<p>Do students who get accepted find out how much merit aid they receive once their CSS Profile is sent to the college?</p>
<p>No CSS Profile has nothing to do with Merit scholarship.</p>
<p>Merit scholarships are depending on your test scores, GPA, ranks, and other.</p>
<p>Schools use CSS Profile to determine your financial aid.</p>
<p>I found out about merit aid in my acceptance package.</p>
<p>As 4kidsdad has said, merit awards usually do not have anything to do with need. People get scholarships who have no need. They are based on how much a school wants you and are trying to get you to come. </p>
<p>PROFILE is what determines your family need, and the financial aid office will put together an aid package with that info and FAFSA info. FAFSA determines what federal aid you are eligbile for. School money is given by PROFILE numbers at those schools that use it. Sometimes there are merit within need scholarships eligible only to those who have need. </p>
<p>Usually, you don’t get merit scholarship information until the spring. The admissions office likes to look at all of the students they have decided to accept and pick the ones they feel need the most enticing and the ones the college most wants, and distributes the merit money accordingly. Financial aid does the need portion of the applicant. Some schools will give financial aid estimates early for those who are applying ED or EA, but they are estimates only based on estimated PROFILE.</p>
<p>Melmaria, some schools will give merit awards with ED/EA acceptances, especially those that have some awards with fixed parameters. But most of the time, what I have seen is that the merit comes at the very end of the process.</p>
<p>Thank you so much! For schools like Fordham and UGA, when do they start giving merit aid?</p>
<p>UGA relies heavily on HOPE and Zell Miller for their merit awards. Do you qualify for either one?</p>
<p>I think Fordham awards their non-NMF awards in the spring.</p>
<p>Fordham gives out merit packages in the spring.</p>
<p>I qualify for HOPE but not Zell Miller (sadly). Also, for people who got in to Fordham EA, would they receive the merit packages in the spring too?</p>
<p>My son was accepted to Fordham EA and he recieved his merit package in the spring along with the those accepted RD. But this was several years ago and things could have changed. However, that seems to be the way a lot of schoos give out their merit awards except for automatic awards and large schools with rolling admissions that tend to give early acceptees their merit awards with their acceptances. Of course, any school can do this any way they please, and thing do change from year to year. That has just been what I have seen.</p>
<p>I was curious of this as well. My D was accepted to Perdue, GA Tech and NC State but the packets that came didn’t mention any aid information. We don’t qualify for any needs based aid (at least on paper). Their web sites say they will be send by April but that’s cutting it close on deciding where to go.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any additional information on when/if these schools send merit based information. My daughter is a solid student, 2000 SAT, 3.95 GPA UW and tons of EC but probably won’t really stand out much among her engineering hopeful peers.</p>
<p>Still waiting on a few other schools to notify, VA Tech, U MD, and Florida.</p>
<p>It is not cutting it close, Dennis, as the due date for decisions is May 1. Other than schools that offer rolliing admissions or early programs, spring is about the time the admissions decisions come out. Those colleges that tend to offer merit awards to entice the students they most want to come, like to look at the whole array of who they are accepting before allocating the awards. Auto awards are different and some rolling admissions schools may also include merit in their packages, but most schools like to wait until the end so that they don’t run out of money by offering it all up too early. They want to spend the money to “buy” the best class they can.</p>
<p>Dennis, if you need merit for schools to be affordable, then some of those choices probably aren’t going to net any merit. GT, UF and Purdue likely require much higher stats for merit. </p>
<p>What is your D’s M+CR from one sitting? </p>
<p>If she needs merit to afford college, then she should apply where her stats will surely get some merit. Miss St would likely give her merit. </p>
<p>Her M+CR score should be well within the top 25% of the frosh class to get good-sized merit. Often a student needs to be within the top 5%.</p>
<p>At GT, the top 25% have a M+CR of 1470+. At UF, they rely heavily on Bright Futures for merit awards. </p>
<p>What is your D’s home state? The better OOS publics usually require higher stats for decent sized merit.</p>