<p>I'm curious to hear about what's out there.</p>
<p>A whole lot of nothing. "Financial aid for entering students is awarded on the basis of financial need." - Course Catalog page 34</p>
<p>oh. well .. oh well :)</p>
<p>Yeah, they say pretty emphatically that they don't give them, and I'd assume they don't... except I've heard several stories of people getting "scholarships", myself included, which seem to be based on academics/athletics and not need? But that's really weird, I mean, they say straight out they don't give them, so there's gotta be a more logical explanation. But I'm just saying, I know people, including me, who'll swear they got a scholarship from Vassar, so it just doesn't make sense to me...</p>
<p>I don't know about Vassar's specific policies but a lot of schools have a system like this: they'll give all the people who get financial aid whatever standard aid they qualify for, and then some students who excel in a certain area and also qualify for need-based aid will get some extra aid in the form of a scholarship. The distinction being that the only people who qualify for those scholarships are the people who already qualify for regular financial aid, whereas "merit-based" scholarships could be given to anyone regardless of whether or not they would otherwise pay full tuition.</p>
<p>They call the grants they give you the Vassar Scholarship. And then really don't give out any type of merit based scholarships. They're quite clear about that.</p>
<p>Jello mostly nailed it . . . simply put. If you don't qualify for Financial Aid, no money of any kind for you (in short, you could be a rocket scientist but if mommy and daddy can pay for school then you're out of luck). If you do qualify, there a high level of discretion in the FiAid process so naturally, people they REALLY want to bring in are likely to get bigger awards.</p>
<p>Well, it's not really that they'll get bigger awards, but that a larger percentage of their award will come in the form of grants and not loans or something like that.</p>