I heard that at Northeastern, any merit aid you qualify for will get deducted from your need-based financial package. That would make merit aid essentially useless because you would get the same amount of aid with or without it. Is it true, or can merit aid stack on top of financial aid?
Thanks
Merit aid is not useless. The benefit of merit aid is that it is not dependent on annual income changes. As long as you keep your GPA requirement, you keep your aid.
In addition, merit aid can be more than you might get in need based aid, as it’s not income dependent.
You need to ask if the school stacks need based and merit aid. You also need to find out if the school stacks merit and need based up to the cost of attendance…or if they stack but you are still expected to pay your calculated family contribution.
This is actually an interesting case, as with The Northeastern Promise, your aid is both guaranteed to not go down and even scale with rising tuition, which merit aid won’t.
Northeastern does not stack merit and financial aid, so in this case the benefit is mainly for those where merit > financial aid.
Merit aid can be either be a part of your financial aid package, or can be the only aid you get if you do not qualify for need based aid. It does not stack as far as I know. No aid provided will go over COA.
Outside scholarships also will not reduce your family’s contribution. They are deducted from the money NU gives you. I was disappointed to hear that. And yes, @PengsPhils it’s unfortunate that merit aid doesn’t increase with tuition, the way NU’s need-based aid does.
When I called the school, I was told that they would not reduce your total aid, if the outside scholarship was small, like a few thousands.