<p>The following info is copied from the Common Data set. It happens to be for Gonzaga but my question really is how to read it for any school since the parameters are the same. Specifically, I want to know the average NEED based award AND the average MERIT based award. While it tells me the average NEED award it only tells me the average MERIT award received by students without need. How do I figure out what the average student that qualifies for BOTH need AND merit receives?? Am I missing something?</p>
<p>Freshmen Financial Aid Applicants 923 (82.5%) of freshmen
Found to Have Financial Need 678 (73.5%) of applicants
Received Financial Aid 678 (100.0%) of applicants with financial need
Need Fully Met 200 (29.5%) of aid recipients
Average Percent of Need Met 79%
Average Award $21,867
Need-Based Gift
Received by 678 (100.0%) of aid recipients, average amount $18,092
Need-Based Self-Help
Received by 261 (38.5%) of aid recipients, average amount $5,580
Merit-Based Gift
Received by 186 (27.4%) of aid recipients
Merit-Based Gift Received by 396 (35.4%) of freshmen without need, average amount $11,363</p>
<p>The Common Data Set’s section H2A(n) refers to “institutional non-need-based scholarship
or grant aid”. By definition this is aid awarded to students who have no financial need. If any merit aid is stacked on top of need-based aid, this is not tracked in the CDS.</p>
<p>Section H2(i) shows “on average, the percentage of need that was met of
students who were awarded any need-based aid”. I’ve looked at many CDS files, and have never seen this figure exceed 100%. If you do get merit money, typically this would offset the amount of your need (so you’d get that much less need-based aid).</p>
<p>May be my understanding is wrong, but the merit awards do not necessarily mean college merit awards. If a students get an external merit scholarship (e.g. national merit, or from the parents employer etc.) it is considered in this figure. So if you are looking at this number to see if the college will give you merit aid, it could be misleading.</p>
<p>I don’t think so. The figures in H2A are for “institutional non-need-based aid,” i.e., for merit aid from college funds only; the term “institutional” is used consistently in the CDS to refer to the college or university itself. Also notice that in Gonzaga’s case, a bit over 90% of all merit aid comes from university funds. These figures are reported in section H1; in the column for Non-need-based scholarships/grants, compare the figure for “Institutional sources” to the total.</p>
<p>More importantly, tk21769 is right. Very few colleges will allow a student to “stack” merit aid, especially institutional merit aid, on top of need-based aid. If a student has no financial need, or if the merit award exceeds financial need, that’s fine; the merit award stands. But the college will usually take merit awards into account in calculating financial need, and award need-based aid on that basis; i.e., need-based FA = “need” = [COA - (merit aid + EFC)]. If the school isn’t meeting 100% of financial need, it’s entirely possible that a student could get merit aid AND need-based aid, and still get “gapped,” i.e., (need-based aid + merit aid + EFC) < COA.</p>
<p>“More importantly, tk21769 is right. Very few colleges will allow a student to “stack” merit aid, especially institutional merit aid, on top of need-based aid.”</p>
<p>Just to clarify . . . I understand that S would not receive more than 100% of need if he would receive both need and merit awards.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to find out is the average breakdown of need vs. merit when a student does receive both. For example, in the case of Gonzaga, is the school calculating merit into the $18,092 figure of average need-based gift aid? </p>
<p>Or can one assume that Gonzaga’s average merit aid (for students who also qualify for need-based aid) is above and beyond the $18,092 figure?</p>
<p>This means that the college gave some need based aid to all applicants with with financial need.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This means that less than a third of their students had their need fully met. So odds are that a given applicant will NOT get a “full need” award.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This “average” includes the 200 students who had full need met, so there are many students who had significantly less than 79% of need met. Basically to get an average figure, there must be many students with significantly weaker aid. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These figures are essentially meaningless because you don’t know how much aid, on average, an applicant needs. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is a figure for loans and work-study. As most aid package are built from the self-help part up – that is, they give out the loans/work-study first before grants – it’s probably a fairly stable figure. That is, most students will be offered a combination of first year loans and work study in that amount.</p>
<p>
That tells you the percentage of students who received some sort of merit aid, but not how much aid they got. I think that percentage probably refers to students who also qualified for need based aid.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And this would be the average for the students without need. Basically it shows that the college offers a merit award to roughly a third of its applicants, and it is likely that the typical award is around $10K with a handful of student getting larger awards to bring up the average.</p>
<p>The figures don’t tell the average amount of merit aid given to students who did have need, but that may reflect a policy where the merit aid is substituted for need aid. That is, maybe one student gets a $20K need-only grant and another student gets a combination of $10K merit + $10K need. It may mean that the “average” total grant for aid for needy students is somewhat higher than shown for need-only awards-- but again the average grant figure means very little without knowing how much each student’s actual need was. </p>
<p>The main takeway piece of information from the items you’ve listed is that the school tends to give some aid to all students, but it is unlikely to meet full need unless the applicant is in the top 1/3 of the accepted students.</p>
<p>Calmom – Thanks so much for your in-depth analysis. It gives me hope of receiving 100% need met because I believe S would be in their top 1/3 of applicants. But I also know it’s not even close to a sure thing.</p>
<p>Deborah T – H2, H2A, etc. – I’m not sure what these identifiers mean and where they are listed on the Common Data??</p>
<p>cbug - the FA speaker who does presentations in our Washington district said that Gonzaga usually gives less aid than some other schools and certainly does not meet 100% in almost any case (unless your need is covered by that 10k merit award in which case you are still lining their pockets for quite a bit). I can go back and look up the figures that she provided when I have time later this am.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is a correct interpretation.
I believe that means that, of the ~1100 freshmen without need who are enrolled in the freshman class, 396, or 35.4%, are the recipients of a merit award.</p>
<p>I don’t think they offer a merit award to 35.4% of applicants, or even 35.4% of applicants without need, or even 35.4% of the admitted applicants without need.</p>
<p>If the merit award is doing its job, it will increase the likelihood of matriculation of those people who get the award, so the recipients of merit awards might be over-represented in the enrolled class.</p>
<p>Again, what does need fully met mean? I would assume that some part of the full need met is through loans. Is there a way to know what percentage of the 200 students got aid without loans or minimal loans (say just the Stafford loans)? Else this statistic is not complete.</p>
<p>I did look at the CDS and I got the answer
H2 Number of students in line d whose need was fully met (exclude PLUS loans, unsubsidized loans, and private alternative loans) 233</p>
<p>So out of about 1100+ students, about 233 got a full ride which is about 20% where fully funded with just possibly Stafford loans.</p>
<p>Be very carefyul saying “full ride”. I would also caution that Gonzaga is a D1 sports school that takes basketball and baseball very seriously so subtract the men’s and women’s basketball teams from your numbers and a few for baseball as well.</p>
<p>Also, if a family has no or low need they will be easily “fully funded” with loans and a modest merit award. If OP has a lower efc and kid is not an athlete be careful how you look at the numbers.</p>
<p>The student’s “need”, a determination based on FAFSA or the CSS Profile, may not match what the family feels his need is.</p>
<p>The school may have a breakdown that looks like this for a given student:
Cost of Attendance (COA) - $50,000
“Need” - $30,000
Expected Family Contribution (EFC) - $20,000</p>
<p>So, even if the school met 100% need of that student, there’s still $20,000 that has to be covered. And the financial aid package may be including loans and/or work study.</p>
<p>From 2009 Gonzaga FA post:
I have a 3.9 gpa and 1070 sat 29 act. and they are giving me 14,000 merit scholarship a year plus 3500 gonzaga funding. I did not apply for any other scholarships, wished I had. i received almost 32000 in financial aid, including loans so basically I can’t afford to attend zag cuz my parents don’t have 10000 to pay for the difference. </p>
<p>and another student reported 8k per year merit with 3.5 GPA, no test scores listed</p>
<hr>
<p>so, with a 3.9 gpa and a decent ACT the above student received 17.5 K in free money, around 14k in loans and 10k to pay out of pocket - not exactly affordable</p>
<p>p.s. OP (or anyone else) Please don’t take this to mean that I’m dumping on Gonzaga. We know several people who love it, will be attending in the fall and are thrilled. Knowing that you’re not from this area, though, I just wanted to be sure that you look at it with eyes open in terms of FA possibilities. It turns out better for some depending on individual circumstances, but they are known for gapping if you have high need.</p>