<p>I'm getting fairly worried. Most of my other colleges have given their offers. Smith, on the other hand, gave me an envelope in my acceptance letter that stated that I was not applicable for need based aid. What's scaring me is that is said nothing about merit aid, so I effectively have zero dollars from Smith. Is anyone else facing this situation, or am I looking in the wrong place?</p>
<p>Merit aid should have/would have come before you got your need-based aid. So if you already got an envelope saying that you don’t qualify for need-based aid, and you haven’t heard anything about merit aid, then unfortunately it looks like Smith has calculated that your need is not great enough for financial aid, and that you did not qualify for merit aid (which doesn’t mean you’re not meritorious, it just means that there are a lot of strong students and very few merit awards). I was in the same boat when I applied.</p>