<p>Through my casual tour of CC, I have noticed a lot of posts regarding students that have received merit scholarships from NU, either in the form of research grants or other monies. Is this the new trend? What made NU start to do this all of a sudden. Why are they resorting to these means all of a sudden? Do they think that they cannot compete with their peer schools anymore? I have mixed feelings about this. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>As of now, the only top notch schools that give out 'merit' rides are UChicago and Duke.</p>
<p>I don't know what this refers to, I haven't seen it and a Rep posted a while ago that NU still doesn't give merit money except through national merit.</p>
<p>The "merit" based ones, according to the few CCers who got them, seem so small that they aren't making any difference. Some even appear to be need-based in the form of grants. I think NU is still unsure about this; they have to make sure their commitment for need-blind admission and aid won't be affected.</p>
<p>sam lee, my question is this: how come none of these scholarships are being published online? Like Duke, Chicago, etc make it very know they give out merit aid....</p>
<p>NU doesn't offer merit aid with the exception of National merit scholarships and music students (office of financial aid) <a href="http://ug-finaid.northwestern.edu/incomingFAQ_pf.html%5B/url%5D">http://ug-finaid.northwestern.edu/incomingFAQ_pf.html</a> :</p>
<p>Q. Does Northwestern offer merit aid? </p>
<p>A. Northwestern is an institutional sponsor of National Merit Scholarships. In addition, the School of Music awards a number of talent scholarships to incoming students with outstanding performance in auditions. The remainder of the Northwestern scholarship funds are awarded in accordance with our need-based financial aid policy which allows our uniformly high quality students to attend regardless of their ability to cover the cost.</p>
<p>NU doesn't offer traditional academic merit scholarships. In this regard it joins the Ivys, Stanford, MIT and Cal Tech in not giving academic merit based aid. Duke, the University of Chicago, Wash U, Hopkins, Emory and Vanderbilt all give traditional merit based aid.</p>
<p>Research grants are not considered merit aid. Stanford and the Ivys give them.</p>
<p>From what I've been seeing on the forums here and my own experience, I think that while they do not give merit scholarships per-se, they are not "merit-blind". If they feel you're a strong student and want you to attend, they seem to increase the amount of aid in grants.</p>
<p>arbiter213: "I think that while they do not give merit scholarships per-se, they are not "merit-blind". If they feel you're a strong student and want you to attend, they seem to increase the amount of aid in grants."</p>
<p>All schools play this game to some degree. Stanford's Presidential Scholars program (hence abandoned) used to identify the top 200 or so top student targets and gave them more aid in grants. There is now a relative arms race for the poorer students with schools competing to have the higher cutoff for qualifying family income that receives entirely grants without loans (Princeton and Harvard have the highest cutoffs with schools such as NU and Penn recently joining the fray). The amount of aid in grants has always been a gray zone to schools claiming not to give merit aid, with programs like Stanford's old Presidential Scholars program and a school upping financial aid grants to high calibur students with competing offers as obvious examples. But, still, a higher percent of financial aid as grants is not merit aid. These students still had financial need.</p>
<p>NUGrad5555,</p>
<p>NU is very SLOW in updating web pages. That can be one reason. For example, the admission page still has 2009 data. There's no link to Kellogg certificate program on WCAS's "programs and departments" page.</p>
<p>NU doesn't offer merit aid. The page is old, but they only offer aid, grants and loans. People get a "northwestern scholarship" but it isn't determined by how stellar your stats are; it's determined by the aid you need and if you can pay off loans or are eligable for grants.</p>