<p>I didn’t read the whole thread, so please forgive me if I’m repeating something already said.</p>
<p>I know exactly what you are talking about, kmrcollege, and also do not consider this as true merit aid. It’s more like what used to happen when you went to buy a car. There’s the sticker price that’s posted, but almost immediately the salesperson takes off a few thousand for you. The kids that this happened to were not especially meritorious (downright poor student in one case) but got a “scholarship”, and/or else the discount offer was made at an on campus event before applications were even submitted. The schools seem to be small privates that do not always fill up all their spots, like Widener in PA. In the cases I heard about, the discount was $5-$8,000.</p>
<p>I can say, from personal experience, that this is untrue. We are a full pay family and we definitely care about what things cost. We do not drive expensive cars. We shop sales. And we definitely care about how much college costs.</p>
<p>Our son received a pretty nice scholarship from Case Western. It is a school that is known to give good merit awards to full pay students. Case Western does not require students to complete a separate application for University Scholarships. They are awarded at the time of acceptance.</p>
<p>Not this year. Older son got a Presidential Scholarship from RPI ($15,000) and WPI ($10,000) - didn’t ask for them, clearly bribes to attend.</p>
<p>American University - younger son got a Presidential Scholarship ($26,000). He didn’t ask for one either, but they did have info on the website that let us know that his grades and scores put him in the running for one.</p>
<p>They must really be desperate… that GPA and score do not even qualify for the least selective state universities in California. I wonder what their four year and six year graduation rates are (not reported on collegedata.com and common data set is not on their web site).</p>
<p>We did not know DD was in the running for the McKissick at U of South Carolina, and we did not even KNOW that Duquesne gave a presidential scholarship based on GPA/SAT. Our kids got those awards. So…I guess it was a “surprise” when they got the awards as there was not a separate application for these awards. EFC was in excess of the cost of attendance in both cases, and awards were received before FAFSA/Profile were submitted.</p>
<p>I do not disagree that many families who are not eligible for need-based aid care deeply about the price of college. Many of us are “full pay” but find it a sacrifice to deploy resources in that way, or simply are value-conscious as a matter of course. But a household income of ~$200K/year makes you a “full pay family.”</p>
<p>There are people with household incomes *many multiples *of that. </p>
<p>Truly, there are people for whom the price of college is no object because they can readily write a check for $60K without even noticing. I know people whose circumstances truly, truly allow them not to think about the price of anything. It is of no concern.</p>
<p>I doubt any of them post on College Confidential.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m sorry, you are correct. Preferential Packaging refers more to a FA package and how that is weighted; grants/loans/family contribution. More desirable students, filling whatever need, can get more grants vs loans.</p>
<p>The idea of non FA students receiving awards for the same purpose still holds. It is done rarely at our state universities, however I know one will seemingly randomly award a one time $5k to OOS students. Now obviously there’s no randomness about it to admissions, these kids are hand picked for one of many reasons (state residency? major? gender balance? etc). However to people on cc each year there is no rhyme or reason other then OOS students.</p>
<p>I agree with those who think that that these discounts shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anybody who is as savvy as the typical CC denizen–a school is likely to offer these merit-based discounts to students who are more qualified academically than the average student at that school–I suppose what varies is how much more qualified they have to be, and how much money the school has to throw around in this way. I guess I don’t believe that any school is offering discounts to full-pays just because they are full-pays.</p>
<p>We qualified for 0 financial aid, with an EFC of $76,000, and received “discounts” (scholarships and merit aid/grants) from the following: Fordham U at Lincoln Center<br>
($13,800); Drew University ($26,500); SUNY New Paltz ($5,000); The New School ($12,000); Hampshire College ($16,000); and her chosen, Sarah Lawrence College ($21,000). My D didn’t apply for any of these scholarships, but her stats significantly exceeded each school’s average.
Each amount is renewable for four years, provided grades are maintained – from 2.75 average to 3.5, or in one case, “satisfacatory progress” must be maintained.
We did fill out the FAFSA and CSS because we were told to by guidnace counselor, no matter what the income. Don’t know if that made a difference.
We were “surprised” by the award from the SUNY, because another SUNY gave her no money, and they are already reasonably priced (we are OOS); and we were surprised by Sarah Lawrence, because we had heard, maybe falsely, that all their merit aid/scholarships are need-based…same with the New School.
My D applied EA to all but Sarah Lawrence and the New School. Her stats are 2120 SAT; 3.77 UW/4.14 W GPA; two leadership positions in ECs; poetry/photography awards. My D has no so-called “hooks” like URM – just applied to schools where she exceeded the average GPA/SAT.</p>
<p>Still not totally sure what the OP is asking but I’ll give it a shot. Our kids applied to schools where they would get automatic merit aid not based on financial need because we are a full pay family. Those awards ranged from $10,000-28,000, but they corresponded with the cost of tuition too. The $28,000 was at a school priced over $50,000, the $10,000 was at a school costing $35,000. Those awards came last fall either with the admission letter or shortly after that. In March when the final award letters came, about 1/2 of their schools sweetened the pot by adding in smaller scholarships–what I think are the “discounts” you are talking about. Those awards were about $1500–not huge but hey, money is money. In the end, the schools the kids chose, through various scholarships, netted out at about 75% off “list” price.</p>
<p>I should add though-just because my kid got these discount scholarships, doesn’t mean they will give one to your kid or just because your kid got one doesn’t mean mine did. I am fairly confident at a couple schools S got these because he is male and wants to major in a program that is fairly new to their school. D got a couple because she is a female interested in STEM.</p>
<p>I fully understand what OP is asking and why she chooses the word “discount”. DD was awarded such discount with one of the college acceptance a few years ago. The school clearly describes the grant is “Neither Merit-based nor Need-based”. We didn’t apply any FA.</p>
<p>“XXX Grant is a personal recognition scholarship awarded to selected individuals who are not receiving other forms of University assistance, and who will improve the characteristics of the entering class by virtue of the degree to which we are able to foster a stronger spirit of inclusive excellence among our students as measured by geographic, gender, economic and ethnic diversity.”</p>
<p>Colleges can and do award scholarships based on criteria other than academic merit. They use money (discounts, if you prefer) to meet their institutional priorities. If their institutional priorities include increasing their academic rankings, then they use the money to attract students who are a notch or so above their typical applicant in order to improve their overall numbers. But not every school has that as an institutional priority, believe it or not! Some schools might have an institutional priority of maximizing revenue! In this case, they are better off giving a $5K scholarship to someone whose only credential is that he can pay the other $45K than by giving aid to a student who can only pay $10K. Schools might also have other priorities–improving geographic diversity, building an under-enrolled program, whatever.</p>
<p>They can even hire a consulting company to provide them with complex analyses about their applicants’ “price sensivitity” so they make sure not to give them more in scholarship money than is necessary to get them to enroll. </p>
<p>I have seen at our state universities the word “tuition waiver”. With the first financial aid award and subsequent account statements over the years while in school, there is often a line item where $1K to $4K is discounted in that way. I’ve seen this with kids who were receiving need-based aid and kids who were not. I never have been sure what triggers the waivers.</p>
<p>All 3 of my kids got “discount” offers - from NYU ($5000), Indiana (automatic scholarship - $9000 a year), Calvin College ($15000). The only one we took advantage of was Indiana - that’s a great deal if you have the stats!</p>
<p>Let’s take Widener University as an example of a school that offers a lot of “discounts” as it does give a lot of kids money. I’m familiar with the school and know some kids going there. I have family within commuting distance of the school, and I don’t think I know anyone who pays full freight there. So I’ll agree up front that it seems to offer “discounts”.</p>
<p>When you go to the common data sets, and look for the hard numbers, however, it tells a whole other story. </p>
<p>In 2011, 615 freshmen who were on some form of financial aid got some of that “merit” money. This is money that was not in the financial aid pot, but reserved for merit or discounting by admissions. That’s 89.9% of financial aid recipients getting a piece of merit pie.</p>
<p>Only 56 freshmen got merit money who had ZERO financial aid, which is a big 7.4%. These are the kids who got the discount. </p>
<p>So you can see separating out the stats is not an process that makes sense This is a typical breakdown by the way. Though it surprised me in that it seemed like everyone and his brother, quite literally got merit offers from them that applied there.</p>
<p>The key, of course, is that Widener may well have given most of those they accepted for admissions some sort of merit package and because the yield is not high at that school, they accept a lot of kids who end up not going there, that only those 56 took Widener up on their discount offer in 2011. These are the hard stats as to what actually happened, not what one gathers from anecdotal tidbits. </p>
<p>As to getting any info out of Widener as to how many kids they OFFERED the merit money that had zero financial need, and who did not end up taking them which would give us a true number of full pay kids getting a discountj–we’d also need to know how kids who apply did not apply for aid, ain’t gonna happen for a while.</p>
This is what I’m skeptical about–I’d have to seem some pretty good proof to convince me that schools do this. I suppose I can imagine them giving a discount to a true development case, but even that seems an odd thing to do.</p>
<p>Dentkids did not apply for FA of file FAFSA. We would not qualify for anything. Merit aid for S (HS2005) was around 40% tuition; merit aid for D (HS2012) was 50% at her top 2 choices. Both kids applied to LACs only.</p>