<p>Is it just me or is the CDS the most depressing document ever printed?</p>
<p>I knew merit scholarships were competitive...but the schools my D is looking at, the merit scholarship rate is between 5-10%!!!</p>
<p>I guess the only good news is the awards are very high IF you are fortunate enough to snag one.</p>
<p>Is it too late for trade school?</p>
<p>Merit scholarships are intended for the top students at a school. They’re a way the school discounts tuition to attract a class of student that the school is interested in. Schools are businesses and it’s in their best interest to attract the desired students while getting them to pay as much as they can.</p>
<p>Are you looking at both parts g and n of question H2/H2A? Both of those are merit aid. Part g is merit aid to people with financial need and part n is merit aid to people without financial need.</p>
<p>I just looked at our state flagship and the number is probably closer to 25% of students getting merit, but the dollars seem to be pretty small. I can’t tell for part g, but for part n, the average amount per person is listed in part o and it’s just over $2000. That’s nice, but not super helpful.</p>
<p>If you want merit aid, you need to apply to colleges that are one tier below where you normally would want to attend. That’s life.</p>
<p>But there’s a LOT of useful data in there if you just keep wading through it :)</p>
<p>Schools with test scores for the middle 50% below your D’s will usually give maximum merit for applicants in their top 25% so think strategically! One tier below might yield merit equivalent to 50% of the tuition (often in the $20K+ range) or more, and these might be solid safeties for acceptance as well. </p>
<p>There’s a CC thread that captures for this admissions cycle just how unpredictable it’s become, both academically and financially, for reach-match-safety school applications, even without consideration of merit. Worth a read. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1488864-2013-year-safety-school.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1488864-2013-year-safety-school.html</a></p>
<p>What frustrates me are the schools that don’t publish their CDS data.</p>
<p>So, as a general rule of thumb…if a school gives merit aid to 20% of its incoming freshman and your kid has stats in the top 20% …are they in line for merit??</p>
<p>I realize this is wholly oversimplified, but can it be used as a generality?</p>
<p>Not necessarily. Some merit scholarships are limited to students in certain majors, from some geographic locations, etc… Also, the amount of merit scholarship may vary from a few hundred dollars to a full ride.</p>
<p>Re: common data sets</p>
<p>[CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) has some of the common data set information in it.</p>
<p>It’s just an estimate and next year’s numbers may change, but often you can get a sense of merit levels & what they’re tied to by completing the Net Price Calculator on each college’s website. The general rule here is that the more detailed information requested, the more accurate. You can also repeat the NPC and enter different numbers for the GPA, ACT or SAT score, etc. which can tell you where the break point is when the merit award changes on the results. You know, for when you need a break from the CDS fog.</p>
<p>Self employed so the NPC’s aren’t helpful for us…right?</p>
<p>If asked for your EFC, I believe you can use this/last year’s tax return to complete a FAFSA estimate, keeping in mind that any changes may result in a higher/lower EFC. If the school uses the CSS profile, I’ve heard that can be more problematic for self employed families. (Other CC posters will no doubt speak to this more knowledgeably.)</p>
<p>You could track which schools are CSS and which FAFSA only, once you figure out how important that might be for your situation. I know that some schools required CSS for EA or ED applications, but FAFSA for EDII or RD. Also, some schools also/instead require their own institutional FA forms.</p>
<p>All that said, some schools’ NPCs will still give you an idea about merit for the GPA and test scores (many ask a third question about rigor of coursework). You could always test the merit result by reloading with a higher/lower EFC to see if it’s need-driven?</p>
<p>Thanks. I’ll give some of the NPC’s a try.</p>
<p>BigDaddy: Many of the universities that offer the most merit aid are safety schools in applications. They need some way to convince great students to pick their university instead of a more prestigious one (that will have a higher net price in many cases). </p>
<p>The numbers can be deceiving - a university may OFFER merit aid to 20 percent of their accepted students, but since only a portion of students accept the offer, and the best students have many other choices, the university may only end up giving merit aid to 5 percent of their enrolled students. </p>
<p>These numbers can also be played in admissions brochures - “Our university offered over $50 million of merit scholarships to accepted students last year.” Yea, but they only had to pay out $10 million because most of the top students picked other colleges. There are some specific scholarships that may be offered to a runner up, but the main sources of merit aid are not.</p>
<p>There’s no reason a Net Price Calculator doesn’t work for self employed. You just have to be able to estimate your income for the year. The only issue I find is that most of them don’t have an entry for deductions which are much higher for self employed. In fact the Fafsa doesn’t really have an entry for it either. So I usually enter my self employed Net in the Adjusted Gross field.<br>
But income on Net Price Calculator really shouldn’t affect the true Merit Aid that will display, just Institutional grants and fed/state aid.</p>
<p>Sent from my Nexus S 4G using CC</p>
<p>I’m really at the point of information overload. I think it’s time to take a step back. So the current plan is to apply to about a dozen schools with a good mix of reaches, matches and safeties and just let the chips fall where the may!!</p>
<p>As long as the safeties are affordable and your D is willing to attend, then that should work.</p>
<p>My D is stuck in the uncomfortable position of being an excellent student with great stats whose parents make too much money to be eligible for need based aid but not enough money to write a check for $60,000.</p>
<p>So, our focus is on schools with large merit aid available to the top students. Of course we will apply to safeties. It’s just difficult getting her to fall in love with the safeties…</p>
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<p>You and I (and I’m sure many others) are in the exact same boat.
And now, as a few college coaches are starting to begin to show some interest in my D, it has struck me even harder lately – we can’t afford these places. And it is very frustrating. And I’m starting to feel a little guilty.</p>
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<p>I could be completely wrong or not as good as others at this but what I’m finding is that merit aid is a false idol. The award at some schools may seem like a large sum of money …. $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 or even $18,000!</p>
<p>But with a COA at around $55,000 to $60,000 a year, the fact that the cost may go down to $42,000, I’m afraid, really doesn’t help us very much.</p>
<p>Yup. When I say large merit aid…I’m talking about full tuition or full ride scholarships. I completely understand that these are few and far between, but someone is getting them! I think the key to these huge prizes is for your kids to have great stats, ridiculous essays and a lot of luck.</p>
<p>Fortunately, we have a good friend who is a Johnson Scholar at W&L. This is a full ride scholarship. She has been helpful in demystifying the process.</p>
<p>Basically, you need to apply to many colleges with high merit aid and hope that you get invited to several scholarship competitions. </p>
<p>My S is in the same boat. He’s a good enough athlete to be recruited to low level DI and DIII schools, but we won’t be able to send him without merit aid.</p>
<p>I do not feel too guilty, because our good income is a relatively recent development. We had some lean years where saving for college and retirement were not in the cards. As soon as we were able, we began saving.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>And what’s usually the case is that at these schools, the need-based aid is also very, very limited. The majority of aid is in the form of loan. </p>
<p>The impression that many have on this forum–that somehow students from families with limited means have it made with respect to college financing–is simply not true for most schools.</p>
<p>My kid received the next-to-top merit award at one school, and then 7K in loans. No other grant. The expectation after the 7K in loans that we would have to pay was just a few thousand dollars lower than about 1/2 the AGI I reported on my taxes. Most schools he applied to awarded him merit, and then maybe about 4-6K more in need based aid. Still, what we would have to pay excluding loans came to about 1/3 of my AGI.</p>
<p>There are a number of private colleges charging 30K tuition that offer $15K of merit money for their top applicants. They are not the most prestigious colleges, but they can provide a solid education for many majors.</p>