<p>I know Northeastern (the school I'm interested in) and many other schools don't always meet your full need. My question is, does my merit affect the percentage of need met? (I was invited to the Honor's program.) For example, if the average need met is 60% would I maybe get around 70% or something like that? I'm just curious on how they decide to meet need for various applicants. I could be making this up, but it makes sense why they'd meet more need for students they want more.</p>
<p>What you’re describing is called preferential packaging, which Muhlenberg describes here:</p>
<p>[Muhlenberg</a> College The Real Deal on Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.muhlenberg.edu/main/admissions/therealdealonfinancialaid/]Muhlenberg”>The Real Deal on Financial Aid | Muhlenberg College)</p>
<p>That’s a very helpful link, thank you so much! Do you know if that’s the general policy of schools who don’t meet full need?</p>
<p>All schools follow different formulas as they have differing resources to allocate for financial aid. It’s also hard to judge from outside the Admissions office what makes one application more desirable to a school vs. another similar applicant - it could be that the orchestra needs a violist and that’s the instrument applicant B plays! However, in general the higher your stats are (test scores and GPA) in comparison to the schools typical applicant pool the better your financial aid package will be. The general reason for that is school rankings - higher stats for the incoming freshman class raise the appearance of the school’s quality.</p>
<p>Also - average need met is a number that doesn’t mean much. Many schools will meet ALL need for a desirable candidate, and none at all for someone they don’t care much about. I saw that firsthand when my son was accepted at BU, a school that clearly states they don’t meed need, but also publishes a rubric of “typical” merit based on stats. On the table my son’s GPA and test scores lined up with a $23,000 grant. In reality they offered him nothing - they had plenty of good applicants from Boston suburbs and there was nothing special about his application. The message was clear - he went elsewhere.</p>
<p>For example, if the average need met is 60% would I maybe get around 70% or something like that?</p>
<p>NO! That’s not what that means.</p>
<p>When a school reports that it meets an AVERAGE of XX%, that doesn’t apply to any individual students.</p>
<p>That does NOT mean that they look at Student A, see that he needs $40k and then give him 60%.</p>
<p>Some students get 10%, some get 100%. Much depends on how much need a student has…and how strong the student is for the school.</p>
<p>Also…the % is based on students who ENROLL. The % does not include all the accepted students who got lousy aid and did NOT enroll. Those stats aren’t included.</p>
<p>So a school may end up with a bunch of kids who have small amounts of need that was easily filled. The school may have very few kids with huge need because the school couldn’t afford to hand out a bunch of $50k grants.</p>
<p>It depends upon the individual school. Some state schools that depend heavily on locals enrolling will meet 100% of need for tuition and fees. Those who qualify for PELL, Direct Loans (subsidized), State grants, workstudy and maybe Perkins and SEOG will get that need pretty much met with those and the school throws in the remainder. You want to go away to that school, it’s on your tab. </p>
<p>For privates who have a higher amount to fund, they can’t even do that. They throw merit at the kids, the most want, maybe fully fund those with lower need figures because they can meet that, and just gap the rest. It makes sense to fully fund 10 kids with a $5K gap over 1 with $50K gap, all things equal. It makes you look better in the Common Data stats too, to fund more kids fully. Still, I see things like less than 25% of the kids qualifying for need getting full need met. That means very few kids get their financial neeed met. </p>
<p>As for merit money, it usually is dispensed by Admissions, and the amount communicated to Fin AId where it comes right off the need figure. If it exceeds the need, you still get the full scholarship, but you don’t get a dime of fin aid.</p>
<p>Yeah mom2collegekids, I knew they didn’t exactly give everybody the same percentage of aid. When I used the numbers 60% and 70%, I was more trying to ask if my package would be above average if I am a more desirable applicant. I didn’t know the average stats were only based on students that enroll though.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for all the help everybody!</p>
<p>Kelsmom was a fin aid officer at a school, and at her school they did not give more money to above average applicants. But some schools do. I know a school where admissions would rate all accepted kids 1, 2 ,3. 1s got priority offers like special invites, maybe early notification of admissions, honors college status, but also if they applied for Fin aid, that 1 beside their name meant full need met with all of the goodies, the grants. 2 got what was left in fin aid, but most need met though through a lot of self help. 3s got gapped if entitlements didn’t meet the need.</p>
<p>And there’s no way to know which policy a specific school adheres to without insider information, right? Gotta love this process :)</p>
<p>There are certain need based aid that has merit factor in it (or there are merit aid that has need based factor in it). Do it is hard to say. There are also aids specifically for certain programs/majors. So not everyone with the same need would get the same need met. Usually, public schools would meet most of the in state students’ need though. So if the overall need met is 75% for a school that has 50% in state student, it may mean there is little aid for oos students.</p>
<p>Yes, Novafan, it does have a lottery aspect to it. With NPCs available, some more clarity is in the process. This has become available only recently, so you/we have more info than in prior years.</p>