<p>D1 and D2 attended different private schools; one required FAFSA to be filed in order to receive an automatic merit award while the other didn’t. D3 at in-state public did not need to file FAFSA to receive automatic merit scholarship.</p>
<p>The bias reported by OP is an amount barely noticeable to most people:</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>This is equivalent to a merit award increase of $250 for an difference in income of $100,000.</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>I agree.</p>
<p>However some schools claim that they insist that students apply for FA so that they can see if they also qualify for Pell or any state aid. I wonder if it’s because these schools have some sort of policy of maybe only providing X free aid, so if some of that “free aid” can come from the govt, that is less merit that needs to be awarded. ???</p>
<p>I can’t and won’t speak to U Rochester’s situation, but I think it’s pretty clear that many colleges use “merit” aid as a substitute for need-based aid, and/or effectively blend the two categories by tilting merit awards to highly qualified students with unmet need.</p>
<p>First, notice that of the relatively small number of colleges that meet 100% of need, many—possibly most—don’t offer merit aid. And of the colleges that do offer merit aid, many—almost certainly most—don’t meet 100% of need. There are only a handful of exceptions, colleges that meet 100% of need AND offer merit awards. So basically, most colleges that offer merit awards are deciding that, since they can’t meet 100% of need for everyone, they’ll spread their money around so as to achieve institutional objectives, like bringing in some high-stats kids who would otherwise go elsewhere, propping up their US News 25th/75th SAT percentiles (which means it’s not always the very top performers who get the merit aid), and substituting some “merit” money for need-based aid they can’t afford to give, to bring in some kids with need AND high stats.</p>
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<p>Yes, obviously. Obviously, because that’s the only sensible strategy for a school that doesn’t have enough institutional funds to meet 100% of need. I’ll use the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an example, only because I happen to be in Madison tonight, and because they helpfully provide us not only with their common data set, but with their entire US News FA questionnaire. </p>
<p>Wisconsin reports on its 2011 US News questionnaire that it awarded nearly $46 million in need-based grants, and slightly over $35 million in merit awards. Sounds like a lot of merit money, right? Until you look closer. First, on the need-based side, $24 million of the $46 million total is federal money, primarily Pell grants. The state chips in another $9 million, leaving UW to contribute only $13 million in institutional funds, or about 28% of the total. So naturally, they’re going to use every last federal and state dollar they can get their hands on before awarding a dime of their own money.</p>
<p>But they come nowhere near meeting 100% of need. Of 27,746 Wisconsin undergrads, 15,446 applied for federal aid. Of those who applied, 11,468, or 41.3% of the undergrad student body, were determined to have need. The rest—58.7%—were “full-pays.”</p>
<p>Of the 11,468 who had need, most–11,173, or 97.4% of those with need—got some FA. But only 2,403, or 21.5% of those with need, had their need fully met; on average, those with need who got any need-based aid had only 66% of their need met. The average need-based FA package was $11,268, but the average need-based grant or scholarship (to those who got them) was only $6,222, and of those getting need-based aid only 7,175, or 64,2% of those getting some kind of need-based FA, got a need-based grant or scholarship. The rest of the need-based aid was self-help, either loans (mostly federal) or work-study (federal).</p>
<p>Here’s the kicker: the University of Wisconsin is using every dime of federal and state need-based aid it can get its hands on, throwing in another $13 million of its own money for need-based grants, and still falling well short of the mark in meeting financial need. So what’s its next move? Why, non-need based (“merit”) aid, of course. The university hands out $21.4 million in non-need-based grants or scholarships from institutional funds; that’s about 60% more of its own money going into non-need-based than into need-based aid. And who gets that “merit” money? Well, some students without financial need—2,168, or 13.3% of the 16,278 undergrads who had no need, got institutional non-need based grants or scholarships, at an average award of $3,214. But that means only about $7 million of the $21.4 million in institutional non-need-based funds, or just under 1/3 of the total, went to the 58.7% of undergrads who had no financial need. The rest, $14 million and change, went to the 8,140 undergrads WITH need who got some non-need-based aid. In short, twice as much institutional “merit” money went to the 40% of the class that had need, than to the 60% of the class that had no need. I’d say that’s a pretty heavy tilt toward those with need, and it’s pretty clear that it’s done largely to make up for the fact that Wisconsin doesn’t have enough money to meet full need for everyone with need.</p>
<p>My goal here is not to pick on Wisconsin. Most public universities, and I suspect the vast majority of private colleges and universities, are in similar or worse shape.</p>
<p>And in fairness to Wisconsin, their hands may be tied with respect to a lot of that “merit” money. Perhaps they’d prefer to offer more need-based and less merit aid (or not to call it merit when they’re using its as a substitute for need-based), but a lot of what they give out comes from endowed scholarship funds, often with very specific requirements. Sometimes those scholarships go to "highly qualified students with demonstrated need, in which case they can probably just count it as need-based; in other cases, though, there are specific GPA or other requirements. But in most cases where there are specific “merit” elements, the university still appears to have a lot of discretion to decide which candidates to give the award to, and nothing says unmet need can’t be an additional discretionary consideration. So I’m actually pretty sympathetic to their sitution, and if I were in their shoes, I might decide to act just the same way.</p>
<p>S only applied to Us that did NOT require any documents to be submitted for MAid & received several nice offers–including full ride to >1/2 tuition. The awards were renewable as long as student met set criteria–GPA & progress toward degree. S accepted one of them & never filed any financial paperwork in the 4 years he was at the U. A friend got a full tuition scholarship at the same U and also never filed any financial paperwork with the U.</p>
<p>If you want to call these tuition discounts, go ahead, but it seemed like merit awards to me because there are many attending paying full freight and others are getting FAid.</p>
<p>This is exactly how my son’s school described it. He was awarded the scholarship before submitting any financial paperwork, but in order to actually get the merit money, we had to file a FAFSA.</p>
<p>That’s a smart way to look at it. Of necessity, the schools WOULD be taking income into account when dispensing these merit awards. It makes perfect sense to me, although I’m not saying they all do it. (I remember that Atlantic Magazine article.)</p>
<p>Thank you, RochesterDean, for posting here! OP here, wanting you to know that by “covert”, I meant this practice is simply “not openly acknowledged or displayed”. In my view, that was correct until you went public with this additional information.</p>
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<p>This was exactly my thinking, that the reviewers give extra “points” for students from families with lower incomes. Parents must decipher this on their own, even when colleges claim that financial circumstances do not factor into merit awards.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Even “wealthy” families in that income range might notice a few hundred dollars difference.</p>
<p>bclintonk - thank you for sharing that data about U Wisconsin financial aid; it’s very informative.</p>
<p>While it’s impossible to quantify, it’s clear to me that on average and assuming similar achievement levels, the student from the lower income family stands a better chance of receiving any given merit scholarship than the student from a higher income family. Family income does matter.</p>
<p>Of course, if the merit scholarship applications are evaluated holistically, a needy scholarship applicant who writes an essay about overcoming the hurdles of growing up in poverty, etc. might sway the odds in his/her favor over a non-needy scholarship applicant with similar achievement.</p>
<p>Who is more meritorious, given essentially equal stats? The kid who comes from a privileged background, with well-educated parents whose home is full of books, who live in a wealthy suburb with good schools - or the kid from a blue collar home with parents who only finished high school and who do not read and who lives in a poor rural are with crummy schools?</p>
<p>If I were an adcom, I know which one I’d be more anxious about encouraging to join the student body at my school.</p>
<p>But the point of <em>merit</em> scholarships is to draw a student who would otherwise not be attending. Does it matter if the student wont be attending because that student will be attending elsewhere? And is the kid from the privileged background more likely to be able to attend somewhere (likely being in the category of wealthy enough to not qualify for any need-based aid, but not wealthy enough to be able to pay U Rochester’s $50+K tuition) or the kid from a less well-educated, and less wealthy family who will get substantial need-based aid? The educational experience of the family won’t necessarily help that family’s finances.</p>
<p>I agree that there needs to be substantial need-based financial aid for our meritocratic society to actually work, but being from a relatively privileged background should not make a student have <em>less</em> merit.</p>
<p>Parents and guidance counselors should be aware that financial need is sometimes a factor when colleges make decisions on merit aid.</p>
<p>In some cases it comes down to the fact that some/many colleges judge achievement within the context of the students financial circumstances. As a simple example, if both Wealthy Willy and Poor Pete scored 2200 in their SATs, an admissions committee would judge Petes achievement to be higher and more worthy of a merit scholarship.</p>
<p>In other cases family financial circumstances come into play when a school is trying to maximize enrollment, perhaps using a moderate merit award to lure the middle-income student while offering nothing to the high-income student, although both are equally worthy in other ways.</p>
<p>While some parents here are savvy about all this, I think most parents do not automatically understand how the system works, given that the colleges will assert that merit aid is dispensed without regard to financial circumstances.</p>
<p>I’ve been hunting around Rochester’s website, and I simply can’t find the blog or any detailed merit information - if it’s there, it’s well hidden.</p>
<p>So, what’s the consensus from this thread? Does Rochester offer true merit or not? Does Rochester require family financial information for true merit awards?</p>