<p>This would make sense, because colleges would want to "sway" students their way, wouldn't they. And if people qualify for plenty of financial aid, there's not much of a difference between that and merit aid since they aren't combined.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure most colleges are need-blind for merit aid. It goes to the most qualified candidates, not just the most qualified rich candidates.</p>
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<p>Sometimes this is true and sometimes it isn’t. Some merit awards actually have a need component to them. Some do not. This can vary not only by the college itself but also by the individual merit scholarship awards. Some are very clear…they are for students with financial need…or the FAFSA/Profile must be submitted for consideration for these awards. Check each school’s scholarship requirements for EACH scholarship…you will find this varies quite a bit.</p>
<p>Most colleges don’t meet need anyway, so it probably doesn’t figure much into the equation.</p>
<p>As Thumper says…some schools look at need when awarding merit. Those are probably schools that want to make sure they aren’t awarding merit to a wealthy person’s kid when there are a very limited number of awards to give out.</p>
<p>Many schools do not look at need when awarding scholarships. The awards are purely by achievement.</p>
<p>Well, if a merit scholarship depends in some part on need, then it is not entirely a merit scholarship, but rather a competitive need-based scholarship, part merit and part need-based.</p>
<p>I was attempting to address the OP’s question of whether or not merit scholarships (in general) are more likely for people without need than with need. While I know of several scholarships with merit and need components, I do not know of one that disqualifies candidates for being needy. Nor do I know of any policy that makes people without need more likely to receive merit scholarships on the basis of not having need.</p>
<p>Usually, there is no need component for merit scholarships and those who award them only consider stats, leadership, etc.</p>
<p>The purpose of most merit money is to get the best incoming freshman class - regardless of need.</p>
<p>Many merit scholarships have a lot more to do with family finances than with merit.</p>
<p>Colleges employ people called enrollment managers. Those people figure out, using demographic data, how much a family will pay for their child to attend. In many cases, for example, they know they will not ‘yield’ the candidate unless they make their price the same as the student’s public options, so they offer a ‘merit scholarship’ that makes their price on par with the state U.</p>
<p>At pricy colleges tht are not top colleges, not many want to pay full sticker price which is what most of the so called merit money addresses.</p>
<p>But to answer the question, most colleges with major merit money don’t meet need. They will often indeed use merit as part of a package to get the cost where it needs to be for a student with need. It again comes down to a formula created by the enrollment manager, they know what the price needs to be to yield a student.</p>
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So, for the narrow group which has an EFC they can’t afford, the schools which don’t give merit aid are out, and the schools which DO give merit aid may also be out, because it’s really NEED AID, and they are left with fewer and fewer options. The news just gets worse.</p>
<p>There is a category on the Common Data Set for the amount of merit aid to non-need students awarded, and the following thread gives computations of percentages of such students: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/696637-merit-aid-percentage-common-data-set.html?highlight=percentage[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/696637-merit-aid-percentage-common-data-set.html?highlight=percentage</a></p>
<p>If you are a high-merit, low-need student with some colleges in mind, you could check this thread to find out more about the likelihood of your getting aid at those colleges. If your favorite college isn’t on the list, you can compute this by using the instructions on the thread–and it would be a contribution to others if you would add this information to the list!</p>
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This may be the case for some merit scholarships but it is also not the case for many of them. I am sure it varies by school but many schools award merit money without regard to need. We know kids that have no financial need at all and have received excellent merit based scholarships from their schools. My daughter’s merit award (full tuition plus a cash award) was offered to her based on her stats before we even submitted FAFSA so the school had no idea what her need was. As it happens her need is quite high, but they had no way of knowing that. </p>
<p>Some schools have automatic scholarships based on certain stats and those will not take need into account (unless they specify there is a need component). Other scholarships may be based on minimum stats but not be automatic, whether they take need into account will be up to the school.</p>
<p>It really depends on the school and the award. As others have mentioned, some merit awards are automatic. Any and everyone above a certain threshhold SAT score and gpa/class rank automatically get awards. Financial need is often not a factor in these awards. Other times, the cut offs are there just for consideration for the awards and then each candidate is carefully assessed and selected. Sometimes need is taken into account, sometimes not.</p>
<p>Many schools do have merit awards for the sole purpose of attracting the students they most want. For those awards, need is not taken into account. </p>
<p>Where the question becomes particularly tricky is in asking what role merit has in the awarding of financial aid. Many schools do give merit within need. A student who highly desired by the school will get a more generous aid package. For some students, it is possible that s/he gets more money than need warrents due to the extras in the merit. Sometimes it is the composition of the need package. A highly desired student will get more in grants and scholarships, less in self help funds. For those schools that do not guarantee to meet need, those kids most wanted, will get their need defined more generously and may get it fully met even though this is not the case with most students at the school.</p>
<p>Well how about at extremely competitive merit scholarships from like Rice, JHU, and Vanderbilt? They use them to lure kids with money, so it wouldn’t make sense to offer them to kids who would get financial aid anyway.</p>
<p>A girl my daughter went to HS with went to Vanderbilt and got one of the top scholarships there that requires interviews and stuff. I know she did not qualify for need based aid.</p>
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It would if the FA kid had a big gap in aid. </p>
<p>Why wouldn’t this be logical: I have one scholarship and 2 academically qualified and similar candidates, Bob and Richie. Richie has a high EFC which he can either afford or he can’t (but I don’t know which). Bob struggles to keep his head above water, financially, and has a significant gap between his EFC and the COA because we don’t meet full need. If I give the scholarship to Richie, I know for certain that Richie will enroll and Bob will not. If I give it to Bob, then I know for certain that Bob will enroll and Richie MIGHT. The odds of getting both are better if I give the scholarship to Bob. </p>
<p>If I don’t use the financial picture as a criteria, then I have to find some other way to choose between them. Isn’t going with the best odds for a good yield better than flipping a coin?</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>That might be the reason that some schools ask for FAFSA.</p>
<p>However, some schools award merit before FAFSA’s are due, therefore the school has NO IDEA what anyone’s EFC is.</p>
<p>My kids were awarded their merit scholarships in Dec. If we had requested FA, we would have done so AFTER Dec.</p>
<p>Same - my full scholarship from my alma mater was awarded in early-to-mid February, but FAFSA wasn’t due until March 1, almost a full month later. I was in a lot of scholarship competitions in high school for colleges, and most at least select their finalists by January - most scholarship weekends I was invited to were in January or early to mid February. None were after March 1, but most schools’ FAFSAs are due around March 1 or later.</p>
<p>In my experience (and I applied for a lot of scholarships, as a solidly middle-class student whose parents laughed at the EFC), MOST merit scholarships do not take your income into account. A lot of the big ones do, like Gates Millennium. But most of them are just that - merit scholarships, and are about your GPA and SAT scores and accomplishments rather than how much you can pay.</p>
<p>No, sylvan, that’s wrong. Think about it: a Vandy they want to use the highly competitive scholarships to get kids away from like Stanford, and seeing how Vandy is good with aid, it wouldn’t make sense to offer the scholarship to a kid getting a full ride at Harvard over a kid getting nothing at HYPS</p>
<p>I know a number of families whose kids are on financial aid at Vandy. 4 of the kids are on some combination of financial/merit aid. I’ve heard nothing but great things about the generousity of Vandy’s packages.</p>
<p>To add to ripemango’s example, when I attended the scholarship weekend at Agnes Scott (a women’s college that hovers around #50 on the U.S. News LAC list), most of the other top scholarship winners (who had won essentially full rides) had been accepted to top schools like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, whatever. The lower scholarship winners (like me, who had maybe gotten a full tuition scholarship) had generally been admitted to schools that weren’t at the tippy-top but were still higher-ranked than Agnes Scott.</p>
<p>Of course Agnes Scott had no way of knowing this ahead of time, but combined with your stats plus when you specify to what other places you plan to apply, I think their enrollment manager could come up with a pretty good idea of who was going to need some luring. It worked on some of the students. And one of the best things was that when the tippy-top students relinquished their scholarships to go to the tip-top schools, they offered their scholarships to the top students in the next tier of scholarships 
That’s how my friend, who only got a partial tuition scholarship, ended up getting full tuition in the end. I was also told if I had accepted there I probably could’ve been bumped up to the full monty.</p>
<p>Schools in the middle offer those huge merit scholarships so they can get HYPS-caliber students at their schools.</p>
<p>I think the enrollment managers have a lot of influence in determining merit scholarship awards at some schools. My D1 applied to one school and purposely did not ask for FA (on the common app they ask if you will be filing for FA) so they do know this much at application time. I got the distinct feeling from the info session at this school that merit money was awarded to full pays more readily than FA applicants. D1 did get their top merit scholarship (full tuition). I don’t think they ever knew that we actually needed FA - my zip code and her private high school education would indicate that we were probably full pay. I can’t prove what was the school’s motivation but I just wanted to see what would happen. This school was the lowest (by far) ranked school on her list BTW. </p>
<p>Of course each school is different. She got many merit awards within her aid packages at other schools (preferential packaging), even full need met schools. I think the merit at the full need met/no loans was a way to show how much they wanted the students since it didn’t make any difference in our COA.</p>