It’s primarily super high stats kids that are likely to be affected. The kids with slightly lower stats (lower than 1500 SAT/34 ACT/3.9 GPA ) weren’t in recent years getting merit aid anyway, and often no institutional financial aid no matter what their EFC. I do think Pitt, as a state-related school, should be targeting aid, whether merit or need-based, to instate students, in line with what most state flagships already do. And I applaud Pitt for trying to make the school accessible to a wider range of SES students. Way better than Penn State, which gives virtually no aid to anyone except for the token amount given to Schreyer students.
They’ll move away from pure merit, and meritorious students from upper middle class families will stop choosing Pitt.
According to Pitt common data set, only $2.8 million Is awarded in merit scholarships to the matriculated students. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things, so I don’t believe cost is the issue here.
Agreed. As schools become more popular, awards decrease.
U.S. News college ranking:
Standardized tests: 7.75%
Pell Grant graduation rates: 2.5%
Pell Grant graduation rate performance: 2.5%
Pitt’s new policy will at least affect the above factors. They may have done some calculation to confirm the positive gain?
It certainly hasn’t hurt other schools to give only need based aid - Ivies, Stanford - or the many schools that give mostly need based but do have some merit, like Cal, UCLA, Michigan,Virginia.
Isn’t the reward the knowledge gained? Or getting into the top school? I doubt many Harvard admits think they got no reward for their hard work even though they got no monetary award for the test scores.
True. But it is hard for Pitt to lure students accepted by the schools you mentioned without giving out (more) merit money, except for those who got accepted into guaranteed Pitt Med School.
@FindAGdWay Believe it or not, Pitt is the school of choice for many high stats students and those who can afford it will still attend without merit. Many flagships offer little merit and have no problem attracting high stats students - eg, UT, Texas A&M, the UCs, Penn State.
@twoinanddone The reward is not being in debt up to your eyeballs. As far as being admitted to top schools that’s nice but enrolling is another thing when the price tag is $300k. Being admitted to Harvard but not attending because you don’t have $300k is a hollow victory.
Again, it’s discouraging being a donut hole. My friend who makes more than me but whose wife doesn’t work sends his 2 kids to Notre Dame for what my in-state option is for my son. You finally start moving up the pay scale at the wrong time when it comes to aid and you’re all of a sudden full pay. My son would love Notre Dame but no way for $75k/year.
I wouldn’t trade but when you take away merit it sends the wrong signal. Especially after the admission cycle has already begun if that’s the case.
Except, almost no one thinks that Michigan or UVA or the top UCs are in same category as Pitt. Savvy UMC kids who are in the donut hole might attend UPitt on significant merit aid vs paying full tuition to UVA, Michigan or a UC, to save money for grad school or avoid loans. But few high stats kids would attend Pitt full freight if they could attend UVA, Michigan or a UC for about the same cost.
My kid got into Pitt, really liked it, and it’s strong in his area of interest. He was going to wait and see what his merit award was and apply William and Mary, RD and UVA EA. After this news came out, he joined the long line to talk to the counselor, and has decided to apply to WM ED, since it appears that merit aid isn’t happening at Pitt. He’ll probably wait until he gets his acceptance to formally turn down Pitt, just to be cautious. But he will be locked into WM if he is accepted by this weekend.
Pitt isn’t in state for us, and they can allocate aid any way they want. But I’m pissed that they weren’t transparent about the change in merit aid policy two months ago. A lot of kids, like mine, jumped through hoops to get the applications in in August for priority merit consideration and wrote the extra essays on the application and did the honors college app when there was no need. And our guidance office is saying they were blindsided too, after they worked closely with Pitt for years.
So no, once Pitt becomes the same cost as— or more than — UVA, WM, Michigan, UVLA, Berkeley, etc.— Pitt loses a lot of appeal.
+1. This 
Does your state provide the same opportunities for all kids from pre-K through high school? Every kid gets exactly the same education; there aren’t poor districts in some areas and wealthy districts in others? If everyone is to be treated the same it has to start much, much earlier than college, and it won’t be a cheap undertaking.
@Destination2020 I understand feeling a bit betrayed. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out with merit. It’s all speculation so far, but this article does seem to be the first where they admitted the change. I’m sad for all the kids who potentially will be affected. The ones who really wanted Pitt, worked really hard for it and who were told by their families it would only be affordable with a merit scholarship $. These are kids who bring a lot to the table at Pitt since they really and truly want to be there.
I will be rooting all of you on for sure!
But that’s up to Pitt to decide. Alabama decided to attract a lot of high stat students with merit aid and now are backing off (a little) by raising the requirements to get those awards. Several years ago Florida raised the requirements for Bright Future awards and now the group of students who get them are a lot whiter and a lot wealthier than the prior group. I think at some point they’ll turn the program upside down again and consider need.
A lot of life isn’t fair. A co-worker made the same as me, but his family of 3 was him, one wife, one child and mine was me and 2 college kids. He qualified for the AOTC because our income was under the married max but I didn’t qualify because income was way over the single/HOH max. I had 2 in college and got no deduction and he only had one kid qualified. Same job, same pay, same family of 3 on our taxes. Unfair. My kids would have liked Notre Dame too, but it wasn’t in our budget. A friend’s kid got to go to ND because her father paid. Nice Grandpa! Life is unfair.
@twoinanddone I’m well aware life isn’t fair. It is what what it is.
The problem is watching my son figure it out. Work hard, move up and go to his in-state public while some of his cohorts go to top schools on need. Luckily he’s also learned that going in debt for an undergraduate degree isn’t a great idea so It’s a draw.
“ Work hard, move up and go to his in-state public while some of his cohorts go to top schools on need.”
In a lot of cases, a lot of cohorts with a lot lower GPA and SAT scores go to top schools with full ride because they belong to … where as the kids who worked extremely hard and sacrificed 12 years of their childhood have to settle for instate public school with full pay. Yes life isn’t fair , doesn’t mean that we have to exacerbate it instead of attempting to mitigate it.
@bsms2018 Why any parent would encourage or condone sacrificing 12 years of childhood for the sake of possible admission or even merit chances at certain colleges is beyond me. Most instate flagships have excellent programs and lots of very smart and capable students.
We are a “donut hole” family who got $0 merit from Pitt last year. We are instate for Pitt. She was received a lot of merit money from other schools. Her SAT 1460 fell short of the 1500 requirement in order to receive merit last year. My point is that I don’t think this is going to any impact on those high stat donut hole famililes. ETA: Super high stat over 1500 another story
@ShrimpBurrito we are still awarding merit awards. There is no plan to remove merit money that I’m aware of.
This is really a shifting or reallocation of financial aid funds…more to need-based and less to non-need based, rather than an elimination of merit.
Quotes from the article above
This re-allocation has been happening for awhile, at least at the main campus based on the last 5 common data sets. in 2014/15 non-need based fin aid was 49% of institutional aid, while last year (18/19) it was 42%.
These numbers are from the institutional fin aid line, just at the Pittsburgh campus. A full and correct analysis would look at all 5 system campuses and probably should include the tuition waiver and athletic awards (both need and non-need based columns).
The Pitt Success program impacts about 5,000 students across all campuses, not just the main Pittsburgh campus.
https://oafa.pitt.edu/pitt-success-pell-match/