When a school says that they offer 15 full boat scholarships, or a certain number of competitive scholarships for any specific amount, does that mean that they make offers to 15 people and if only 10 accept that only 10 are given that year? Or does it mean that the remaining 5 will be offered after the others rescind their acceptances?
It depends on the school. Where DS went for undergrad, scholarships that were awarded to students who didn’t matriculate were not offered to others later.
I agree. It depends on the school.
My D applied for several competitive merit scholarships and her experience was they had an alternate list to pull from once they heard from the finalists. But as @thumper1 said, that is not the case at all schools.
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As stated, totally depends on the college, and in our experience even within a college different awards may vary with the flexibility to offer a named scholarship to another worthy student if it is turned down by the initial awardee.
Some scholarship awards had timelines to accept that were prior to May 1. Those were clearly being used for recruitment of top students and it was clear they would be offered to another candidate.
We are very grateful to the person who turned down the scholarship my daughter ended up accepting. So, it does happen.
Others seem to not offer additional rounds.
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Or, does it mean that they know their approximate yield so offer 20, expecting 15 to accept?
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That’s unlikely. Typically they’ll offer 15 and have a waitlist. Many will tell you where you stand on the waitlist. For example D’s full ride scholarship had 30 scholarships, she was told she was number 6 on the waitlist, and finally got the call on the afternoon of May 1 after the sixth person turned it down.
OTOH the UC Regents scholarship she was also offered is not like that, they assume a yield rate in the number of initial offers.
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I know U of Florida offers 300 merit scholarships and they DO NOT offer them to others if any of the initial 300 do not attend.
For the grandparent scholarships (you get in-state tuition if your grandparent is a resident), they DO offer them to the next person on the list because those are funded by the state and UF doesn’t want to give the funds back to the state.
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These are the schools I know about from D21’s application cycle.
Washington & Lee - Johnson (full ride for 10% of incoming class, so not a set number) - They build in yield rate to the number of initial offers plus have an alternate list.
Washington & Lee - Weinstein and regionals (full tuition, 1 student each) - They make the one offer but have an alternate list.
Davidson - Belk (full ride) and James B Duke (full tuition) - Make the initial offers then go to an alternate list.
Furman - James B Duke (full tuition) - Make the initial offers then go to an alternate list.
Rhodes - Cambridge ($36k(?) is a competitive scholarship offered to three students. They no longer offer the Bellingham full ride.) - Make the initial offers then go to an alternate list.
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