<p>If a school offers a certain fixed number of competitive merit awards, and not all of the students awarded the scholarship matriculate to that school, do they ever/often re-award the declined scholarships to other students?</p>
<p>They (most likely) give out more scholarships than they actually can afford to give out. So no, they most likely would not re-award declined scholarships.</p>
<p>It is similar to how they give out college acceptances. When people do not accept a spot at their university, another spot does not open. They use statistics to find out the right number to accept to fill every spot.</p>
<p>Some schools yes, some schools no. Probably the bigger the award and the smaller the number, the more likely the school only offers the exact number they can award on the first go around.</p>
<p>For the full ride scholarship my daughter ultimately accepted, they only award 3, so they offer to the top 3 and if any don’t accept they upgrade the next best candidate. The same school just uses yield for the lower level awards, however, i.e. if historically half of the $10k scholarships have been accepted then they just offer double the number they want to ultimately give out.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of a school like University at Buffalo which apparently awards 25 full rides competitively. They accept 11K freshmen for a yield of just over 3K, so was kind of wondering whether to think of that as needing to be top 25 out of 11K or top 25 out of 3K. It seems that even if they would go down the list, it wouldn’t be something they could do before May 1, at which point, why bother to offer it to someone who has already committed.</p>
<p>The terms of my d’s competitive full ride (5000 freshmen attend the university, +/- 110 invited to compete, 10 awarded) stated that, if she accepted the award, she needed to immediately withdraw all applications/scholarship considerations from other schools. She was telephoned, and they asked her to tell them as soon as possible, preferably before mid-April, so they could have a firm decision for the 10. I would assume, should a student choose not to accept the award, they would have alternates. (My assumption is based on the wall of photos of the “scholars” in the Honors House – 10 each year, with the hair and clothing styles changing over time!) If a student leaves before graduation, that student is not “replaced,” as this award can only be offered/accepted in Freshman year.</p>
<p>She thought of “good scholarship karma” as she was contacting the other schools to release awards, which she was able to do by May 1, in strong hopes they could be re-awarded!</p>
<p>Schools have models that tell them how many they can award so that they get a desired result. So, they may award 30 to get the desired 20. Obviously, the numbers may not be exact, so if they do have a “low yield year”, they save the money for the time that they have a “high yield year.”</p>
<p>Thanks! I guess there are 3 models, all of which are sometimes used</p>
<p>1) award more than the advertised number, using yield estimates to try to hit the advertised number of students accepting
2) award the exact advertised number and re-award to runners up when declined
3) award the advertised number, fully expecting to actually give out fewer (knowing by yield estimates about how many will really be accepted each year)</p>
<p>So… I guess if you really want to have an idea what your chances are, you need to know which approach each program you are interested in uses</p>
<p>I’ve also noticed this…</p>
<p>Some endowed scholarships get awarded to exactly the number that the endowment allows (say 10). If someone declines, that award often does get re-awarded. I think some endowments HAVE to spend a certain amount each year.</p>
<p>Like so many other things, it depends on the school Most of the time, it seems to me that the awards are not recycled as they are given to just about the right number of people to make it work. From what I was told, the awards are not necessarily budgeted in a one year time frame, but in 3-5 year periods, so a school can compensate if too many kids turn down admissions/awards at the school. Some of them even do a rolling average. However, even within such frameworks, there can be a certain fixed number of awards that the school want to give out. But from what I have seen, there is very little of the money being recycled or unclaimed in a year. I’ve known people to ask about this at a number of schools. Also, what’s left in terms of financial aid, is often distributed to those on the wait lists.</p>
<p>MathMomVt–My D was a candidate for a full merit scholarship; on Scholarship Day, the parents were told that the college would adopt choice 2) from your post #7, above. Based on my research in the past several years, I think that your summary is probably correct.</p>
<p>Schokolade, do you mind sharing which school that was?</p>
<p>^ Furman University.</p>
<p>Thanks, Schokolade – not a school that’s on S2’s radar at this point, but that could be very helpful information for others making their lists.</p>