<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>