<p>Here's what I'm thinking. College admission is largely determined by two quantifiable factors: GPAs and test scores, and three subjective factors: essays, ECs, and recommendations.</p>
<p>So let's say a student applies to a college with an average GPA and test scores (compared to his class) but once in a lifetime ECs , essays and recommendations .</p>
<p>So what happens? Well obviously, he gets accepted when they sit around in February and talk about the applicants.</p>
<p>But does he get offered merit aid? Do they give the ECs, essays and recs some numerical value so they can compare and rank candidates? Or do they focus a lot more on the GPA and test scores?</p>
<p>It depends on the school and the merit aid. Merit aid can be offered to simply increase yield (i.e. “discounting” by offering financial aid disguised as merit aid since people are likely to get flattered by merit aid), to boost the numbers of students with certain talents and interests (i.e. merit aid connected with art, leadership, community service, music), merit aid aid designed to attract students in certain majors (i.e. engineering, business, etc.), and merit aid designed to lure high stat students or students like URMs who are highly desireable.</p>
<p>geek_son’s merit aid at Harvey Mudd is strictly numbers-based and very rigid. SAT and/or ACT subscores above a certain number, SAT II Math 2 above a certain number, top 10% of their class, all at the time of the admission decision – automatically renewed after frosh year, then dependent on college GPA after that. ECs, essays, recommendations, interview, course rigor, &c are not a factor, although they’re important in admission decisions.</p>
<p>They say the donor placed these specific requirements on the gift. No doubt, but it seems pretty obvious that the purpose of this merit scholarship is to make HMC price-competitive with nearby Caltech for students who would probably have a choice between the two.</p>
<p>When compiling geek_son’s college list, we noted many, many other colleges offering merit aid that is strictly stats-based. As NSM mentioned above, this is probably a marketing approach to make a “lower-tier” college more attractive to students with high stats.</p>
<p>In our state, the Byrd scholarship is partly dependent on test scores, unweighted GPA, and class rank. They ask for ECs as well, but I’m not sure they ever make it that far down the list of qualifications before they run out of money. The exact formula isn’t shared.</p>
<p>Almost all of the private merit scholarships we could find (notable exception: Coca-Cola) included financial need and/or minority status, along with something else such as community service or an essay. So those ones clearly are more “holistic” than what I’ve mentioned above.</p>
<p>At S’s school the Merit Scholarships are awarded by a Faculty Committee, not by the AdCom, and notification came about March 21, right before regular decision time for most schools… They are professionals and play their cards well. Northstarmom hit it right on the head with the different reasons. S was accepted EA, had leadership, certain major, high stats and URM. $0 FA. Didn’t get the top scholarship, but got enough to tilt the balance from State Flagship. They definitely didn’t want to let him go and yes we were flattered. :)</p>
<p>I’ve found that for the most part funding labeled as “scholarship or merit” is pretty transparent on each college website and generally stipulates what the money will be awarded for like GPA/SAT or EC related. Additional dollars in my opinion are in the vein of “grant-type” which may or may not be called out on the website and may or may not have a “name” connected to it like “faculty arts” or “emerging scholars” or something like that and those typically I’ve not found called out on the college website and as J’adoube points out may happen outside the admission/financial aid environment. But that has just been my experience looking at various colleges with my two older kids. My older son got a small one like that. It never showed up on the “list” of scholarships on the website and yes, it is “flattering” both to the kid and a happy circumstance for us parents, mentally I just filed it away in my brain as tuition discounting because they wanted him and it “sweetened” the pot. We did not “qualify” for any need based aid at this particular school. To me, there is a slight distinction between scolarships, merit aid and grants and how the schools deal with those and award them.</p>