<p>I think it’s pretty standard for schools to say that their merit scholarship is dependent on your qualifying for need and that means FAFSA. At my kid’s school CSS goes away after the first year and all you have to do to continue to qualify for their merit is to meet FAFSA’s need level, which is pretty liberal. My thought is that if you make too much to meet FAFSA’s need level you should be paying list price anyway. </p>
<p>Only 1 of my D’s 8 schools required FAFSA for merit. We did it anyway, in case she qualifies at some of the pricier conservatories. As for paying “list” price if you have a high income, I disagree. If a student has worked hard and qualifies for merit, they deserve it. Why would you penalize the student’s hard work based on the parents success? That only instills the idea of, “Don’t worry kid, mom and dad got your back”. The sooner ANY kid can make their own way ( especially in music) the better. IMO </p>
<p>Agree Scubachick, for the reason you stated plus the fact that the FAFSA is not kind to people who seemingly have high incomes (according to FAFSA), which really are not high at all for those that live in areas with a very high cost of living (L.I., NYC, Westchester, Boston, etc.), and whose dollars don’t go anywhere near as far as people think. These are the same folks (like me) who get screwed every year on the Alternative Minimum Tax by the IRS, even though we are considered middle class for our area. So yes, if my daughters qualify for merit aid based on their hard work, they absolutely deserve it, regardless of what their FAFSA says.</p>
<p><a href=“Opinion | A Quick Way to Cut College Costs - The New York Times”>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/opinion/a-quick-way-to-cut-college-costs.html</a> Relevant to your interests. </p>
<p>Article really lays it out - thanks glassharmonica!</p>
<p>Also relevant: <a href=“A Parents' Guide to Conservatory Auditions, Part 19: How Do You Pay For It? (Reprise)”>http://www.violinist.com/blog/karenrile/20143/15626/</a></p>
<p>We’re in the same boat as the OP- not rich enough or poor enough for meaningful needs-based aid. Dreaming and hoping for merit…
Time was (in my day) that merit figured prominently. That bygone era… Maybe some say “good riddens,” but it’s us in the square-middle who are in an untenable position now.
The NYT article tells the truth. We’ve learned this with DS1 and hope-against-hope to have different results with DD2. With both, we trampled through the FAFSA and CSS (agree, the latter is a doozy) with disappointing and unrealistic EFC coming back at us.
A specific list of conservatories that had <em>real</em> merit aid would have helped.</p>
<p>P.S.
Not feeling “entitled,” just wanting to know, like the OP, what is out there.</p>
<p>As far as I know, all conservatories have real merit aid. But not everyone receives it. </p>
<p>Of course, glassharmonica. Merit should mean being exceptionally meritorious.</p>
<p>That isn’t exactly what I meant. </p>
<p>The whole thing is a tangled mess, and with music schools, I suspect there are a lot of factors that go into the whole merit aid question. In theory, it would be great if a kid is so good, is wonderful, etc, that the school would give them merit aid based on that alone, and wouldn’t care what family income is, but in the real world this doesn’t hold up, and every school is different. At a school like Juilliard et al, where they attract so many high level students, it is very, very hard to say one student is so much better they deserve merit grants, so basically Juilliard doesn’t, their merit aid is need based, so the fantastic violinist whose family is well off (or even not so well off) won’t get merit aid if they think the family income doesn’t deserve it. Most schools have limited pools for either need based aid or merit aid, and while they may be looser with merit aid than need based aid (for example, my S was ineligible for need based aid at the school he goes to, but did get some merit aid), so they are administered differently. However, they are not likely to give merit aid to cover s full ride to a student not eligible for need based aid if the school is that competitive. Where that rule is probably more murky is going to be a program trying to make a name for itself, the programs trying to sell themselves as the next big thing, they may do just that, if they get a kid who is fantastic, who otherwise would not get aid, they might do it to get them to go there and help build the name, so like everything else in music, it all depends. A school like Colburn, that is full free ride, in part does that IMO because there a kid whose parents are caught in the middle can get a free ride, in effect a full merit scholarship, since parental income doesn’t mean anything,and they can get kids who otherwise might go to a Juilliard or Rice or whatever, but can’t afford it…</p>
<p>In the end it comes down to how much the school has available to give in aid and the size of the demand. Among other things, I wonder with the influx of kids from Asia,especially China, how much that plays into the process. You have a large pool of kids who are playing at a very high level, and while some of them are the children of well off families, the 'little emperors" of China or the kids of well off families from Korea, and lot of them also are the product of state music schools where the families are not well off…so it could be a lot of merit aid is being used to allow them to attend the school, too…or there also could be cases where they have a need on certain instruments, and use merit aid to attract strong players, or a kid from unrepresented demographics in music, and it all plays into it. </p>
<p>In theory merit aid would be “wow, this kid is so good, we want him, and we’ll sweeten the pot to get him to come here”, in reality, it doesn’t work like that, real world economics plays into it. Every school is different, but I would bet that most of them do in fact factor family circumstances in some way, shape or form into merit grants, whatever they say, given that the merit pools and the need based aid are processed by the same people looking at the same numbers, and while in the merit pool how well you play decides the theoretical amount you could get, I am almost totally sure that is a starting point and they adjust that down based on family income.</p>
<p>As others have noted it seems to vary by school. My son is an international applicant and at one school we did not have to provide any financial information. It stated on the application that all domestic and international students were considered for merit-based scholarship. Since we didn’t have to provide ANYTHING, this leads me to believe that this school does not factor in need when determining merit. On the other hand, 2 other schools did ask for some financial information (not FAFSA). One was very detailed and the other very basic. </p>
<p>Even Juilliard is not that simple, Musicprnt. I had a conversation with a finaid staff person who mentioned that for undergrads, they do base a lot of their aid decision on parent income, whereas for grads, since families rarely still support them, the audition is weighted more in aid decisions. But I know undergrads who come from needy families who were admitted with no scholarship. I would say it’s a complicated decision and may be made on a case-by-case basis. </p>