<p>I have applied for a number of merit based scholarships but my peers, who have less achievements than I do, get the scholarships. It's quite frustrating seeing my peers who have opted out of extracurriculars (with the same academic achivements ) getting these large awards while I have put hundereds of hours into ECs and gotten squat. I was wondering if any of you have experienced this. I certainly don't want come off as ungrateful becuase I realize I have been blessed by being born into a family that has financial security, but I certainly would like some affirmation to all the things I did in high school. </p>
<p>PS</p>
<p>These are all local/state scholarships, my efc is 70k, and my parents won't be assisting me with college, they made me work hard in high school becuase they thought I would get scholarships</p>
<p>These dont sound like pure merit scholarships…they sound scholarships that require or look at need. </p>
<p>Often local scholarships are that way…they look at need…and are for frosh year only…and aren’t for high amounts.</p>
<p>were these scholarships for frosh year? If so, then how were you supposed to pay for the other 3 years? </p>
<p>If your parents expected you to get scholarships, why didnt they have you apply to the schools that give them for your stats for all four years??? those ones are often strictly based on merit and do not consider need at all.</p>
<p>I do have a full tuition scholarship, but it’s only worth 5500 The one particular scholarship that I was counting on pays for everything but tuition and sounded like it was purely achivement based (also through my state school). Based upon what I know about several winners, it almost seems to be achivement up to a certain point and then financial need. This is not explicitly said but based on reading the entire page and info about other scholarships, it might be the case.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is possible I didn’t get it because based upon the number of things I was invited to do through them ( internships, camps, etc) they already considered me recruited.</p>
<p>I did consider other schools that would give me tuition and room and board but they did not have a major I wanted or didn’t have a good reputation. </p>
<p>When an entity only has a limited number of awards to give, and there are a larger number of qualified high stats applicants, then it makes sense to use need for the down-selection. Look at it from the entity’s perspective…someone with need doesnt have a resource. his parents cant pay even if they wanted to.</p>
<p>Your parents are choosing to leave you high and dry so that they can use their money for what they want. why should the scholarship entity help with that when there are others who dont have that option.</p>
<p>what is this unique major? and what schools didnt have a good reputation for your major?</p>
<p>OK…so you have a tuiton scholarship. do your parents expect you to snap your fingers and come up with the money for room, board, books, fees, etc? what do they expect you to do now? </p>
<p>with an efc of $70k, either your parents have a very high income, or they have lots of assets, or both. </p>
<p>@danritter, my sons had the same experience. What we found was that if the scholarship application requested information about finances, family income, EFC or required that you complete a FAFSA, then regardless of whether it was purported to be purely merit based, the financial information seemed to come into play. All the kids who won those scholarships from our HS were great students to be sure, but all had financial need. No problem - just wish the app would say that need was considered. My sons did not win any scholarships that requested financial info. They did win scholarships if the app didn’t even ask financial questions. After the first son went off to college, we learned our lesson and the next son didn’t apply for any scholarships if the app asked about family finances. It just wasn’t worth the time.</p>
<p>Keep looking for scholarships and keep applying, and remember that there are scholarships you can apply for sophomore, junior and senior years in college as well. </p>
<p>Usually, the awards given by the admissions office tends to be merit based, and as Barfly says, if there is no inquiry about finances. IF given by the fin aid office, it is almost certainly to be need based. Departmental or independent can be either or a combination, where need is a factor,but how heavily weighed can vary.</p>
<p>You can contact the scholarship administrator and ask. Check on the goals and purposes of the scholarship for the institution. FWIW, I’ve seen awards going to students who have a certain level of need (based on EFC), who also can show merit (GPA, essay, LOR). When the decision is being made, the award/s will go to the student/s with highest merit, but within that group, it’ll go to the higher need applicants. (Make sense?) </p>
<p>@dyiu13, calling the scholarship administrator is a good idea. I do know of one time I got bad information, though, when I was told that in spite of all the need related questions on the app, the scholarship was purely merit based. My son did not get the scholarship (great stats but no “need”), but students with lower stats but great need did. The next year, the scholarship description was changed to need based. I think we were in the between year when the description in the paperwork (merit based) and the actual basis of awards (need based) were out of sync. </p>
<p>Remember: just because a scholarship is “merit” based, it does NOT mean that it’s solely based on whoever has the best test scores, GPA, etc. Unless a scholarship says you need x GPA and y SAT/ACT to automatically get it, there is a level of subjectivity. Maybe you had a higher GPA but the candidate had a much better essay. Or you had a much better SAT but they had fantastic letters of rec. </p>
<p>However, if the scholarship app is asking for FAFSA, you can pretty much guess there’s probably a need component.</p>
<p>There are both merit scholarships with and without need component. For those scholarships granted early (before FAFSA/profile), they are usually solely merit based. We submitted FAFSA in early February, but my D has received scholarships notice from a couple schools already long before that. In addition, one of the two schools gave additional merit scholarship afterward that has a need component too. The other one also has merit scholarship with need component pending but she declined the admission before submitting further document to the FA office. The reason is not financial related as that school already covered 75% of CoA in merit scholarships and the award notice was received in October (so it is totally not need based). </p>
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Completely agree with barfly. They all tend to look at income for merit-based scholarships.
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<p>no they dont. we have never filled out FAFSA or provided any income info to any school. my kids have been offered numerous merit scholarships based solely on their stats…no income consideration at all.</p>
<p>Right, @mom2collegekids. @aunt bea, I did not mean to apply that they “all tend to look at income for merit-based scholarships”. Some do, some don’t. What I am saying is that IF a “merit based” scholarship application requests need-based information (such as a FAFSA or other info) then, based on our experience, they are going to take need into consideration in some way. Why else would they ask? I have no problem with this. We have no financial need and my sons learned that their time was better spent applying for scholarships that not only say they are merit based, but don’t even ask for financial info. If they don’t want to know anything about our finances, then they must not be considering need. Those are the scholarships for us, and we will leave the scholarships with a need component for those with financial need. </p>
<p>If the merit scholarship application. ASKS for your family financials, it’s a safe bet they consider financial need as well as merit. Both of my kids received smaller local scholarships that did NOT ask for financial information at all. And one got a purely merit based scholarship from his school (our FAFSA EFC far exceeded the cost of attendance).</p>
<p>They want the FAFSA so they can have someone else cover the difference. If a college give 100K in merit awards and your FAFSA will get you needs based aid of 50K…the school’s scholarshp program only needs to come up with the 50K remaining. (that is not saying that some do not also use it to award aid as well)</p>
<p>The best option is to go for those schools that offer specific aid to applicants that meet specific requirements. I know Baylor has a grid with test scores and GPA so you can essentially figure out what you will get.</p>
<p>^ Unfortunately, the calculation is more complicated and scholarships may affect the need based aids. For my D, we have an EFC of $13000 and the CoA is $27000. Since it is in state and the school will meet need, we are expecting $6000 in grant, $5500 in load and $2500 work study based on the NPC (a total of $14000 in need based aids). Then my D got 2 merit scholarships from school that total at $9500 for first year and $8000/year afterward. On the financial aid package, the merit scholarship basically replaced the grant and part of the loan. At the end, the EFC is not touched and the net difference is $3000 less in loan which is less than 1/3 the amount of scholarship. So if FAFSA get you $50k in need based aid, the merit scholarship will first fill the gap, if any, and then reduce your need. If you have no gap to begin with (e.g. need met school), the merit scholarship would just offset the need based aids before it would reduce your out of pocket cost. </p>
<p>Great discussion. A reminder that universities also have a threshold for how much merit they will let you bring in BEFORE they lower your need-based aid. @barfly and a number of you did address the OP’s question thoroughly. If you’ve got a high EFC and any scholarship asks for FA info, you can assume it may affect if you are selected. On the other hand DO ask. DS applied for an Optimist Club scholarship and even though they asked for FA info, it was not the major consideration since most of the kids’ parents in the geographic region of the club had high EFC’s. They were looking at the students’ GPAs, test scores, essays in alignment with the mission of the club, etc. </p>
<p>As many others have said many times, it depends a lot upon the school, how merit awards are treated. My old school allows stacking for first year awards. The only exceptions are regarding any government aid that have rules that need to be followed. You cannot get SEOG, federal work study or federal subsidized loans, for example, until you’ve paid your EFC. Federal rules, not that of any school dictate that. So, yes, you get true full ride award, you lose subsidized loans, federal workstudy and SEOG; any such award reducing your EFC is not permitted. Gotta pay EFC first before you get penny one from the feds. Some schools make the same rules, so if you get an outside award, you cannot apply it to the EFC, just by the way they define how aid can be distributed. There is no budging the federal rules; schools can do as they please with their own money. </p>