<p>If merit aid is given independent of "need" why do colleges need a parent's financials before deciding how much merit to give? For instance, if applying EA or ED your acceptance will be determined prior to the colleges having the parent's financial information. Why not, with the acceptance letter, let the kid know whether he/she has been awarded any merit aid? I'm assuming no merit aid is distributed until the institution has financial info in Jan. or Feb. and "merit" is supposed to be given, if earned, regardless of whether a parent earns 30k a year or 300k... so why do they wait?</p>
<p>Oh dear. This question has been discussed at length here.</p>
<p>In brief, and broadly speaking, there are two different approaches to merit aid:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>merit aid that is truly merit based, such as an award tied to achieving NM finalist status, or based on an evaluation of one’s HS record as contained in the application package.</p></li>
<li><p>aid that is targeted at revenue maximization. Two years ago (maybe three?) the Atlantic Monthly, in its September college issue, had a great article discussing this approach. In short, colleges would rather give 3 merit awards of $10,000 each than one full ride at $30,000 and then lose some students who were otherwise well qualified but not from wealthy families. </p></li>
<li><p>Frequently, IMHO, a college will combine the two approaches above, so that awards are based largely on merit, but also take into consideration ability to pay (need, if you will). I suspect this approach is most common at colleges that gap their aid awards.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The three schools that offered my daughter merit aid required no financial information. One awarded the scholarship with the admission decision, the other 2 were later, but not tied to financial info. I guess it really depends on the school and the award.</p>
<p>Same here - my d’s schools did not consider the financial aid applications until after merit aid was awarded, just to see if she qualified for anything else. Merit aid is given out by the admissions office at most schools; need-based aid is given out by the financial aid office. I know several kids who never sent in any financial aid applications, but received merit aid anyway.</p>
<p>You send in the FA application so that colleges can give you the estimated FA award in time for you to decide where to enroll; without that info, you can’t make an educated choice. That doesn’t mean that they use the FA information to award merit aid.</p>
<p>(However, I do know that some schools do want the financial information even for merit aid; I assume they use it for the purposes that newmassdad mentioned.)</p>
<p>We never filled out a single FA form. We knew we would not qualify. S received two merit scholarships from his state u. renewable for four years no questions asked.</p>
<p>Are you sure ability to pay isn’t taken into account at all? Some merit scholarships still consider need to an extent.</p>
<p>I got a merit scholarship for my school without ever applying for financial aid or giving any financial information. When I reapplied last year, I only had to fill out the personal information section (name, address, etc.) of the financial aid forms.</p>
<p>My sons got merit aid to a school they had never even applied to! But I do think schools work merit aid numbers to benefit the school, not necessarily the student.</p>
<p>Could it be that the schools are trying to stretch the pie into as many slices as possible? They may figure they can give a kid X amount of dollars, then they try to figure how many pots they can take it from? just my guess.</p>
<p>Opie,</p>
<p>What you describe is part of what the Atlantic Monthly article discussed.</p>
<p>My son was offered “merit scholarships” at a half-dozen colleges. We didn’t provide financial information to any of them. FWIW.</p>
<p>Usually, merit money is taken from a different “pot” than financial aid. It’s specifically set aside for that purpose, and generally isn’t “shifted” from the merit aid account to the need-based account. Often merit aid, in the form of named scholarships, are restricted funds to be used only for that purpose.</p>
<p>As newmassdad said, there was a lot of discussion about this topic over the years. Here is a link to one of the articles from the Atlantic Monthly magazine.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/financial-aid-leveraging[/url]”>http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/financial-aid-leveraging</a></p>
<p>As NMD summarized, it came down to, wouldn’t it be better to provide 3 $10K scholarships then 1 $30K scholarship? The schools got 2 things out of it, more students in a higher stats range (if that was their criteria) and more money in their coffers.</p>
<p>Personally I struggle with the merit vs need equation. It is my preference for schools that provide merit aid to meet 100% of financial need to all of their students first then if there is anything additional to give they should provide merit aid.</p>
<p>That produces a secondary question, what is 100% of financial need. Every school defines that differently.</p>
<p>I guess some schools do give merit aid minus any financial information. Good for them. That is the true meaning of “merit” aid.. given without respect to family income. All the others are gaming people, or so it would seem.</p>
<p>Eagle79, your secondary question is actually the primary question for many people: what is “need”. I know very few people who can actually afford their EFC in the real world. What a college says we can afford, and what we actually can afford, are often two different things. The only way for some of us to afford to send our children to their choice of college is for them to recieve merit aid. (And no, I’m not getting into the “do you live frugally” argument.)</p>
<p>“All the others are gaming people, or so it would seem.”</p>
<p>AT the end of the day, it’s money, you use it for school. Who cares where it comes from as long as it comes? no? </p>
<p>As the old saying goes… as long as the check clears…</p>
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<p>My opinion. Financial information is gathered for statistics. The second part is more intellectual and has won a few people Nobel Prizes in Economics. Everyone knows pretty much that negotiations is appropriate for buying a house. Each party has something that the other wants, the question is to each is, how dear is that desire. The only way to discover this desire is thru information on the other party (financials, school rating, reputation) but there are other pieces of information that are unknown and can only be discovered by meeting face-to-face or thru some type of negotiation. This discovery practice is called “enrollment management.” It is a effective way to gage a student’s desire to attend a school with or without financial incentives. Like anything else that one buys, some will pay full price, some will buy on-sale, and some will buy on negotiation. The most successful negotiation outcome is if both parties can have walking away power. </p>
<p>We are 100% EFC.
We knew at one private school what merit aid DS would receive minimally based on NM and XYZ award even before he made the application. DS’s eventual matriculated SCHOOL offered nothing, but on the revealing of the awards from the near, “peer” school, his SCHOOL offered a nice “institutional grant,” which although was much lower than the other school’s offer. However, SCHOOL’s counter grant was sufficient to seal-the-deal. This School knew our financials and DS scores and based on this did not see a need to offer “merit” money. But when we revealed the award from the other school, the SCHOOL either had to make a counter offer or walkaway. We likewise could take scholarship and walkaway from this SCHOOL. The SCHOOL knew we were still interested because we revealed the competitive award-the SCHOOL only had to discover at what incentive level would we definitely make a choice. </p>
<p>The grant was unrestricted and without conditions. But we still had to file FAFSA, school’s request for FA form, and complete 1040. I know this because each year I forgot to file one of these items. </p>
<p>Answering your question another way, If two equally desirous schools offer equal amounts of merit money, which school would You choose. If two Nearly equal desirous schools offer unequal merit aid, which school would You choose? And finally, if no desirous schools offers merit money, which would You choose?</p>
<p>How can you avoid tipping your hand to an enrollment manager? What is it they are looking for? I suppose it is like poker… a smirk, lack of eye contact.. anything can cause you to lose the advantage. How do you avoid being managed by these types so your financial package is not “managed” to your disadvantage?</p>
<p>Nightingale,</p>
<p>You will never have an advantage in this game, any more than you will have an advantage buying a car from a car dealer. The folks on the other side of the table are pros. We are not.</p>
<p>So what is the answer? I think it is for us parents to stop viewing the process as a game to be won. Yes, it is a game, but one with unpublished rules that make it impossible for us to know how to play. Instead, let’s focus on what we do know and want. We know our kids and want the best for them. If we focus on matching our kids to the college, taking into consideration affordability (painful it may be by finaid definition) and whatever else, at least the outcome will be satisfactory.</p>
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<p>Why??? Because some schools simply have the policy that ALL students must complete the finaid forms even for consideration for merit aid.</p>
<p>Re: EA/ED…Well…DD applied EA to two schools. One school required that the Profile be filed BEFORE November 1. The second school required that the FAFSA be filed as a will file on January 1. That second school did NOT send out EA notifications until very very late in January. In both cases, DD got an ESTIMATED finaid award either with her acceptance or very shortly thereafter. HOWEVER, her finaid was not finalized (including merit aid) until after the finaid forms were finalized…and in one case the award went down by $6000.</p>
<p>Re: merit aid. I would say that music performance awards are merit aid that do not at all deal with finaid applications or need. They are clearly awarded based on the audition. PERIOD…and every school website I have read for music says that…very clearly. BUT DS was REQUIRED to complete both the FAFSA and Profile to be eligible for a performance award. It was the school policy. So we did it…because it was the school policy. BTW…we had NO financial need.</p>
<p>We filed no financial aid forms and my son got merit awards from 5 colleges. I called each admissions office to make sure we didn’t need to file any forms.</p>
<p>He chose a school that offered half tuition all 4 years with no conditions attached–and we just got a phone-a-thon request to give most of it back as a donation to the college. It wasn’t framed that way and the caller probably knew nothing about the merit scholarship, but it was rather amusing anyway.</p>