Exactly @GMTplus7. Just fyi, though. NU gives no merit to those who can afford full ticket price. My husband and I graduated from there and I know someone in admissions. And, yes, @Ballislife23mjs, merit aid is irrespective of family income but, in general, the student would have to be in the tippy top of the applying students to get those scholarships. Need to apply where your student is above the 75th percentile in scores/GPA.
Another full pay here. We’re older parents and it’s our savings and home equity that disqualifies us, not income.
We paid full cost…minus $6000 in merit for one kid, and $10,000 merit for the other.
Yes, it is.
Merit aid can be based on academics, talent (art, music, dance, theatre, etc.) or athletics.
At some merit aid schools, scoring a merit scholarship is VERY competitive and is decided in a “black box” (e.g. Duke). At other schools, it’s a simple, transparent formula based on GPA & scores, and it’s automatic (e.g. Alabama, Arizona).
FYI. Some merit schools require that students submit a FA form to be eligible for non-need based FA (e.g. WUSTL, Northwestern, UMich, Carnegie Mellon).
Reading the common data sets of many top 30 ,LACs is interesting. You see that most don’t offer academic merit (why should they, full pay parents think it’s worth every penny) but have huge (!) amounts of athletic scholarships. So they award merit based on sports, but not academics and then brag about meeting full need for all students.
Really, you can get merit scholarships for athletics? I’m assuming most LACs are division 3, which are not allowed to offer athletic scholarships?
My daughter chose a school that gave her a merit scholarship, but had she chosen her 2nd choice school, we would have been full pay. Many of my daughter’s HS classmates are full pay, as they are from fairly affluent families and either chose to attend top colleges that don’t give merit scholarships or chose schools where they didn’t qualify for merit. D’s best friend is full pay at a $60,000+/year college. Her parents had saved enough to put both of their kids through expensive privates; they knew they were unlikely to qualify for financial aid and would be past retirement age by the time the kids graduated from college.
There are many D1 LACs. Holy Cross is one I can think of. Bucknell. There are others.
Full pay here as well. Daughter chose school with no merit over schools that offered merit. I think she made the right choice for her.
I pay full price for my daughter at Cornell.
Full pay for 2 in college. No loans, thank goodness. Savings only.
Don’t get hung up on the terminology. ‘Scholarship’ is used for merit aid, but it is also used in contests and by some schools for need based aid ‘Grant’ is used for need based aid, but also used for state money and institutional money given for non-academic aid. Ex, a Florida Resident Aid Grant is given to residents attending a private school in Florida - no need test, no special skill, just a grant for being a resident. Schools include loans as FA, and it is an ‘aid’ to get the money when you need it, but it has to get paid back. Usually a financial aid package or outline includes all types of scholarships, grants, loans (some include parent loans), and work study on the same page and call it ‘financial aid.’
It’s all money. ‘Athletic scholarship’ in commonly used, but the award is technically a ‘Grant in Aid’ (yet it is for a skill, so merit aid). Just know the difference between scholarships/grants, which do not have to be repaid, and loans, which do need to be repaid.
Davidson gives athletic scholarships, too. But most LACs are DIII and don’t.
The size of the school doesn’t determine the athletic conference, the school determines what level of athletic competition it wants to be in, how many sports it wants to sponsor (there is a minimum for D1),and applies to the NCAA to play in that division. There are some tiny D1 schools (Presbyterian ~1200) and some large D3 schools (UCSC ~16,000).
There are also some schools that are D3 for most sports but play ‘up’ in one sport and can give scholarships in those D1 sports; Hopkins in lacrosse, Colorado College in ice hockey
Yes. For example, http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=444 indicates that 41% of Harvard undergraduates do not have financial need as defined by Harvard, so they get no financial aid. You can use Harvard’s net price calculator at https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator to get an idea of what income and assets levels are needed to get no financial aid at Harvard.
Short answer: yes, there are. Long answer: everyone puts different values on different things. Some parents believe there is a justifiable difference in the education/experience their child will get at one institution versus another. You only live once, so choose what makes you happy (be it 4 years at a top school or 200k of savings in the bank).
If the family doesn’t qualify for financial aid, and can fund list price from savings, current earnings, and future earnings (such as HELOC), and believes it’s worthwhile (e.g., enabling graduation in eight semesters), then yes.
We are full price at Cornell (ouch!). Financial aid is solely based on income with heavy emphasis on assets. Nothing is merit based because all the students are amazing.
We are a full pay family. Our daughter is at an Ivy League school.