As I help my child gather information about various schools, I am trying to understand how merit aid is handled for music students. The language various programs use has me confused. E.g., Juilliard says that its policy for awarding scholarships is “need-based, merit-informed,” IU/Jacobs says scholarships are awarded “primarily based on merit,” Peabody says “merit-driven, need-informed.”
We will not qualify for need-based aid, of that I am certain. My older, non-musician, child applied to various colleges and universities and was offered merit scholarships that were independent of financial need; we never have completed a FAFSA.
I understand that each school has its own way of handling scholarships. My question is, has anyone found that it was useful or necessary to complete the FAFSA for merit scholarships, knowing in advance that there would be no need-based aid?
NEC is one school that requires the FAFSA, even for merit scholarships not influenced by financial need. So we completed one. My S is there now and could not be happier.
That’s good to know, thanks; NEC is high on my child’s list.
You must remember that Stand alone conservatories raise the huge majority of their funding from tuition.
Therefore they are admitting many full pay internationals - which is a win / win. Highly motivated and qualified kids paying full to keep the lights on.
To expect admittance as well as significant merit to those schools you need to be at the top of their applicant pool.
At a Peabody, Eastman etc which are attached to a deep pocketed university, they for kids with need will typically not stack offers so if they can afford to pay $30,000 and offer them a merit scholarship of $10,000 - they still pay $30,000 but the package has no loans and no work study. For a full pay, they could dangle some merit if they felt it would seal the deal - meaning your child was in high demand.
Yes, I am aware of conservatories’ financial situations, as well as of our own.
I also received your pm. Given how small the music community is, I am not inclined to share details of my child’s background and preparation here. We are basing the school search on advice from well-informed and well-connected teachers, conductors and coaches, and I believe we have reasonable and realistic expectations of the admissions process.
My question is not about “expecting” merit per se, it is about whether or not there is any reason for a full-pay student to complete the FAFSA, in the event that merit aid would be offered.
Yes, it is often/usually necessary to complete FAFSA for merit scholarships.
We did the FAFSA JUST IN CASE as my D entered undergrad and grad. We didn’t want to leave dollars on the table just because we missed some fine print somewhere. I wanted every dime I could get. Schools are so vague around this area. And it’s an extremely busy time (auditions) when the FAFSA is due. You still don’t know where your kid will be accepted and how the money offers work. So I would just do it. Once they enter a school you can figure out if it is necessary each year.
We stopped doing the FAFSA in subsequent years as it became clear it would not affect her merit scholarships at her schools (but could be different elsewhere). We did not qualify for any need based aid - even though I felt very needy and could not afford some of the schools.
When D was an undergrad we assumed that since we probably did not qualify for need based aid we did not need to fill out the FAFSA. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s required by most schools(music and otherwise) to qualify for both merit and need based aid.
My son applied to both independent conservatories (Juilliard, Berklee), conservatories associated with colleges (Oberlin, The New School) and music schools within universities (Michigan, USC). Based on our experience, which doesn’t exactly reflect what @ClarinetDad16 suggests, I would recommend that you be prepared to complete the FAFSA and CSS because there’s a chance that at least one of the schools on your child’s list will require one or both for merit scholarships. (Off the top of my head, I believe Michigan did.)
Once you get through the pre-screen process and have the list of schools where your child will be auditioning, it’s pretty straightforward to go through their websites and determine whether any require FAFSA/CSS for merit consideration.
FWIW, my son received the highest merit offers from conservatories and the least from universities. We are effectively full-pay for Michigan (in-state public) and qualify for some aid from privates. How well each school “met need” varied and it did not follow any conservatory vs university rule or trend.
@ScreenName48105 - was your child a top applicant to the studios s(he) applied?
Did any of the schools stack merit to exceed your need?
It’s hard to know what is meant by “top applicant”-- above a certain level, there are potentially many top applicants. I agree with SN48105, you should be prepared to fill out both FAFSA (which is relatively easy) and CSS (which is a pain.) You may not find much rhyme or reason in the awarding of grants and merit aid (we didn’t.) One thing about these applications, for incoming freshmen they are due quite early (they are due later for upperclass students.) So you will probably need to fill out estimates based on your last year’s tax reports and then go in and correct them.
If Rice Univesity is on your list, they require the FAFSA and the extra Profile. They use that before awarding any merit. She was our 4th and only one we did the forms for. She was only awarded merit money but we had to fill both of those out every year.
Eastman also requires the FAFSA. Also, we learned that the FAFSA is required in order to qualify for the federal student loan program (even the unsubsidized student loan, which is not based on need). In general, the FAFSA is not that difficult to complete, and will only help, not hurt you. Might as well submit one because that covers most school’s requirements.
Don’t know how we’d know… but I’m pretty sure that means he’s not. 
But no, he’s not a star, and doesn’t go to a fine arts school or have a prestigious teacher. He made it to the call-backs at Juilliard but didn’t get in; got in everywhere else. Got merit offers everywhere he got in, all in the 1/3 to 1/2 tuition range. No big full-rides.
Our experience differed from some of the advice here. Of all the programs my son auditioned at, only NEC required the FAFSA for merit-based aid. I believe Oberlin, New School, Berklee, Frost, Hartt all offer merit aid without the FAFSA (thought Eastman did too, but I could be wrong about that). All that being said, I agree that it’s worth completing.
@unscripted I can only speak of Berklee but we knew we wouldn’t qualify for financial aid so we didn’t fill out FAFSA and it was not required for his merit scholarship.
Thanks for the responses. Since most of the schools you all mentioned are of interest to my child, this all is very helpful. As I mentioned above, my older, non-musician, child received merit aid at several schools without submitting any financial information, but this time around I guess it is something we should expect to do.
@glassharmonica yes, we already are seeing how, for friends accepted at many of these schools, the need and/or merit awards vary greatly, even for individuals we know are “top” applicants.
It is very hard to come up with a standard formula, but when you are dealing especially with the top schools, the onces that attract the most competitive students, there isn’t that wide a range between the ‘tippy top’ and the bottom as there would be at other programs, so merit aid may not necessarily reflect the kids ability, it is why I am pretty sure at Juilliard merit awards are need based as well (in other words, they say “oh, yeah, this kid impressed us…but wait, his dad is a cardiothoracic surgeon making 7 figures a year,”…and the kid won’t get more than a token merit award).Obviously, if some kid applies, has the backing of some hotshot teacher and won’t attend unless they get great merit aid, they could make an exception (and I am not saying that is true, just that it could be).
Where trying to attract a top student with merit aid seems to happen more often IME (and take it for what that is worth) are programs trying to make a name for themselves, trying to make a name for a particular area and so forth, where merit aid may not be tied to need as much. I have seen plenty of stories where parents claimed their kid was so great that a top school (like a Juilliard) offered them a solid merit package, and when you kind of nose around the subject, you also find out there was more to it (like the family had another kid in college, or that based on what the parents did, they likely were need based merit).
In the end, I agree with what others have wrote, trying to make sense out of merit aid (or even financial aid) is like trying to make sense out of admissions, in the end it turns out to be what it is. The fact that someone didn’t get a ton of merit aid doesn’t mean they are not a top student , and a kid who gets a ton of merit aid may be a really good student, but got the merit award because they needed the money (among other things, merit and financial need based aid come from two different pools, so using merit money to meet need is a way to help a kid without tapping out the other pool). It is why kids are faced by the big fish in a small pond (with a large award) versus small fish in a big pond (small(er) award).