<p>Hello everyone!
I am a senior student from Turkey, I have applied to many universities in early round among which is Northeastern University.</p>
<p>Thanks to my luck somehow I was accepted into Northeastern University and was given the chance to study in the Honours program. Sadly I need a boost from merit based scholarships to be able to study in NEU but I am yet to receive it.
In their internet website it is said that they accept the 10 percent to their honours program and give merit based scholarships to the best 25 percent.</p>
<p>Does this mean I am overlooked and should be eligible for merit based aid? Or this means that there are other factors in play and that is the way it was supposed to be.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the responses in advance. Here is my information just to give you a clearer image.</p>
<p>SAT
1440/1600
2040/2400</p>
<p>690 Reading
780 Maths
570 Writing</p>
<p>SAT II:
800 Physics
790 Maths I</p>
<p>85 percent average GPA which means in the first 11th quartile of my whole graduating class.</p>
<p>Both an IB and Turkish National Diploma scholar, which means I will graduate with 2 diplomas.</p>
<p>IB predicted 41</p>
<p>Major Extra Curricular:
Organized and European Youth Parliament conference, was the Vice President and head organizer.</p>
<p>Went to search and rescue training with a dog companion.</p>
<p>Is a swimmer.</p>
<p>Thank you once again for your attention and help.
I wish you all and your loved ones a lovely week.
Batu</p>
<p>If you’re in the top 10%, then you are definitively in the top 25%. I think you should get the merit based aid. I think your decision notification should’ve told you if you got any aid (at least that’s how it is in USA)</p>
<p>Technically, you can be in the top 10% and not top 25%, because they are based on different pools. For example, if you were the very bottom of the 10% of a pool like the College of Social Science and Humanities, then you would get honors. But if you look at that compared to the entire admissions group, you might not be in the top 25% of everyone. It’s the same concept as why people with high stats in Engineering might not get honors, while people with lower stats in Communications (poor Comm, always gets picked on) might get honors.</p>
<p>That being said, your stats would typically fall into the top 25% of the entire group. I would say, if you didn’t get any aid, then it’d be something weird to do with being an international student (I know they give little to no need-based aid for international students) or maybe you didn’t check some box somewhere that you were supposed to check.</p>
<p>After the holiday is over, call admissions and just politely ask to double check that you did everything correctly.</p>
<p>When my son logs into the application status check web page there are links in the upper left corner for financial aid and scholarship award. Look to see if you have these links. His scholarship award was listed under both of them. Good Luck!</p>
<p>PD2012 would you mind telling me what stats (SAT and GPA) your son had in order to get scholarship (not financial aid, just merit scholarship). My son was deferred with very high SAT 2320 and GPA… can’t quite figure it out. (activities and essays and service all very good with long term significant commitments).</p>
<p>Not to be alarmist, but it would presumably take a rather serious application flaw to be deferred applying with the information you just described. A 2320 would put you solidly in the top 10% assuming a comparable GPA and average ECs/Recs/Essay. </p>
<p>May I ask if you could give us more information?</p>
<p>Allegedly, some schools will reject the very best applicants on the theory that most such applicants will go to other schools. Why would schools reject such applicants, when by accepting them they could increase the average SAT scores and GPA of their accepted and enrolled students, as well as increasing the quality of their student body? Because by rejecting them they will slightly increase the yield rate.</p>
<p>Does this make any sense? No, because no applicants (except a few of the obsessed on CC) pay any attention to yield rates, while everyone pays attention to average SAT scores and GPA.</p>
<p>Rejected applicants find Tuft’s Syndrome to be a very attractive theory, because it means that they were rejected not because they were under-qualified, but because they were over-qualified. They were just too good for that school! For that reason, this urban legend will never die.</p>
<p>Interesting, Thanks for the explanation! I just got rejected from Tufts ED and even if “Tufts Syndrome” is a real thing it certainly wasn’t why I was rejected!</p>
<p>Actually, it is real. It’s clearly not as obvious and common as people like to pretend, but yield rates do matter to schools. Students don’t care about yield rates at all, but rankings do. And prospective students do care about rankings, as do other schools.</p>
<p>However I was referring to the student’s view in that situation, not the college. Meaning, if you write your essay for one school and it bleeds evidence towards another school, other schools might pick up on it. Imagine writing an essay for how amazing it’d be to be in the central of finance for a business major, because you wrote it for NYU. When someone in Boston reads that, they wonder what you’re referring to. I worked in admissions and heard stories that had this type of problem just as much as people accidentally leaving another school’s name in the essay.</p>
<p>If the application is truly flawless, then send a letter of interest in February if you suspect Tuft’s Syndrome. However, this is an isolated case. Northeastern is not denying (or deferring for that matter) droves of tippy-top applicants, nor is it known for yield-protection. It is not Tufts, and in regards to its rankings climb, I would think perfecting its retention rate and increasing its SAT percentiles with top students would be a higher priority than yield numbers, important though they may be.</p>
<p>I cannot say with certainty, but I would assume that Northeastern has a relatively low number of 2300+ applicants and, even if they all decided not to enroll, the yield number would not be changed by more than 1 percentile.</p>
<p>Especially since this is an isolated case, one student is not going to single-handedly cluster-bomb Northeastern’s yield. They have no reason to not admit him in particular. </p>
<p>By the way, I don’t think Northeastern has a supplemental essay on the Common App, so there is no place for a name mix-up.</p>
<p>Demonstrated interest could play a role. My kids both came in around 2200 SAT and top few out of 450 ranked in a MA highschool. Both did well with applications, and got good merit aid at their chosen schools (son - Syracuse, junior, dual major poly sci and IT; daughter - Northeastern, freshman, civil engineering). My son was rejected at American U, where he stacked up quite well against their acceptance stats. I called the admissions office, and spoke with the MA rep. Turns out since they said he had no demonstrated interest (visits to campus, remote chat sessions, request for interview, etc) they turned him down. They have a low matriculation rate, and don’t want to waste slots on some high flier students. Since I called, they said it’s not too late (I guess we were demonstrating interest), but that he would get zero merit aid since that was already handed out. Both kids love their schools, and we (Mom & Dad) are happy with the reduced cost out of pocket due to the merit awards.</p>
<p>You have no idea how many people misunderstand how to do the common app, though. It sounds very silly if you know how to do it (how could someone put the wrong name on an essay going to every school???), but it happens. And it happens way more than you’d think.</p>
<p>In regard to my son being deferred with his 2300+ SAT - which spurred a discussion as to the potential reasons for that, on this thread - it turns out he was admitted into honors. (Sorry for the delay in checking back on this thread.) There was a mixup with some of his documents being uploaded - long story short an administrative issue between the school and the university - and as soon as this was recognized he was immediately accepted under early action and offered a seat in the honors program, with a very nice Dean’s scholarship to boot. So, no Tufts syndrome - just a mistake! And very glad it was worked out easily, once we looked into it. Northeastern handled it very professionally and very well once they realized what happened.</p>