<p>@parentOf2018 In most cases, freshmen are not admitted into specific department but the school, so I am not sure what kind of departmental scholarships you are talking about that would give to freshmen except from music school. There are additional scholarships one may apply once admitted though such as Bell.</p>
<p>@billcsho, sorry that I’m unable to share too much because I don’t want to risk revealing my kid’s identity. I guess my point is that: some departments – perhaps only a very small percentage – may have extra budget for merit-based scholarships to give out to qualified candidates. The only way to know for sure is to ask directly from the departments one is interested in. My S asked several departments, and was told that some didn’t have any for freshmen, but some happened to have the budget at the time when he checked around. </p>
<p>It seems like these departmental merit-based scholarships are not automatically offered to students (unlike the school scholarships from LSA/CoE). So, one will have to apply for them, assuming they are available, and the candidates meet the requirements. Admittedly, I don’t know how this works exactly; but I can only assume that it won’t hurt to find out earlier and apply earlier before the budget is depleted.</p>