How do they choose who gets 14k/yr and who gets 16k/yr, for instance? Is there an algorithm? I feel like a good prediction could be made based on past applicants
From what I’ve seen, it looks like they look case by case truly - I haven’t seen any pattern and I’ve been paid close attention to 3 admission cycles. If there’s a formula, reverse engineering it would be very challenging and if they change it year to year (they would have to as stats move) you would have to look at at least a few years as well as probably having more data than publically avaiable. I would just go with the flow on the small differences.
I’d love to know who gets the max -25K. I’ve seen very few of those this year. You are right @PengsPhils - very spotty and hard to figure out who is getting the big merit awards.
In general merit aid is given to the top 25% of accepted students and SAT/ACT weighs heavily. so based on last year that would be SAT at or above 2200, ACT at or above 34. As for the specific amount that is a black box.
Remember that only about 5% of EA/ED applicants chimed in here on CC.
Tom,
Last year kids from 2050/31 ACT got merit. 50%+ of kids going to NEU will get some merit money.
NEU competes for kids with many very generous schools and is able to attract academically very strong pool of kids. That takes a lot of merit money.
I can tell you that I know a student who had better stats than what you are saying @anotherparent22 who did not receive any merit money whatsoever. And I’ve seen enough people claiming the same after watching a couple of years’ acceptance threads. I think @PengsPhils got the answer right in post #1.
I got 22k a year in merit aid. I’m not going to go in depth about my stats but I have a 4.05 GPA, 34 ACT, a few leadership positions in clubs, etc.
I honestly have no idea how merit aid is calculated but it might be based on an applicant’s stats compared to the rest of the pool.
@suzyQ7 I got the 25k/year. I thought it was interesting that being in honors didn’t give you a higher aid amount. One of my friends got into honors with 15k/year while another didn’t get into honors and she got 17k/year.
I got 25k/yr as well and I assumed that it was partially based on need even though it’s called a merit award.
Other than my SAT score, the rest of my app was nothing special. However, my EFC is very low (less than 10k/yr) so I feel like they would take that into consideration when putting together my FA package? This is just my guess though.
DS got 20k/year, no honors though. 2250 SAT.
Dean’s Scholarship are strictly merit - not based on need.
I would love to know the answer to this question. I got 18k but no honors, accepted to the business school. 34 act, 3.89 unweighted gpa, and pretty good extra curriculars. My thought was that the admissions staff looks at a bigger picture when deciding merit aid, obviously considering grades and test scores, but also looking at involvement and other less quantitative aspects.
My Daughter and 3 of her closest friends applied last year.
F1 had a 4.0 and around a 2200 SAT and received a 30k merit scholarship (I think for NHRP because she was not a NMS).
F2 had a 3.8/2350 and received 25K.
F3 had around a 3.7/1960 and got no merit and was accepted to NUin.
D had a 4.0/2140 and got no merit.
I don’t think any of them got into the honors program.
My feeling is that NEU uses financial aid to entice the students they really want to come to campus, and also believe that the $$ will impact the decision. High SAT or other achievements (e.g. NHRP) seem to trigger merit aid, not GPA or a “holistic” view of the candidate (based on other reports of aid from her class). F2 in particular had very little in the way of ECs.
All 4 of these girls currently go to schools that do not offer much if any financial aid.
@ormdad So the 30 and 25k were not enough to.entice the friends? Did they go with Ivy type schools?
@suzyQ7 Penn and William & Mary. I think W&M did combine a small amount of merit aid with need based aid. The last one goes to UMass (she got in to some decent schools but could not afford them due to parental inability to contribute, but high EFC). My Daughter goes to Tufts.
The W&M girl seriously considered NEU but decided she wanted to be farther from home and wanted a more traditional college experience. For my D, obviously it was more about the cultural fit since Tufts and NEU are less than 10 miles away from each other. But I can say that she would have considered it more had she gotten any merit aid at all. Penn is hard to pass up, and that family decided that they could afford what Penn was going to cost (I think they get around 20K/yr in need based aid).
I know there are lots of conversations on this board about ivy-accepted students choosing Northeastern because of merit aid, honors, university scholars, coop, etc, etc, but at our (local) school it’s not even close. I personally know around 15+ kids from our school who go to Ivies/MIT and only 1 who goes to NEU. Merit aid does not seem to be a big draw for the kids that get into the Ivies or MIT.
I don’t think many kids will choose NEU over Ivys or top raked schools. That is unrealistic. But there are many extremely bright and capable kids that will go to NEU. If the choice is between Tufts and NEU and there s considerable difference in merit aid, lots of kids will choose NEU.
My daughter chose NEU over Tufts - Tufts gave no merit but also she felt NEU was a better fit!
@ormdad Sounds like your D and her friends went to the schools where they perceived they got the most value for the money. Sounds like the UPENN friend is going to UPENN for close to what NEU offered, your D was full pay at both schools, and the W&M friend probably ended up paying the same for that school as NEU would have cost even with $25K-30K merit from NEU (W&M being at least 10K cheaper, and you mentioned she got some aid). The UMASS friend got no money for NEU but got instate at UMASS - a better value for her money too.
Are there some families that can’t (won’t) full pay for Ivy and would take a large offer to an exclusive Scholars program or large scholarship from NEU, if they perceive NEU to be in line with other likes/wants of the student (big city, coop, etc…)? I’m sure there are. Some will stretch and make an Ivy work, if they feel its the best value for their money.
Its nice to have options, and this is all as it should be.
In some affluent communities there may be social pressure on families to stretch and even overextend themselves so that their kids can go to MIT/Ivies etc. if accepted.
I didn’t really mean to turn this into a Northeastern vs “Other Top School” thread- there are lots of great reasons why kids chose NEU over other top schools. I’d hope that cultural fit and academic alignment (including coop) are equally/more important than merit aid, assuming adequate need based aid.
Back to the original discussion, I think it would be great if Northeastern put up a merit aid “predictor” like UofR and some other schools have. But somehow I doubt there is a hard-and-fast formula that they would be willing to publish. In my experience, there are some decisions (e.g. Honors) that don’t make a lot of sense when you compare candidates. Honestly, without the merit aid program, Northeastern would not be where it is today. So the fact that it is somewhat unpredictable is kind of a head scratcher.
I think this is what this thread is about- how does an applicant get accepted into Honors but get less than 10K merit awarded, but a 25K or 30K merit applicant doesn’t get Honors? Every year you see posts come up about this and I think it would be great if applicants could get an idea where they stand before they apply.
Granted, if my daughter had received any merit $ I probably wouldn’t care that much… 