My son just returned from the open house at Notre Dame. The financial aid officer said they were sending out letters for additional information for those students being considered for merit scholarships. Has anyone been contacted?
My son has not received any word on merit scholarships. I would love additional information in this regard
Based on sarefosr’s comment, if you haven’t received a call or letter requesting additional information by the end of the week, I wouldn’t hold out hope. Also keep in mind that outside of 25 Hesburgh-Yusko scholars, based on the info on ND’s website, ND offers a maximum of only 32 merit awards (up to 10 ND Scholars, 10 Stamps, 5 Scott, 5 Trustey and 2 Malpass). This out of ~3500 admitted students. If you include H-Y, that is 57 total, which is about 1.6% of admitted students. So if you are not one of the 50 H-Y finalists announced today, your odds of a merit scholarship at ND are less than 1%.
D is a freshman at Notre Dame. As noted above, Notre Dame is simply not one of those schools that gives out a lot of merit aid. On a positive note, our adjusted gross income this year was around $220K and she should receive about $14K in financial aid next year. I had been thinking that above $200K a families chances for financial aid are nil, unless the net price calculator is off significantly though that is not the case
Wje9164be and any other experienced ND parents - Can you share roughly what date the merit decisions come down? My understanding is that merit decisions are automatically generated (aside from the major scholarship programs like H-Y). Do I have this right, or would we need to fill out FAFSA etc to be considered for additional merit monies? Many thanks
About a month ago I confirmed with ND that no application for need-based financial aid, or filing of the FAFSA or PROFILE, is necessary to be to be considered for merit scholarships (and that not applying/filing has no negative impact on being considered for merit scholarships). I don’t know anything about merit scholarships outside of the major merit scholarship award programs mentioned in my post above. I think those selected/nominated for the major merit programs have been contacted by now, but can’t say for certain. The only other thing I have heard is that those students invited to attend one of the two Reilly weekends (one for EA, one for RD - see http://admissions.nd.edu/reilly/) are among the candidates for merit awards - which makes sense because ND invites what they consider to be their top ~80 kids from EA and RD rounds to those weekends. Obviously with far fewer merit scholarships than the ~160 kids invited to those weekends, even being invited to a Reilly weekend is far from an assurance of merit aid. The Reilly weekend for the EA admittees was this past weekend; I don’t know when invites go out for Reilly weekend for the RD admittees.
I don’t think you need to fill out a FAFSA to be considered for merit aid at Notre Dame. It is a requirement for some public universities but not Notre Dame. A quick way to find out roughly when merit decisions are communicated would be to look in the Notre Dame forum around this time last year. Obviously things might change year to year but probably not very much
As a follow-up, just looking at posts from last year, RD applicants invited to the 2nd Reilly weekend last year received e-mail invitations on Feb 25 along with ‘likely’ letters. That was a Wednesday last year. Thus, if you applied RD and have perfect/near perfect test scores, GPA and strong extracurriculars, etc., it sounds like there is a chance of receiving an invite this Wednesday (or sometime this week). However, I still wouldn’t be surprised if ND has already contacted all those individuals from the RD pool identified for merit scholarship programs. I do think it’s safe to say that if you were accepted EA and weren’t invited to the 1st Reilly weekend, there is virtually zero chance of a merit scholarship at this point. Hope this helps a little.
The website specifically states that the Reilly weekend is independent of merit scholarship awards.
My guess is that they don’t want people to think that getting invited to Reilly means you will get a merit scholarship. But thinking about it logically how could the students receiving the 32 merit scholarship awards not be from among the ~160 ND considers to be “the best of their applicant pool”? In any event, from reading past posts on this site on this subject, and also knowing a few people that have received merit scholarships, they’ve been invited to Reilly.
I believe Reilly invitations are out, per the post in this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-notre-dame/1856788-2020-notre-dame-rd-applicant-discussion-p5.html
I got my Reilly invitation today (Yay!) The letter (which arrived through snail mail and is dated February 18th) said that an email will be sent on February 24th with a registration form. That email might arrive before the letter for some (just speculating)
I received one, too.
DD was invited to the first Reilly weekend but could not attend due to conflicts with school activities. She got the email yesterday for the second weekend, which they offered her after she told them she could not come the first time. She will hopefully be able to come. Looks like a great weekend to really get to know ND. We have heard nothing on merit, but did submit a FAFSA due to having a sophomore in college. We will not be attending ND without some FA/merit.