I was accepted b w/ out merit aid labeled in the letter. Does that mean I will not be receiving merit aid? Or does it come in a separate package/ email?
I also got no merit aid, but they offered me a loan. I’m surprised as this is the first school to give me zero merit aid. Thought my chances of merit aid at American would be good.
It looks like American only accepted 11% of the applicants, which means they are going to be even more selective with scholarships. I didn’t recieve any either but they seem to be substituting scholarships for AU grants, for the kids who are in financial need. The AU grant doesn’t need to be paid back like a loan, it’s gift money. You might have received that or you may be able to ask them for more if you really need it. From what I’ve seen though, most kids have received their scholarships attached to their financial aid package.
Re: 11%, the math doesn’t work that way. Pictures of acceptance letters I’ve seen on Twitter say that “nearly 19,000” students applied for 1,780 spots in the class. To fill 1,780 spots, they probably accepted 5,000 to 6,000 students, based on last year’s yield rate. There were 1,785 new freshmen last year and they admitted 5,498 students to achieve that. Not everyone who is accepted says yes.
Oh ok, I saw somewhere else that it was 11% and I just trusted their number. However, that certainly makes more sense when considering American’s obsession with yield protection.
American waitlists the vast majority of its pool. They are huge on keeping their ratio down, so they accept a small number of people they think have a high chance of attending the school and if they need more they pull them off the waitlist.
No, AU does not wait-list the vast majority of its pool. From the 2016-17 common data set, they had 19,325 applicants and offered wait list spots to 3,116 students. That’s 16%. As long as the desired class size is around 1,800, they get 19,000 applications and the yield rate is about 33%, here’s the rough AU admissions math: 30% accepted, 15% wait-listed, 55% rejected. What you see on College Confidential is not a representative sample of the AU applicant population…don’t fool yourself into thinking it is.
@LiliVoss what are the perks of accepting the loan?