<p>I was accepted to NEU early action this year, to the Honors program with a 20k/year Dean's Scholarship (woo!). With sky-high tuition, though, this is obviously not enough and I'm applying for financial aid as well.</p>
<p>My question: will I perhaps be awarded more financial aid because I'm an Honors student/more likely a student they want to convince to come to their school? I hope you don't think I'm pretentious, NEU is just where I'd like to be and I've heard fin. aid is hit and miss there. My family makes between 120k-150k, so I know my package won't be huge regardless, but I was wondering if anyone had history of getting good packages/closer to their estimated need if they were an Honors student or merit scholarship recipient.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>**Edit: If it matters at all for the size of my package, I submitted my CSS Profile yesterday and the FAFSA today (1/15/14)</p>
<p>Need-based aid is just that: need-based. The amount you get from merit aid is based off of what the school thinks of you as a top student. That is where that shows up, not in need based aid. Need based aid is based off of your financial numbers, straight an simple. And most of the aid you would likely be getting is federal aid. This is just based off of the numbers on your FAFSA and does not consider how you are as a student and is not subjective.
This is not just a Northeastern thing; this is just how need-based aid works.</p>
<p>I think I should clarify a bit. I know Northeastern and many other schools don’t always meet your need. My question is, does my merit affect the percentage of need met? 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>I realize how awful I sound, and I’m so sorry, I try not to brag about things like honors/scholarships, I just am trying to be hopeful so I can stop stressing about affording a school I love!</p>
<p>If you are wondering whether you will get gapped or not because you are a strong student, that wasn’t clear when I emailed with them. But the disappointing thing I found is that their merit aid tends to just replace their financial aid. If you were expecting more than 20k in financial aid, then I suspect the merit aid you got will become redundant.</p>