What size merit scholarship does Villanova offer? What are the corresponding grades, scores, ACT’s for these awards?
I think the Villanova scholarship is the merit money. Apparently it’s $3-15K. Not sure if they do more merit aid though. I had an interview for one with a 2120 SAT, 4.0 W GPA, good EC’s. Haven’t heard back yet.
There are 5 Catholic colleges (Georgetown, ND, BC and Holy Cross are the others) that give little or nothing in the way of merit scholarships, even to applicants with strong academic credentials (i.e. UW gpa of 3.75 or more, SATACT of 2000/30 or more). Villanova is the least selective of these 5 schools, which can make it difficult to accept the full cost of attendance for families who are not eligible for need based financial aid. The Villanova scholarship is nice, but doesn’t change the overall cost much.
Disagree dtrain1027 there is a presidental scholarship which is full ride. You had to apply to it by Dec. 1. Your principal of your high school has to recommend you. I also disagree that Villanova is the least selective. Engineering and VSB is pretty selective.
Yes, the Presidential scholarship is great, but only a very small number of students get it (around 20 per year?). BC and ND have similar, very limited full tuition awards.
Villanova selectivity is increasing and enrolled student stats are similar to HC but not the others. You can check for yourself on common data sets.
Has anyone heard back about the Villanova scholarship yet?
@dancing1 Nothing yet, but they did say they would communicate decisions by April 1.
According to admissions, scholarship letters were sent out late last week, though they could have been delayed by the Easter weekend. Still haven’t received anything.
Has anyone else heard back?
The portal has been updated.
@julia1611 where?
Yes, just saw my daughters aid posted.
Visited Villanova this week and S loved it. Great vibe on campus right now with team headed to final four. We will not be able to pay full price, not by a long shot. S understands this. School seems pretty wealthy. Can anyone shed some light on why Villanova has such a reputation for being stingy with merit money?
@mtown27 in the “next steps” section, on the right, view award
Got the letter in the mail today for Villanova Scholarship
Good news: son got the letter today.
Not so good news: $3k. Not enough to justify a $25K+ annual difference from the other colleges on his list. He had kind of been doing a Gideon’'s blanket with this, saying that if he got 10K+, he would have taken that as a sign to Go Nova.
STEM2017,
Villanova is stingy with merit $ for the same reason Boston College, Holy Cross and Georgetown are stingy…because there are enough affluent families willing to pay full price for a Villanova education.
Or … the school has simply moved away from paying wealthy kids to attend in an effort to attract a more diverse student body. According to the Common Data Set, 70 percent of freshmen received an average of $35K in need-based aid last year. That seems significant, in line with the stated goal of eventually meeting 100 percent of need.
What constitutes “aid”? Our “aid” is $3K in work study and $5,500 in loans. Does that mean our aid package is $8,500? Because from our point of view, that is zero.
Villanova is a school where you either have to be full-pay (or close to full-pay) or have a lot of need. It’s not a school that is friendly to those who are in reasonably solid shape financially but can’t afford 60K+ per year. Nova gave us a package that had us spending 15K more than our EFC. And I didn’t like the way they presented the info - at least at that time, I thought the presentation was misleading as to how much was actual grant money and how much was loans and “family contribution”. They almost made it look like the family contribution was part of the aid package.
D took a shot, but we quickly moved on to schools that offered packages that didn’t have us taking out Parent Plus loans.
I actually loved the layout of novas financial aid it’s better than some others. Nova gave me much more aid than boston college so I’m happy about that