<p>Yeah it really sucks. No one is saying that it doesn’t really suck that college is expensive. Plenty of students can’t go to great schools that they love because of the cost.</p>
<p>None of that changes the fact that Northeastern does merit scholarships and very few need-based scholarships. For many people attending, that is a lot better than giving a couple of low-income students full rides and screwing over all of the middle-class students by making them pay full tuition.</p>
<p>To Guest101 and Easternmasskid:
I think you are both missing the point. So many of the decisions these schools make are made in a vacuum and are, therefore, a crap shoot. I can tell you first hand that kids who have lower GPA’s and lower SATS got MORE in merit based aid than my child. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps it was the major they choose, perhaps it was their ethnicity, perhaps it was their essay. I don’t think I’ll ever know, but it is definitely something I was expecting as we (informed parents) have been warned about this. We were warned not to try to make sense of it all, but to stay focused and help our children as much as we can with this crazy process. So, I don’t think its fair to criticize each other. It’s not your fault. We are all caught up in a high stakes adventure and it doesn’t always make sense.</p>
<p>Yeah, some people feel that it might have to do with the college or the major. I certainly know that honors does that. An engineering student got a LARGER merit scholarship than a CAS student, and yet the latter received honors and the former didn’t. Fortunately the engineering student applied for honors after first semester and got in.</p>
<p>I’m sorry for your situation jv, and I hope you don’t take my statements personally. I was just mocking some of the statements people were making. I applied to Northeastern, unfortunately I most likely won’t be going. I myself didn’t get any need aid aside from loans the $5500 (I did get a 12,000 merit scholarship though, but still not enoughto make it affordable – declared major in Computer Engineering). And I agree the merit scholarships can be random, but know that Northeastern and all colleges in general are looking for more than just GPA and SATs.</p>