<p>Just a quick question, so I can hopefully settle a debate with my son. :-) He's a HS Junior right now and will be applying to Texas A&M @ Galveston in August. He'll be auto admit, so he says his essays won't really matter, and he wants to concentrate on the essays for a few of the big scholarships he wants to take a stab at getting. </p>
<p>My question is, is there any sort of merit aid that a school might give based on the application essays? He knows he's not going to get away with half-assing his essays anyway, just based on the code of ethics he has been raised with, but now I'm curious whether or not the essays could make a financial difference. </p>
<p>Look at the school’s website and check out the requirements for their merit scholarships. Most schools of which I am aware base them on GPA’s and test scores; there is also a scholarship at my daughter’s school for kids with considerable community service records.</p>
<p>If the school offers merit scholarships with any kind of ‘selection’ process that don’t require additional applications, absolutely yes. </p>
<p>I was given a couple of scholarships at UT with the essays I wrote as a part of the Apply Texas scholarship application (or it might have been the overall UT scholarship process). I know a lot of auto-admit students who don’t take their essays seriously-- and then they aren’t in the major they want/don’t get the money because their file is weaker.</p>
<p>He’ll be auto admit, so he says his essays won’t really matter, and he wants to concentrate on the essays for a few of the big scholarships he wants to take a stab at getting.</p>
<p>School scholarships might have a down-select process that use essays. </p>
<p>Those scholarships that your son is talking about…what are those? are those only for one year? If so, then trying to get university ones that are for all 4 years would be more desirable.</p>
<p>@Mom2CollegeKids ~ The big one he intends to focus on will renew automatically as long as he maintains the required GPA. They have some smaller university ones also, and he’ll be applying for a few outside ones as well. Then we should qualify for a pretty good amount of need-based aid as well. But the deadline for the university biggie won’t be until next April 1st, so he has a whole year to craft that one – the Apply Texas app essays will have to be done by this August 1st. So he has time for all of it – I just wanted to be able to tell him that the app essays can make a difference too!</p>
<p>My D is at A&M college station, yes her essays got her additional merit money. I’m pretty sure once they’ve picked the “top” group of students with similar stats, they use the essays to select who gets the top awards. One scholarship required an interview and it was clear from the discussion that her essays had been read and considered in her selection.</p>