Which is why the best need-based FA is given by schools where simply getting in means the student is meritorious and what that student can bring to the school is valued.
LOL! But there is something to be said for getting all those diapers out of the way as soon as possible! 
Mine are 2 years apart and both at “meets full need” schools, so I am a happy beneficiary of this randomness of FA…One of the few times “unfairness” lands in our favor.
I’m not sure why there has to be one or the other: FA or merit. They can co-exist.
Two kids not so close in age can also mean extended years of daycare or babysitting, driving them, etc.
I think F&M’s decision was unique to the philosophy they needed to implement to broaden their base. There is value in merit, for lots of reasons.
@lookingforward - yes of course, I was just being silly. 
It shouldn’t take people long to realize that that college tuition is a rigged game, and colleges are doing their best extract as much money as possible from people who they think can pay in order to give it to people they deem worthy, as well as hire more highly paid administrators.
The simple solution to this game is just not to play. If a school does not offer a significant amount of merit, don’t show interest, don’t visit and don’t apply. Boycott it, let them find some other family to pay full boat. When you are making acceptance decisions, demand merit deductions. If a school doesn’t give you a non-need based tuition deduction, walk to the school that does, or go to the in-state public. Once past the tippy top schools, there is little difference in outcomes anyway.
An easy way to filter out non-merit schools is on the Kiplingers website:
Here is a list of non-merit schools (3% or less non-need aid). If you don’t like the system, avoid these schools.
Amherst College, Amherst
Barnard College, New York
Baruch College of the City University of New York, New York
Bates College, Lewiston
Berea College, Berea
Boston College, Chestnut Hill
Brown University, Providence
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Colby College, Waterville
Colgate University, Hamilton
Connecticut College, New London
Cornell University, Ithaca
Dartmouth College, Hanover
Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster
Georgetown University, Washington
Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville
Hamilton College, Clinton
Harvard University, Cambridge
Haverford College, Haverford
James Madison University, Harrisonburg
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Middlebury College, Middlebury
Pitzer College, Claremont
Pomona College, Claremont
Princeton University, Princeton
Reed College, Portland
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs
Spelman College, Atlanta
Stanford University, Stanford
State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore
Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula
Tufts University, Medford
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, Buffalo
University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
University of Texas at Austin, Austin
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie
Wellesley College, Wellesley
Wesleyan University, Middletown
West Chester University of Pennsylvania, West Chester
Western Washington University, Bellingham
Williams College, Williamstown
Yale University, New Haven
I still remember the Georgetown info session, and they gave a reason for not giving merit aid—it lets them focus their aid budget on those who are utterly unable to afford college without financial assistance.
Seems reasonable to me, really. (And certainly better than Penn’s explanation for their no-merit-aid policy, which was basically “Because we can.”)
Zinhead, totally agree. Interesting that West Chester is on that list. It is a state college in PA.
I’m a student just poking her nose in, but I would prefer need based aid to merit money. In the school I’ve been accepted to I’ve received the president’s gold merit award for my sat score, but it doesn’t cover much. I hav yet to receive word of my honors college app, which will pay full tuition, but not room and board. As a result Im desperately looking for any all scholarships to meet the balance, even tho not all my schools hav replied yet. My father is looking into opening his retirement fund for me and my siblings, and need based aid is unfair? Getting a loan I probably can’t payoff until I’m my father’s age is fair? Even if I took a gap year to earn money as a waitress or a medical assistant, how will $17,500 the whole year offset ur $500,000?
Merit aid doesn’t count as much in my book if it is to the tune of, say, $10k at a college that costs $40k normally. You are still paying $30k in tuition alone. In my family of 5 kids, the expectation is to go to cheap schools (under $10k tuition) and work in college or get full tuition scholarships. Other people pay for college different ways; this is how we do it.
One of the ploys some schools use is to jack up the price of tuition then give just about everyone a “merit” award, regardless of whether they’re at the top or bottom of the admitted class. That way students pay the same as they would have if the school put the same money into reducing the school’s price tag, but admitted students get to feel special, that the school wants them so much they’re offering them merit money. I’ve seen C students get these kinds of merit awards, particularly if they’re financially capable of being full pay. The student and parents can brag to their friends about their award, the school gets a big check, and both are happy. The only losers are the kids who are gapped, because these schools rarely cover full need.
@RerunGirl Need-based aid is not unfair, but it also doesn’t provide what many families actually need in order to make college budgets work. It looks at a single yr of a family’s financial scenario and makes decisions based on that. Your desperation might not go away just bc of need-based aid. Plenty of families are “gapped.” That means the need-based aid offered leaves a huge gap between what the family can realistically afford and what the school expects them to pay.
Did you apply to any schools that you can afford w/o a lot of financial stress?
@studious99 and @sue22 Those types of merit awards are what I was referring to as token merit. Though in the article about F&M, they stated they do not do that because they want to give out greater FA awards. The irony is that when I ran their NPC, their net cost for us was $15,000+ more than most other schools…way out of our budget bc we can’t afford the “most other schools.”
This is a great thread with pretty much everyone unhappy with the current system.
Now all we need is for the government to upset the apple cart on the wealthiest schools and ensure they utilize their endowments for students with demonstrated need (by a yet to be defined metric) or having that endowment taxed.
And I find it ludicrous that those who send their kids to private catholic schools upset they pay taxes for public schools in their community. Imagine what would happen to our society if we didn’t educate our kids?
@Zinhead Totally agree with your post:
It shouldn’t take people long to realize that that college tuition is a rigged game, and colleges are doing their best extract as much money as possible from people who they think can pay in order to give it to people they deem worthy, as well as hire more highly paid administrators.
The simple solution to this game is just not to play. If a school does not offer a significant amount of merit, don’t show interest, don’t visit and don’t apply. Boycott it, let them find some other family to pay full boat. When you are making acceptance decisions, demand merit deductions. If a school doesn’t give you a non-need based tuition deduction, walk to the school that does, or go to the in-state public. Once past the tippy top schools, there is little difference in outcomes anyway.
You do have a typo on your list- Boston University (not in Providence, obviously) gives about 11% in merit aid. I think it was a typo that it was on your list since they do give merit to over 3% of kids.
Actually, to my surprise, UT Austin does give some merit. It is departmentally based, not university wide and only to a few students. I’m thinking both engineering and CS, it has been mentioned. An example is 60% of all Turing Scholars receive merit aid. Turing is the honors for CS and they accept about 40 students/yr. The amounts I have heard are $40,000 for 4 years. Pays for instate and helps somewhat in OOS. I know UT Austin proudly states they give no merit but they are having a lot of good students go elsewhere and so individuals are donating money to give as merit.
I thought grants came from endowments and donations, and college tuition was used to actually run the school. Colleges are a business, and people who don’t like the way a particular business runs should take their money elsewhere.
I don’t really understand the complaints from families who make too much to qualify for need based aid. Do you mean too much to get federal aid (~$60k) or too much to get financial aid from the elite colleges (~$150k)? There’s a world of difference there.
If a family makes too much to receive federal aid, I can see the problem. Families who make ~$60k are routinely gapped and I wouldn’t be suprised if many ended up at their local state school or even cc. Most families can’t afford to send their kids away to school, so they’re in good company.
But if a family makes too much to qualify for financial aid from a college, why should the school give them money to attend? How is a $60k school charging them them $30k more than the family thinks they can pay different from them gapping a low income family $10k? The only difference I see is that the higher income family could pay it, they just don’t want to because it’s full price and they don’t want to pay full price. The low income family can’t pay. If the higher income family truly can’t pay either, it seems like their only choice is to find a less expensive option just like the lower income family.
I don’t think schools can win. There are a lot of posts on CC from families who are upper income but think colleges should give them a discount for a variety of reasons – they live in expensive areas, they provide support to other relatives, they own two (or more) properties but the income is how they support themselves, they have high debt, they’re paying for expensive private high school for siblings – apparently, nobody makes enough to be full pay at any school ever. The great thing for upper income families who can’t make their $30-40k budget stretch to cover those $60k/year schools is that there are many, many options for your children. Options that most other students don’t have. Make sure your children know your budget going in and limit apps to the schools you know you can afford.
@RerunGirl But need-based aid doesn’t always meet a family’s actual need. The EFC, or the school, may very well determine you can contribute much more than your family can actually afford. It’s really, really important to think about your budget and strategize your applications accordingly. For our family, we looked for big merit money before putting in applications. Full tution or full tuition plus. Our kid was not initially pleased with the list we came up with! No one in her peer group, nor the counselor at her prep school were talking finances when compiling their lists. When we ran the NPC on a school that meets 100% need, the first year looks doable. But looking ahead, and taking our oldest kid out of school? Bumping up our income if my husband’s compensation package increases? Junior and senior years at that school look frightening. There’s nothing wrong with taking a gap year and squirreling away a pile of money. There’s nothing wrong with trying again next year with applications targeted towards schools that will get you an UG degree with as little debt as possible. My oldest did her first two years at community college. There are many paths to getting what you need. Maybe not what you want, but what you need. Good luck!
In the interests of a spirited discussion, I would like to disagree with the broad view of this thread. Buying a college education is a good that has many different price points just like buying a car. If you spend $15k for a KIA it will get you to Starbucks just as well as a $95k Mercedes. So like buying a car, there is a large amount of perceived ‘prestige’ value in paying $60k for a school vs. paying $15k for in-state tution. Consider the CA state system. UCLA or Berkeley are great and very close in educational opportunity as Stanford or USC for instance, respectively. So a very good CA student has choices. Maybe that is not the situation everywhere as some states do not have as good flagship schools as private schools… So if education is considered a very high value good then parents should stretch as much as possible to afford their children the best opportunities. If its still unaffordable, then there is always working very hard in a lower price school, proving your value and if its your goal, attend a more prestigious school as a graduate student on scholarship or full ride if possible and merit takes you there. Global wealth has significantly increased in the last 40 years. All the ‘best’ and most expensive schools could charge probably 2x what they charge and still fill up every seat with qualified rich kids. Its a good thing they are liberal and progressive, isn’t it?
@Mom2aphysicsgeek i applied to my state school rutgers and stony brook u, which with merit aid I can pay.
But those are not my dream schools. Rutgers, the cheaper option, doesn’t even offer the major, location, personal interaction with faculty I want. Don’t get me wrong, mom2aphysicsgeek, these are things I can live with, but still.
And I was referring to the first two pages of this discussion.