I recently received my award letter from one of my universities and I’m wondering if what they did is standard procedure. I received a merit-based scholarship valued at 20000 a year but apparently am ineligible for any need-based aid despite my EFC being 2000 dollars. Is that normal for my merit-based scholarship to just invalidate any need-based aid completely? All it seems to do is negate all the extra effort of great students who also happen to be poor.
It sounds like this school doesn’t meet need anyway if your EFC is $2K. What is the balance you would have to pay after the merit award?
well tuition is 40700 a year and I might as well say its Loyola Chicago. It says online that 79% of need is met.
So they offered merit of $20K and nothing else?
If they met need for all (and they don’t - maybe that 79% they do meet for have very little need), you’d have a package of $20K merit plus $20K need-based aid.
I think the merit aid has nothing to do with it - they were unlikely to meet need anyway.
Actually I am seeing Loyola only meets all need for 16% of its students. On average they meet 79% of need but that means many get less.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=809
You qualify for a Pell Grant. Did you get about $4k in a Pell Grant?
[QUOTE=""]
well tuition is 40700 a year and I might as well say its Loyola Chicago. It says online that 79% of need is met.
[/QUOTE]
No it doesn’t say that.
That stat tells the AVERAGE need that is met amongst students who ENROLLED in the school. There are many who received LOUSY aid and didn’t enroll, so their info isn’t in that stat. And, average is simply average. It means that SOME had 100% need met…and some had a lot less than 79%
You will get:
That merit award
about $4k in Pell grant
$5500 student loan
maybe $2k in work study
so, maybe about $30-32k in aid. You’re still short a lot of aid, so you probably can’t enroll…therefore your stat won’t be included in next year’s report.
Yeah but if that’s the average percent of need met I should still at least get on average the around 15,000 just in need-based aid. I got absolutely nothing! Maybe that need that they covered was for those that had very little need (liek lets say 5000 dollars)
Are you sure that merit isn’t awarded first and then need based to follow? If your Pell grant is not listed, I’d think you are still waiting on some awards. Call them. A catholic school is probably closed for the weekend.
@mom2collegekids I see what you are saying. That is very misleading but thanks for explaining.
Loyola Chicago’s NPC indicates that its financial aid for students not getting merit scholarships is poor – try it (put low GPA, rank, and test scores to see the non-merit scenario).
A student from a low income family would need a really huge merit scholarship (close to a full ride) to be able to afford to attend Loyola Chicago.
@twoinanddone I got the pell grant in my award. And I did call them and they told me that I don’t qualify for need-based aid because I already got the merit scholarship.
OK, so you did get Pell plus the $20K? Was that it?
damen scholarship for 20k, stafford loans totalling 5500, pell grant 3865, perkins loan for 1000, and map grants which most likely won’t be funded this year. I think that’s pretty ridiculous.
Yes, @chicago107, that’s pretty common. Happened to my son at two schools that meet full need, but also award merit scholarships. The net award was the same as it would have been without the merit award. There were a couple of advantages, though - both scholarships generated invitations for fully paid trips to the schools for admitted student days, and one of them also included a very small additional stipend for study abroad.
And, unless that’s the only college you applied to, your extra effort in high school will not go unrewarded. It may get you merit scholarships at schools that award little or no need-based aid (many public universities), and it may get you into those selective schools that don’t offer merit aid, but will meet your full need.
So if you don’t end up with any affordable options, then it may be time to take a gap year and come up with a new list. Hope that doesn’t happen . . . but if it does, we’ll be happy to help you figure out what colleges would be affordable for you.
OK. They might have given you some need-based aid if you didn’t get that Damen, but they might not have. They just don’t meet need for anyone (or for 84% of their students, anyway - I bet the 16% they did meet need for only needed 5.5K or less in loans).
I’d cross that school off the list and move on…do you have other options?
Long story short not really. My only hope is that I received an invitation to a competition at Loyola that offers full tuition scholarship. I guess that’s my last option.
Did you apply to any other schools, and what were their admission and net price results?
If you have nothing affordable right now, there are still options including CC and a gap year then re-apply. If you want ot share your stats and such perhaps we can help with ideas.
It’s not clear to me form your previous posts if you are international? But you do have high test scores, if the GPA is also high you may have options, certainly for next year but maybe even still for this one.
So I’m a US citizen but living in Germany and my GPA is 3.62 UW but most likely around 3.8 for the core classes. Rigorous course work with 34 ACT. I’m thinking right now worst case scenario to transfer after a year to a place with lots of institutional aid. I know as a transfer student you get less aid, but do top schools that meet full need still give out full need aid for transfers?