<p>Are a familys financial circumstances considered when the University of Rochester awards merit scholarships? Lets look at the facts.</p>
<p>From the University of Rochester website: Merit-based scholarships range in amount from $2,000 per year to full-tuition. They are awarded to students who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and potential, regardless of financial circumstances.
We distribute merit-based aid regardless of a familys demonstrated financial need.</p>
<p>But heres what Jonathan Burdick, Rochester Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, writes in a candid blog post about 12 steps that mattered for earning merit scholarships.</p>
<p>We had a progressive tax in our merit. On average, each four dollars less in family income increased merit awards one cent. Not much impact per student, but noticeable overall.</p>
<p>According to this, a familys financial circumstances are a factor in the distribution of so-called merit awards. I see a contradiction, even if unintended. Is this curious correlation a simple coincidence? What should families believe?</p>
<p>Daniel de Vise of the Washington Post writes. Need-based aid is fairly easy to predict; many colleges spell out their formulas so plainly that a student can calculate a likely aid award based on her or his household income. Merit aid is comparatively opaque, meted out in rough proportion to the applicants academic credentials.</p>
<p>Opaque, indeed. In reviewing college merit aid policies I have seen many instances of hybrid aid, where schools make it clear that both financial need and merit are considered. However, I have not been alone in wondering if some colleges also take financial need into account when dispensing what they label as merit aid while never disclosing this significant fact to families. It seems that the University of Rochester may have given us an example of this covert and confusing practice.</p>
<p>Not only college merit aid, but private scholarships are often just as confusing. If they want to make the aid “hybrid” (based on merit AND income) that is their prerogative–I just wish they’d be up-front and explicit about it. This is hard on kids and hard on families. The whole process is confusing enough without misleading students on this point.</p>
<p>It’s like going in to buy a house with blindfolds and earplugs on.</p>
<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad – Would you then say that any scholarship that requires the FAFSA is not merit only? I believe it’s not uncommon for a school to require FAFSA in order to be considered for a merit award.</p>
<p>My friend’s son had a $10K yearly merit scholarship at Rochester and I know that she did not even file a FAFSA because she didn’t want to be bothered. Her family had enough to full pay. The son was a legacy but my friend said the scholarship was for his academic achievement in HS and not his legacy status.</p>
<p>It happens, but the impression I get from my kid’s recent college search/application process is that it happens in a distinct minority of institutions. And my strong suspicion (I guess I don’t really have enough data to call it a “conclusion”) is that any time they ask, the merit awards aren’t about merit only.</p>
<p>I really think it’s disingenuous of universities to do this unless they’re totally up front about the fact that need matters as well as merit. If you tell me plainly that merit awards will take need into account, I can make an informed decision about whether I want to pay money to file CSS PROFILE, and give your institution a lot of financial information I might prefer not to divulge. A private college or university certainly has the right to decide for itself how it will give institutional aid. And honestly, I think considering both need and merit in awarding “merit aid” might even make better social policy than dishing out money to kids who want it but don’t need it. But colleges that base merit awards on some other criterion instead of or in addition to merit really ought to be candid about that fact.</p>
<p>Few so called Merit Awards are truly about merit. Most often, they’re about financial yield management. About 8 years ago, there was a great Atlantic Monthly article discussing this.</p>
<p>The idea is that by offering, say 10K Merit Award to a kid, you get them to pay the other 30K. Better 30K in revenue than 20K or none at all. </p>
<p>So many colleges do a delicate dance between ability to pay and academic quality. For example, at my D’s alma mater (she graduated two years ago), U. Chicago, after many discussions on the UofC board it’s pretty clear that the best applicants were not often the recipients of Merit awards. Rather, it appears to be pretty random among the higher quality applicants. </p>
<p>Please fellow parents, don’t kid yourself. The only Merit in a Merit Award is in the title.</p>
<p>I dunno. We hadn’t looked at the specifics of financial aid before my daughter started visiting schools. During two of her interviews, after the admissions counselor looked at her SAT scores and GPA, she was informed that she automatically would receive a specific amount of merit scholarship (percentage of tuition discounted; so as tuition costs have gone up, so has her scholarship). This was before any financial information was given to the school. We really needed the financial help, and she received additional need based grants for the first two years (free room and board as an RA last year instead).</p>
<p>The application for the grant she has now for grad classes never for financial information. It was based strictly on merit (under Obamacare, so I’m kinda surprised they didn’t want financials).</p>
<p>One of her independent scholarships requires filing a copy of our tax return for the previous year (but not hers, come to think of it). Last year we had a slight increase in income and her scholarship was increased as well, so I’m guessing that need is considered, but merit ranks over need.</p>
<p>Grad school merit awards-tuition remission and such are calculated very differently from undergraduate. We had no need-based aid for either of our daughters, one at U of R, but both earned merit money from their respective schools and I agree with the above poster. They are really what would be considered “tuition discounts”. Because graduate programs are for the most part small, if they really want you, they will offer tuition remission grants or funded teaching assistant positions, however as with most situations, each program may only have a certain number of grant money available.</p>
Generally, yes, I’d say that if they require the fafsa in order to be considered for a merit award then it’s almost certainly not strictly merit based. If it was strictly merit based there’d be no reason to require a fafsa first. That doesn’t mean that merit isn’t a component, it likely is, but a more accurate description would be that it’s a ‘merit award based on financial need’ where it’s neither strictly merit based or strictly need based.</p>
<p>Some places do give strictly merit awards. </p>
<p>I don’t know that it matters one way or the other as long as people understand what’s really being done so they know whether they might be excluded from an award or not due to their financial stats.</p>
<p>I don’t know about Rochester, but at Miami (Ohio) you need to file a FAFSA for your “automatic” merit awards. For OOS students, the automatic awards, at least at the highest level, make the cost of attendance close to the IS costs at our state flagship. So I agree, they are a type of discount. The amounts are published on the website and there is no adjustment for financial need. </p>
<p>We have a 99,999 EFC so there is no reason for me to file the FAFSA except for my DS to collect the merit award. I called the FA office and explained my situation - they said I still needed to file because when they prepare the total award offer, those persons who have financial need will be considered for a separate need-based award in their final package. It makes no sense, but for tons of free money I’ll file the FAFSA.</p>
<p>I appreciate the debate but not the “gotcha.” The relationship between merit and need is confusing, but “covert” suggests we have an intentional institutional practice of favoring needy students for merit aid. We don’t. This was clear in my original blog post (I hope). </p>
<p>As the website suggests, direct information about family income is not available to Rochester’s merit scholarship reviewers. The correlation I was reporting was part of a model I constructed analyzing results months after both merit awards and need-based aid had been (independently) offered. The model showed that needier students were on average more likely to have earned larger merit awards from the committee review process. I expect this result reflects the sympathy most reviewers might have for students whose essays and letters of recommendation describe tougher life circumstances. You don’t have to see a tax return to admire someone who has both achieved in school and comes from a single-parent home, or will be the first in the family to attend college, etc.</p>
<p>Given counteracting forces at work too (e.g. the consistently documented positive correlation between income and test scores), the detectable final amount of difference in our merit awards’ negative correlation with income was small. A family with income in the $100,000 - $250,000 range, which represents a significant share of our merit winners, wouldn’t notice the “tax” I had detected.</p>
<p>Nice to see a clarification from someone with knowledge. There’s all too much speculation going on in this process, so it’s nice to see some real data.</p>
<p>My own D was a B&L award winner, so qualified for a nice grant from Rochester. We visited and saw a great campus, but she ultimately went elsewhere, with great results, winning a scholarship for study at Oxford her senior year.</p>
<p>My d was awarded a $10K merit scholarship two months before we filled any financial aid documents. </p>
<p>A friend’s child was awarded a Renaissance Scholarship. His family didn’t qualify for need-based aid at any of the other schools to which he applied. </p>
<p>Anecdotal, certainly, but these amounts are not small. And despite the fact that most schools considered us “full pay,” the scholarship allowed my d to go to and graduate from Rochester.</p>
Okay so - merit awards, financial need awards, and sympathy awards?</p>
<p>It makes no sense to require a Fafsa be submitted for a true merit only award. Certainly not all colleges require this (for example, the UCs don’t).</p>
<p>Just to let you know DD was awarded more than 20K at Rochester without filling out any financial forms. We would not have qualified for financial aid so it was truly a merit award.</p>
<p>However, UC Regents’ Scholarships are selected on merit, but the amount awarded is based on financial need (at least at Berkeley), which may replace loans that would otherwise be included in a financial aid package.</p>
<p>It would not be surprising if there were other scholarships awarded on merit, but whose amounts vary by need. This can make sense from the school’s point of view in terms of how much it feels that it needs to offer to top students to attract them.</p>