I’m unfamiliar with UChicago’s merit aid process. What are they looking for? What are the qualifications of the recipients, and how much do they receive? I’m a recruited athlete…would that be a factor?
By the way, I would really appreciate if you estimated my likelihood of receiving a scholarship. My stats are on a chance thread I posted.
Honestly among my son’s set of friends it seemed pretty random. They noticed no trend in terms of athletes, minorities, legacies, super perfect stats, etc. It must just be one of those things where an app really clicks with the admissions committee. The absolute best thing you can do for yourself at this point that is totally under your control is to write amazing essays especially your uncommon essay.
Any recipients around with input?
Basically no one can offer chances on UChicago admission. So really no one can chance you for a merit scholarship.
^ OP, I posted on your other thread as well.
Look at the EA and RD acceptance threads for UChicago from last year. Look at who they offered merit to. And while I agree that it’s really impossible for us to gage your chances at merit there, it still might be helpful to you.
Your truly best bet for merit scholarships are at colleges where you are clearly at the top of the applicant pool. So those will be the lower tier schools.
Since no one here is in UChicago admissions, reviewing your application and your essays, it’s impossible to say what your chances for merit are at the school.
I saw that you have Yale and UChicago but pleas have some match and safety schools.
Son is a merit aid recipient from 3 years ago. The amount was about 1/3 tuition. He was a strong applicant but not extraordinary. I believe in his case they may have perceived that it would persuade him to attend UChicago over a couple of peer schools. In his case it worked.
I believe that since the time of my son’s acceptance, the merit program has improved and in fact they are offering more and bigger awards to especially outstanding applicants. But as is pointed out above, the process is a little inscrutable (typical UChicago). Best of luck to you.
Hello! I received merit aid and honestly I don’t think my application was particularly special in one way or another. I think that maybe I was a great fit for the school and they wanted to give me some incentive for picking chicago over one of the other schools I had been admitted to.
Here to echo the “merit aid as a carrot” theme. Chicago’s had a single-minded focus on moving up in the rankings for a while, and using targeted merit aid to boost yield (giving aid to those who look like they may not enroll) is a logical way to do that. That’s what happened in my case.
In other words. to be accepted in the first place, you need to telegraph an unhealthy infatuation with the university, but to get merit aid you have to suggest a sudden loss of interest that has you considering Northwestern instead.
Oh, and don’t apply ED.
@NotVerySmart doesn’t Chicago offer merit aid to practically everyone?
@NotVerySmart — you provided my laugh out loud for the evening! Excellent summary—and I think you are correct.
I got a lot of merit aid and I’d say you should make it known to your local counselor/representative that you really want to go and that you can’t afford to go unless you get sufficient merit aid. My counselor actually said it was a good thing I was denied financial aid. If this isn’t true then ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This is assuming you apply EA btw. If you apply ED they probably won’t give you merit.
ahahaha I will keep that in mind!
Oddly, this is the exact opposite of what I’ve been told on the topic. The logic being, if you’re applying for financial aid, the university has more info on your personal finances than the IRS ever will (unless the IRS has started asking how much you spend on leisure or vacations each year). The aid office knows (or thinks it knows) whether you can afford to pick Chicago, so if they don’t give you any need-based aid then they’re betting you can afford it.
The element beyond a university’s control is where you want to go - if you can afford to attend, but decide you really like Stanford, whether you can afford Chicago is a moot point - so they have an incentive to “bribe” you with merit aid. Tell them you really want to go, and the money is all that keeps you from enrolling, and you lose that leverage - since they know that, unless a peer school offers you significant merit aid, you’ll likely pick Chicago
Relevant detail: if you’re accepted EA and wait for a while (i.e. months) before enrolling, the admissions office may get nervous and offer you merit aid - the more time passes without an enrollment deposit arriving, the more likely it is (from their standpoint) that you’ll go elsewhere. YMMV.
Other relevant detail: if you get no financial aid from Chicago and are offered $15,000 a year from H/Y/P/S/M/Columbia/Duke etc. (i.e. schools competing with Chicago to move up in college rankings), that may prompt Chicago to up its offer. The worst-case scenario is attending one of these other colleges with $15,000 deducted from your bill, which isn’t half bad.
^ This is good advise.
Again, no one is quite yet sure of how having all these other options will impact decisions for merit. We will have to see how things turn out.
FWIW, my S’s school, CMU, explicitly stated on their website that applying ED was the best strategy for fin aid (need based).
It will be interesting to see how things pan out.
@NotVerySmart I’m not so sure about that. Just because the financial aid calculator says that you can afford to pay that much doesn’t mean that’s true. I think you’re exaggerating the accuracy of the financial aid estimate. It’s a formula. It’s not catered to each families special circumstances.
What you’re saying, “unless a peer school offers you significant merit aid, you’ll likely pick Chicago”, isn’t always true. In my case, my parents wouldn’t have allowed me to go to UChicago without merit aid. I would have had to go to safeties. Even with stretching it wasn’t affordable. We made it clear that we needed X amount of aid to be able to attend and they provided almost exactly that much.
From what I understand, your local counselor presents your case to a committee who determine how much merit to offer you. Maybe by letting him know you’re very interested, he’ll try harder? If he thinks you’re not even interested, why waste the energy? Admissions counselors are busy people.
If a counselor believes you aren’t interested, he/she won’t recommend you be admitted in the first place. The admissions process has become increasingly professional - instead of professors or alums with spare time, most applications are handled by professionals whose performance is measured by the numbers. Yield - the % of students admitted who enroll - is one of the key criteria (some list their yield on LinkedIn), so a Chicago rep will only admit students he/she considers likely to enroll.*
*Exceptions are made in some cases - Malia Obama got in everywhere she applied, no doubt, and Olympic medalists will fare well - because even a 5% or 10% chance of convincing these students to enroll is worth far more than an 0.05% increase in yield. Similarly, URM students with high stats and a compelling application are in short supply, and it’s not possible to only admit those who’ll definitely enroll.
Merit aid, at least in Chicago’s case, has mostly been targeted to improve yield - swaying applicants who are on the fence. When they hear “I’m not sure, since I have the option of attending (elite school) for $X less” or an applicant hasn’t enrolled several months after being accepted, they have an incentive to offer aid. From the admissions office’s standpoint, offering merit aid to students who’ll likely enroll anyway accomplishes nothing, and leaves less money for those who are on the fence. Sometimes they’ll be wrong, but they just need to be right 70% of the time to increase the college’s yield.
I mean, like you said, housing.
It’s hard to discern from U Chicago website/or CC admitted threads what the merit aid will be for students who do not qualify for any need based aid. Other than NMS/Stamps, do we have a feel for whether 1/3rd, 1/2, or even full tuition merit is ever provided? A related question is for students who do qualify for “some” need based aid (according to NPC), is merit aid combined with need aid for a larger contribution towards COA?
Apologies to OP for hijacking his/her thread - I can only imagine answers here can benefit all.
Traditionally (meaning the last few years) these awards have been $5k, $10K, or $15K. But just last year some reported larger awards.
Some of the earlier posts on this thread have assumed that admissions counselors determine who received merit aid, but actually a faculty committee plays a big role in this. I recall learning a few years ago that about five percent of admits receive merit aid, though that may have changed. Here is the language on the website:
“Merit awards are determined by Faculty Committee and the Office of College Admissions without consideration of financial need, and are guaranteed for four years of undergraduate study.”
My son (class of 2015) received 10k per year of merit aid and then a full scholarship to continue graduate studies there. He had excellent numbers and grades in HS and solid Dean’s List performance as an undergrad. at UChicago. Beyond that, though, I think his admission essays for undergrad. reflected strong, interdisciplinary (including musical) intellectual curiosity, and his graduate admission essay reflected heavily on his appreciation for and enjoyment of his undergraduate experience there. (And it probably helped a lot that it was in the same discipline as his undergraduate major, so several of the faculty knew him already and vice versa.) It just turned out to be an excellent match between the student and the school.