<p>D received acceptance in NYC yesterday, so wonderful!</p>
<p>My PRESTO finally changed to show my financial aid idk why it’s just doing it now :/. The aid is good but it’s 7K short of my Reed fin aid so, I might just appeal for the heck of it and if it doesn’t go through then I’m heading to Reed.</p>
<p>Waitlisted here…decisions, decisions. Congratulations to those that got in!</p>
<p>Waitlisted. Why does this keep happening?</p>
<p>waitlisted! got my letter today in Florida</p>
<p>D accepted in Northern California with $17,000 merit scholarship. She is very happy after a rather brutal college application process. What a ride. She is a double legacy and although she is a stellar student with great test scores and grades, I know that this decision was in part due to her legacy status. It just gave her the edge that she did not have at some other very selective schools where she was either wait listed or rejected. I believe this, I saw her experience it, and I saw it happen with her friend’s applications. There are simply too many qualified students applying to limited spots. I think there are many,many fine schools out there that don’t have the same name recognition that need to be discovered and explored. My advice to anyone going through this next year is to carefully choose your list of colleges well, and include some of the hidden gems that exist in all areas of our country. Good luck to all of you and thank you for sharing you thoughts and feelings on this forum.</p>
<p>Letter did not arrive with today’s mail in Northern California. Wondering if I should call the office of admissions or wait for it tomorrow/Monday?</p>
<p>Did merit aid awards come with the acceptance letter? I’m not seeing anything with mine :/</p>
<p>@neder94 I would wait and see what happens tomorrow
@recidivist26 yes the notification of merit aid came with the acceptance letter.</p>
<p>Bayrunner…that is a very thoughtful and compassionate post. I totally agree with your advice and should be well heeded by any juniors reading these forums. It makes me so sad to read some of the posts by kids that are devastated by the denials. So much of who and what you become is inside you. One may become the director of the Mars rover mission after starting at a community college or the Unibomber after going to Harvard. Both true examples. My son was waitlisted, but will most likely be moving on. Good luck everyone and be proud!</p>
<p>Accepted with $20k in merit scholarships 
But no other financial aid, so unless that changes, it’s looking like Oberlin won’t be for me 
Seems a shame, I really like their neuroscience program. Anyway, congrats to all the other future Obies, and I hope that all those not receiving the decisions they wanted end up somewhere that they love next year.</p>
<p>Uhm I can see my fin aid award and stuff but I haven’t received my acceptance packet yet. Should I be worried? I live in NY in case you’re wondering.</p>
<p>I would not worry too much, Ivyvision. If you can see an award, it is unlikely you will get bad news. Fingers crossed though!</p>
<p>Accepted with $20k in merit scholarships…the letter came on Saturday (SoCal).</p>
<p>I am a parent whose daughter was accepted at Oberlin, and elsewhere, and will need to make a choice. She is flattered that Oberlin offered a merit scholarship. I am relatively unfamiliar with the merit scholarship process, but after reading the preceding posts in this thread, it one could get the impression that these offers are fairly common. How common are they? What percentage of the student body actually pays full tuition? Is satisfactory performance defined as not being on academic probation, or on maintaining a certain GPA?</p>
<p>Ruppy, you can get the answers to most of your questions from Oberlin’s Common Data Set. The financial aid section will indicate how many students applied for aid, how many got it, what the average scholarship grant amount was for both students with need and students without (these are separate line items). I think that most FA packages include a scholarship component of some amount because Oberlin tries to structure the package to be 70-80 percent grant / 20-30 loan. Hope this helps - I don’t have the CDS link handy but you can Google it or find it on the website…</p>
<p>plmdin, thanks. I have no idea what the “common data set” is, or where to find it. I will look. Meanwhile, while I recognize that college costs a fortune and there is real debate about the value of a traditional liberal arts education (although I am in the pro LA camp), my question was less concerned with financial aid than with the prevalence of merit scholarship offers. I am troubled by some aspects of merit scholarships. I believe some schools waste funds in order attract students with higher board scores, and thereby boost rankings. I object for other reasons, but am not looking to start a pointless debate. I do care, however, about what the “real” tuition is at various colleges. I define “real” tuition, as a vague combination of amounts that the average and median students pay. </p>
<p>I also wanted to see whether the offer of $15,000-$20,000/yr is rare, or common for students not seeking financial aid.</p>
<p>Ruppy, I am sorry that I didn’t explain. The Common Data Set (or CDS) provides information about admissions. All sorts of great info in there! Here’s a link to the Oberlin 2012 CDS : [2012</a> CDS](<a href=“http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/www/cds/cds_explain.html]2012”>http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/www/cds/cds_explain.html) According to this: 759 students are in the Freshman class, 510 applied for need based aid, and 421 were found to have need. The average scholarship and grant for these students was nearly 30K. 243 of the students who had no need were awarded a scholarship, with the average amount being about 12K.</p>
<p>At Oberlin you have to make good progress but there is no minimum GPA that must be maintained. That makes Oberlin unusual in a good way!</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Thanks for your time; it does help! I am printing out the CDS as I write. If I understand your post, 664 students out of a freshman class of 759 did not pay full tuition. Only 13% of incoming freshmen paid full tuition? I suspect that this type of statistic is not unique to Oberlin, but it strikes me as distorting the published cost of a college education.</p>
<p>I agree that, so long as “good progress” is defined as maintaining a normal course load, the offer is good and honorable. I have found that nothing is more destructive to an education as a distrustful relationship between student and institution. I hope most colleges that make such offers are equally honorable.</p>
<p>I actually lost part of that post when I edited it but you’ve basically got it - if you look at the numbers: 421 students had need. 271 of those got need based scholarship/grant (averaging 30K) and 214 got non need based scholarships (but there’s no amount for that). So clearly, some students in the 421 number got both. </p>
<p>What you probably want to look at is the next section which is where it shows that 243 of the students who had no need were given a scholarship with the average being 12k.</p>
<p>That means 453 of the 759 got non need based merit aid.</p>
<p>The discussion about published cost and ‘true’ cost is another discussion entirely. Really, it is about what the cost is to the individual. The average means nothing if you pay significantly more or less. I know Oberlin is need sensitive and that there was a blog post from Elizabeth last year that stated that yes, some people are on the cusp of admissibility but are admitted because they CAN pay. I find it hard believe that 13% of the class is marginal.</p>