most schools want to pick and choose and also not want to commit to give the money to every single person who qualifies. And the list is diminishing. Pitt used to given anyone with certain stats money. Now the stats have gone up, and just get you consideration for the awards. No guarantees and kids each year don’t get the awards with the minimum threshhold stats and higher.</p>
<p>KCTaxguy . . . no problem.</p>
<p>As far as going to Harvard, same rules apply: would my son have a net out of pocket (not including travel and personal expenses) of no more than about $10-11K that I would pay in cash either upfront or in payments to the school (most offer interest-free payment plans) over the course of every school year? In order to get the net out of pocket to the $10-11K level, would that require taking that subsidized $5500 federal loan (so the out of pocket cost would really be up to $16.5K)? If it would, we would all consider whether taking that $5500 on was worth it, and that goes for Harvard or any other school for that matter. Taking that $5500, or taking the entire $27K that is available over the course of four years, in easy money, federally subsidized loans, should not be a casual decision. It can be tempting, no doubt about it. $5500 is our debt max - under no circumstances, even for the Ivy League, would we sign on to Plus loans - not ever going to happen - end of story.</p>
<p>If my son wanted to attend an Ivy League, and was accepted (he would much rather go to the California Ivy, Stanford, than Harvard), and the make-or-break was going to be $5500 a year in federal loans, then he might go for it, but we’d also work with him to have a plan in place to make certain all of that federal debt was going to be paid off within 1-3 years of graduation. He wants to double major in physics and engineering/computer engineering, so there is a good chance he will come out of college with a job and salary available to pay off the federal loans (we would still have paid up to around $10-11K each year for him, plus additional living expenses and travel.) But the choice to take on the federal loans would have to be his, as he would be the one responsible to pay them off. </p>
<p>He has twin siblings, so there will be two years during which we will have three kids in college, contributing up to the same amount for each (they will have to get similar merit aid), and that is the best we can do. I cannot be trapped by enormous school loan debt as I head into my 50s and beyond, not even for Harvard. Some may say that sounds selfish. I don’t think it is. Going to Harvard as an undergrad is not essential for success in life. I will say something even more shocking: going to college is not essential for success in life either - it just makes things easier in some ways. I want my kids to be able to make choices free of having to consider whether they can afford it due to their school loan bills. I want to continue to make choices free of having to consider school loan bills.</p>
<p>We have encouraged our kids to make plans to continue on for their Master’s degrees, and for those degrees, they can focus on trying to get into an even higher tier school. They will need a great record of undergraduate success to do that, and they can accomplish that a public university, a state school, a smaller private, the oft-insulted community college (unfairly insulted, I would say.) Of course, for those who want to be engineers, the best of all worlds would be to graduate with the BS, start working at the first job, and then let the employers pay for the graduate degrees. That’s how my engineer husband got both his MS and his PhD - the best college financing deal ever. I hope my kids are as fortunate.</p>