<p>Son received his merit aid award information at or about the same time he received his acceptances. The largest award was from the State Flagship, and he had not completed any additional applications for scholarships. We were quite surprised, actually, at the size of the award. We incorrectly thought that an instate, white, male would not receive merit money to attend engineering school. We were very wrong.</p>
<p>It really pays to scour the school's website. For example, Duke says all applications are looked at for merit money, but we found out too late that there is a process where you can apply for their top scholarships and be sure you'll be looked at.</p>
<p>For some of ds's merit offers, he had to send in a separate application or essay, often months in advance of the school's application deadline -- beware of this!!</p>
<p>I think ds had to attend a scholarship competition/weekend for all of the scholarships he received. At one school, he received a pretty nice merit offer with the acceptance, then a few months later, an invitation to compete for the top scholarship at a weekend. </p>
<p>The scholarship weekend thing can be very tricky, as most say, "If you don't come, you don't compete." Sometimes schools in the same area schedule the weekends for the same weekend, sometimes you'll have games or big EC commitments you have to forego.</p>
<p>It's also important to remember that merit scholarships are academic <em>recruiting</em> scholarships. That means that if you apply to a department that is overstuffed and you play the trumpet and swim, that the guy applying for a underfilled department, who can fill the place of their graduated tuba and golf player may get it - even if you are more qualified. The colleges will recruit what they need - not necessarily who's best.</p>
<p>So... our eldest got very large merit aid offers at 7 great colleges, but got a poor offer from our state univ where his SAT is waaayy above the average. But, he was an instate student (college looking to diversify), applying to a crammed full department.</p>
<p>As always, you've gotten great advice already -- go out to ::</a> College Planning Made Easy | Inside Source for College Admissions Requirements where you can look at colleges' middle 50th percentile SAT scores - look for those he's in the top quarter, then check out the colleges' websites, and finally, have your student call the colleges and ask them about merit aid - how to apply, what's available, etc.</p>