Question about how merit money is applied...

Paying for College
1

If anyone with experience could teach me how things work, I’d appreciate it very much.

Rolling admissions school. College data says they meet 50% of need on average
$10,000 scholarship offered along with acceptance letter (with chance for more)

which is correct?

COA 50,000
EFC 10,000
merit offered 10,000
need 30,000 ?

of which he may get another $15,000
for a total out of pocket cost family of $25,000

or is the math more like

COA 50,000
EFC 10,000
Need 40,000

and they may meet 50% of that through
10,000 scholarship already offered
Plus an additional $10,000

for a total out of pocket family cost of $30,000

Thanks

2

You have need of 40,0000, but some of it is already met. Your remaining need after merit is 30,000. However, no school has a financial aid policy of “multply your need by X percent,” so don’t use that to guess what else might be awarded. Have you run the school net price calculator?

3

thanks @AroundHere so you’re saying its methodology A Unmet need is what they look at?

I thought that made sense

BUT I ran the NPC and it comes up closer to scenario B

Let me pose this general question. When the Collegedata says a school meets 50% of need (on average) and that 10% of freshman get 100% of need met, Do kids in the top 25% of applicants usually get a better percentage than the bottom quarter?

4

How merit scholarships interact with need-based financial aid can vary by college.

Some colleges specifically state which order merit scholarships will replace various line items for a student getting need-based aid. For example:

https://financialaid.stanford.edu/aid/outside/
https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/

However, many colleges do not state anything of this nature, so you would have to ask the college’s financial aid office directly what their policy is.

5

Usually not. If money is given out according to stats, that’s usually merit. Need based aid is usually given out according to need. If someone’s EFC is $0, they’d get more need than someone whose EFC is $20k. EFC often (and as calculated by FAFSA) has nothing to do with COA. Whether you go to a $50k school or a $20k school, your Federal EFC is going to be $X, and you’ll get the same Pell grant, same amount in loans (unless the COA is so low other aid covers it).

I’d be mighty careful of thinking that ‘meets 50% of need’ means that you’ll get half of the COA covered. A student with an EFC of $0 might get 100% of need met, and other kids get 10% or 25% of need met. Doesn’t help your kid. Everyone doesn’t get 50%, that’s just the average.

6

Kids with better stats may get better packages than kids with the same need but lesser stats, but there are other factors. Kids who have little need can get full need met without breaking the budget. Kids who need more than whatever the school’s maximum grant allows don’t get need met. Some majors or profiles may be recruitment priorities and get a better package than someone with the same need and stats who is yet another biology major at a school that has lots of them.

All of the above assumes need-aware admissions, which is usually the case.

7

That 50% of average need met means NOTHING to any one family. Some families will have little need and have 100% of need met with a student loan.

Some families will have very low EFCs and only have 20% of their need met.

The average need met is ONLY based on students who actually enroll. There may be a TON of students who only got 10% of their need met and they couldn’t afford to enroll…so their pkgs don’t figure in that 50% need met average.

Technically, a school could be filled with a bunch of affluent students will only $10k of need, and a $5k loan was given and the school gets to claim that 50% of need was met w/o giving one dime of free money.

8

@mom2collegekids is absolutely correct. The “50% of average need met” statistic is meaningless for an individual family, and you could have a huge number of students who didn’t choose the school because they couldn’t afford it, and their stats aren’t included in that average. I don’t think either your first or your second methodology are useful (although the second one seems more correct, though again fairly meaningless).

Some schools do preferential packaging, where top students are offered more aid, and some don’t. But you won’t really know until you get the financial aid package. Just make sure your student knows what the budget it and that you have a financial safety.

9

Great answers and I appreciate everyone’s time Thank You