<p>What's the deal with them? How do you find out if you got one? Is there a special application?</p>
<p>Please help!!</p>
<p>They’re awarded by the admissions office without regard to financial aid. To apply, you simply check the box on the application (I think it’s on the supplement, but I could be wrong on that). You’ll find out if you get it in late March, just before the regular decisions are released. There are a total of something like 100-200 given per year. I’ve heard various numbers from different people. There are a select few students who get full tuition, but the rest get $10,000 per year. The only real condition is that recipients must make progress toward their degrees; there is no GPA requirement.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that the faculty awards them, but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>I’ve been wondering about this too. I’ve also been wondering if they try to use it to boost yield with their stronger applicants or just give it out to people at random. I can definitely see Norndorf not giving any of the merit awards to people who already enrolled, and instead trying to increase yield among the stronger applicants (but perhaps not the absolute strongest?). What does CC think?</p>
<p>^^ I’m pretty sure the check box is on the Common App.</p>
<p>
That’s a lot, actually.</p>
<p>Yeah, that sounds a bit high?</p>
<p>not really. cause it’ll be like 200/3500 accepted and not many of them will accept cause of other reasons.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s 3500 accepted…</p>
<p>In prior years, it’s been 30 full tuition scholarships and 100 $10k/yr. acholarships. If a student declines Chicago, the scholarship is not reallocated to another student.</p>
<p>Yeah it’s on the main common app, under future plans or something like that.</p>
<p>Number Accepted
3,708</p>
<p>according to Chicago’s website
<a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/classprofile.shtml[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/classprofile.shtml</a></p>
<p>The merit awards are allocated by a special committee that includes College faculty.</p>
<p>Here is what the school’s website says:
</p>
<p>Good answer!</p>
<p>DO you know how “outstanding” you have to be go get it? Do you need 5.0 GPA and 2400 SAT?</p>
<p>@ ChairmanGuo: The faculty awards them on the basis of which students they want to teach. There are no magic numbers.</p>
<p>In other words - don’t get your hopes up. It ends up looking quite random.</p>
<p>@neltharion: I guess college admission is sort of like a business so they’ll try to give it to those are outstanding and who will otherwise not go and go to some ivy if not given a scholarship? For truly outstanding students, they’ll probably not offer them since they’ll go to HYP anyways. RIght?</p>
<p>I have no idea, to be honest. It does stand to reason they would try to use those scholarships to increase yield.</p>
<p>if we’ve been accepted EA and initially did not intend to apply for a merit-based scholarship, so we had told the common app accordingly …but now would like to apply for merit aid…is it too late?</p>
<p>^ Maybe you could call them and ask?</p>
<p>I got a merit scholarship last year, and I know one other person so far who also received it. I don’t know anyone who got a full tuition one, and the website suggests that those don’t exist anymore. I’m not sure. Anyway, I had a 4.0 UW GPA, though my high school had no advanced courses, so there was no weighting. I also had a 33 ACT and a 1400 SAT. So my test scores weren’t really spectacular, just run-of-the-mill for UChicago students. My ECs were slightly below average, and I had absolutely no volunteer work. The other person I know who received the scholarship has perhaps slightly lower stats than I do. However, we are both from very small towns in rural areas where we went to extremely uncompetitive high schools. I doubt that students like us are the only ones who receive the scholarships, but it’s something to consider.</p>
<p>It came as a total surprise to me, and I know other people who are MUCH more qualified to receive such a scholarship. I’d say that there’s really no rhyme or reason to the way these scholarships are awarded, so the best you can do is just check the box and hope for it.</p>
<p>Please correct me if I’m wrong, JBVirtuoso, but if memory serves me correctly, didn’t you get the Odyssey Scholarship? (haha I think I remember reading that) anyway, on the FA packet, it said that the Odyssey Scholarship, though merit based, is awarded to only those students whose families make under 75K a year. So, that eliminates <em>some</em> people, no? But then there are other merit scholarships that do not take income into account, of course…</p>