<p>I have a question about aid: If the cost of attendance - EFC is $10,000 and the student has already been awarded a merit scholarship of $12,000, will the school still award need-based aid to cover the 10,000? Or, do they use the merit money to make up the difference?</p>
<p>In most cases the merit money replaces need based aid first. Since you have the merit award, your "need" is that much less.</p>
<p>Generally only if there is no need based aid will the merit money reduce the EFC. </p>
<p>If the school costs 25,000 and your EFC is 10,000 then your need is 15,000. If you get a merit scholarship of 12,000 this reduces your need of 15,000 to 3,000. Any need based aid will be based on 3000. Your EFC will not be reduced.</p>
<p>If the school costs 19,000 and your EFC is 10,000 then your need is 9,000. If you get a 12,000 merit scholarship the first 9,000 will remove your need then the remaining 3,000 will reduce your EFC</p>
<p>What a horrible system. </p>
<p>If you don’t need any assistance for college, a merit scholarship will give it to you anyway. If you do, and you get a “merit” scholarship, it does you no more good than the need-based aid. My daughter received an email announcing that she’d received a $20,000 merit scholarship to one of her colleges and, since that about matches our Profile estimated EFC, we thought we had a $20,000 benefit–that the merit aid would cover our EFC. But no. Today we got the whole offer in the mail, and the merit aid just replaces grant they probably would have given anyway. </p>
<p>Think about that: If we were filthy rich and had no financial need, we’d have to pay $20,000 less than full freight because of the Merit scholarship. Since we do have need, we get no true benefit from the “award.” </p>
<p>And the money we would end up paying ends up subsidizing the “discount” for people who don’t need it. Reverse Robin Hood.</p>
<p>Is AIG running the financial aid system?</p>
<p>The bottom line is that at most colleges that give merit aid, those not qualifying for need based aid would not attend if the merit aid was not offered. Colleges have this down to a science and their enrollment management professionals look at each candidate and determine what they need to offer to get them to enroll.</p>
<p>So frankly, there would be no need based aid if they didn’t use merit aid to rope in kids who can pay most of the cost.</p>
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<p>Why should only someone who “needs it” get a benefit? Who is to say that you “need it”. Maybe you don’t even “need” a college education, so why should we give you financial aid to go?</p>
<p>Our capitalistic society is based upon rewarding those who “earned” it. If a kid has talent, then the kid “earned” the merit scholarship.</p>
<p>Also, many schools cannnot meet a student’s need. Most of the time there is a “gap”. Some would even say that EFC is unrealistcally high. Merit scholarships help close the gap for many of those students.</p>
<p>Just because a family doesn’t qualify for financial aid doesn’t mean that they are wealthy enough to write a check for $200K. For some of those students in the middle, merit aid plays a huge role in where their parents can afford to send them.</p>
<p>Merit scholarships are based on merit. Need is not a part of the equation.</p>
<p>If a student with need receives a merit scholarship, it reduces need. </p>
<p>If the student does not have need, the scholarship obviously does not reduce need.</p>
<p>It’s not that tough to figure out — merit is merit; need is need.</p>