You have to go to each school’s web site to see if the answer to your question is listed. If not, you have to ask the school directly.
It is certainly possible that some colleges have no stated policy because they want to be able to do whatever they want opaquely without tying themselves to any promises. Merit scholarships (or preferential packaging) are often much more opaque in terms of how they are awarded than admission or need-based financial aid.
Worst case: merit scholarships replace grants from the school first. In this case, the merit scholarship must be greater than the need-based grant that would otherwise be given by the school to reduce the net price.
Best realistic case: merit scholarships replace unmet need, student loans, and work-study first before replacing grants from the school (or preferential packaging of need-based financial aid reduces or eliminates unmet need, student loans, and/or work-study). In this case, merit scholarships up to the value of these non-grant amount will reduce net price, but then additional merit scholarships would reduce grants from the school, until they become large enough to consume all of these categories.
Unless there is a stated policy, it would be better to assume the worst case when determining whether a school is a safety in a financial sense.
You have it backwards, if a school meets full need, it is the merit that replaces need. But if they don’t meet full need, and many on your list do not, you may just get some combo of merit and need. You may also get packaged a student loan and even a parent ,Ian, plus your EFC.
It is not realistic to think that you will not pay your EFC. If you are lucky enough to get need met, it will be a combo of merit then need up to your EFC. Check the scholarship sections of each college to see if there are a real super large merit, i.e. Full tuition or full ride.
Thanks @ucbalumnus, I’ll check out the web sites. Is there a term for what I’m looking for? Merit aid that adds to financial aid, instead of replacing it?
Thanks @BrownParent, I’m going to check out the web sites of all the colleges I’m interested in for my daughter, but do you know of any schools that will combine merit and financial aid in such a way that you will pay less than your EFC?
Not trying to hijack the thread, but let me give some specifics. Eventually I’ll end up with 2 kids in college at the same time. From running some NPC’s, it seems that my EFC for 2 kids in school is around 86K - or 43K each. In the best case scenario, some of the schools on our list will give 20K - 25K in merit aid, which will put a lot of them right around 43K for net COA.
I think I already know the answer, but I was wondering if the 23K or so in financial aid per kid would combine with the 20K - 25K per kid in merit aid for a total of ~46K in total aid. But it doesn’t sound like this is the case. It sounds like the 23K in financial aid will just be replaced by 23K in merit aid, and we’ll still have to pay around 43K per kid.
Is this correct? Do you know of any schools that are known to combine financial aid and merit aid?
@WalknOnEggShells We have not found any schools which go below our EFC unless the award is strictly merit- based and larger than our EFC. I have had a child apply to a couple of the schools on your list, and, yes,merit replaced need and the net cost was no different.
ETA: only high merit awards have reduced our EFC. Full-tuition scholarships and/or schools which allow stacking of multiple scholarships are the only way we have found to reduce costs below our EFC. (Bama is one school that allows scholarship stacking…some do not allow scholarships to stack beyond your EFC,. Some only allow one scholarship and replace one scholarship with another. Some don’t allow scholarships to exceed tuition. Finding high merit that is really not just a switch in terminology (merit aid vs institutional grant) takes a lot of time.)
In the best case scenario, some of the schools on our list will give 20K - 25K in merit aid, which will put a lot of them right around 43K for net COA.
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Then I suggest that you add schools to the list that will give you more then $25,000 in Merit aid.
Merit scholarships are applied first. Once the admissions office applies the merit aid, The financial aid office sees that, and sees that it does not have to add much or ant aid.
that seems to be what is confusing some here. When a student is accepted, it’s usually the ADMISSIONS office that includes a merit award. Then, a month or more later, when the FA office is working the FA pkg, it sees that ALREADY a merit award is given and “need” is now gone or mostly gone. that is the problem
Even schools that meet need, don’t really. Need is by their calculations, not yours. Forget looking at schools claims of meeting need, that is just a marketing ploy. You are really looking for schools that pay well for merit scholarships. Those are also the most likely to allow stacking.
I know off the top of my head that Alabama and Oklahoma both allow stacking. Without doing additional research, I would guess that Auburn, Kentucky and Mississippi State do too based upon their similar approach to merit aid. That is completely speculation on my part though.
Focus on the Net Price. It is the only number that really matters. Most of the other is merely fluff designed to obfuscate the fact that you are still paying a bunch…my favorite is the meeting need by giving you a loan. What a bunch of hooey.
Note that the net prices are not necessarily the same as the institutional EFCs, since there may be student loans or work-study in the financial aid. It is possible (but not necessarily the case) that the following scenarios could exist:
No merit:
$66k list price
$23k need based grants
$10k student loan + work-study
$33k institutional EFC
(total net price of $43k)
With $23k merit best realistic case:
$66k list price
$10k need based grants
$23k scholarship (replaced the $10k student loan + work study and $13k of the grants)
$33k institutional EFC
(total net price of $33k)
With $23k merit worst case:
$66k list price
$23k scholarship (replaced the $23k grants)
$10k student loan + work-study
$33k institutional EFC
(total net price of $43k)
This made me pull up my old FA spreadsheets for S’12 and D’15. The only school they had in common was Wooster.
Their net costs were similar, but the distribution was different - D (higher stats) with higher merit and less need-based, S (lower stats but also male, a big plus at many LACs) with the reverse.
D got a 24K merit scholarship at Wooster, S only 10K. But the need-based was higher for S to bring the package to the same ballpark. D’s overall package was better by $2500.
DePauw was $3K more for my S than Wooster was (D didn’t apply to DP). Merit at Depauw for him was only $4k. What’s odd is that he was initially waitlisted at Wooster and it wound up being a better package than Depauw or Wittenberg where he was accepted right away.
D’15 got the highest merit at Tulane (32k), but they also hit need-based aid out of the park for her, and they don’t promise to meet need, so that was a function of them really wanting her, I believe.
I think you just never know, but most CTCL schools try to make it affordable for anyone they accept, if they an afford it.
One more thing to look at is how outside scholarships are handled. My D’s school allows them to replace work-study only, after that it reduces grant aid. They don’t package loans, if they did they might allow them to reduce those. Some schools do allow you to stack those, some reduce grants, some have a loan-workstudy middle ground.
Every school seems to do this slightly differently. We got a FA package from a school with a huge endowment that is very expensive. Most of the aid is grants due to need but there was an extra grant given due to merit that they didn’t call merit aid I think to make their numbers look nicer. They also do give small merit scholarships that are stackable plus allow any independent scholarships to cover the student work requirement first and then any extra reduce the award amount. But asking in that schools forum is probably most helpful as some schools are know for being more or less generous and some of the EFC calculators seem to provide more realistic estimates than others.
Thanks a lot for the additional replies, especially the links to the articles about preferential packaging. I think I am getting the picture now. Sounds like, most likely, we won’t get below our EFC, for the reasons mentioned. From the college’s point of view, it makes perfect sense, of course. They need to spread the wealth the best they can.
Paying EFC wouldn’t be so bad if we could actually afford it. I am probably not the only one who has realized that that number is always way higher than what a family can actually afford. But again, this makes perfect sense from the college’s point of view.
But I am not complaining. Everyone is in the same boat, and I just wanted to make sure I understand how this actually works.
It feels like the EFC is based on thinking you have had the same income since your child was born and that you have been saving a large amount monthly since that point which isn’t realistic for most families. We have been saving since my kids were toddlers in an amount monthly that is almost as much as our mortgage payment and we will only be able to afford our EFC because we will have 2 in college at the same time for 3 of the 4 years for each child which will greatly reduce our EFC for each child for 3 of 5 years.