How does UMass calculate merit awards?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Massachusetts - Amherst
1

I’ve been accepted here and am seriously considering UMass Amherst (and WPI), but I feel as though my merit award is a bit low ($2,000 Dean’s award and John and Abigail Adams tuition ~$1,700). I really don’t mean to come off as arrogant (I will anyways), saying I deserve more money, I just want to understand why I received what I did.

I consider it low for the following reasons:

A friend of mine, who is out of state (is this a factor?), has received more merit than me, but was not accepted into the honors college, while I was. Perhaps I misunderstand how they evaluate for merit and honors college acceptance, but my assumption is that I might qualify for higher merit given my acceptance to the honors college in comparison to someone who wasn’t accepted.

Second, my yearly costs attending WPI will be approximately 2 times UMass Amherst. On the other hand I received roughly five times the merit award from WPI than from UMass ($18,000). There’s an obvious discrepancy between the ratio of costs and ratio of merit awards. Is this normal considering one is public and one is private?

Thanks for any input!

2

OOS receives more merit to try and balance out that they pay more. From what I have read the past 2 years 2000 dollars for instate is as high as it gets. Its a state school so not as much money as private schools.

3

What counts is the what you have to pay, not what you receive as awards. If you are out of state and receive 8K merit then you have to pay 43-8= 35K. If you are instate and you get 2K then you have to pay 26-2=24K which is 10K less than your friend. Merit is not an absolute value. It is a discount to attract students.
Umass Lowell and Umass Boston offer a lot more Merit (and even free rides) for instate students but not Umass Amherst.

4

The reason the private school offers the aid is that its sticker price is already too high and they need to reduce it to attract students who see more sense and value in a UMASS education and degree. The more highly rated private universities can get away with offering less aid, but the ones in the middle are getting squeezed and the state schools continue to attract better qualified students every year.