<p>Rodney, good point–but I did call the FA office this AM, and asked explicity if by not receiving Trustees, if she was being shut out of other Merit. The very nice person at the FA office said, absolutely not. She just indicated that the pool of talent was extremely good, that there was not enough $ to go around. We can send in an appeal, but only addnl need based $ can be awarded</p>
<p>Schools have a pretty good idea how many students will accept the awards, just as they have statistical data as to how many kids they have to accept in order to have a full but not overfull class. They even have allowances for what they call “summer melt”. THe larger the school, the more the Rules of Large Numbers prevail and they are astoundingly accurate. They also often have lee way of a year back and forward to make allowances on amounts. But from what I have been told, schools have been running at a net minus at these things in the past few years, when appeals are many, and more kids are going with the merit money.</p>
<p>54kidsinarow, there are schools that take those things into consideration through demonstrated interest, but I don’t think it is the case at BU. Too big, too many kids, not enough staff, not enough time. They go through the apps as thoroughly as they can in the time constraint and have to basically, make a lot of cut decisions as there is not enough money. That the same kids seem to be getting the bulk of the money from a number of schools pretty much shows that there are some consistent things that all schools are seeking. If they start into the territory of trying to second guess who will be accepted elsewhere and get money elsewhere and decide to go elsewhere, it buts a whole new spin on the app process that the constraints that these counselor already have and the goals of the university for their classes. Not saying a counselor here or there does not get capricious, now and again on an app, but it is not a systematic attempt.</p>
<p>What Rodney said would be able to expain my child’s case.</p>
<p>^^ I didn’t want to “muck” everything up here, but we were told that back in 2008 when my daughter received merit money everywhere else but BU…</p>
<p>we didn’t file, but we knew ahead of time what the score was…</p>
<p>At that time, I don’t remember which poster it was who responded that the requirement of filing for FA to receive merit was only for scholarships OTHER than Trustees…and MLK, I think?</p>
<p>I called BU today about the paragraph in my Merit Decision letter about how I was still receiving full consideration for the merit scholarships I “applied for” (I assume they are referring to Trustee and AGB). The person on the phone stated that at this time the merit decisions have generally been finalized and they put the paragraph in there to give themselves room if anything changes, however that happening would be unlikely.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that nobody on College Confidential has reported getting the Bell scholarship thus far. I guess I’m holding on to a glimmer of hope that the paragraph was about that and they are still making decisions. I guess I’ll just have to see what happens.</p>
<p>As of now I have the $20,000 Presidential Scholarship.
My stats were 2300 (780M, 740R, 780W) superscore, 35 ACT superscore, 780 Math II, 740 Bio, 790 US History, 680 Physics. 4.8 GPA, 2 AP Classes junior year (both 5s) 5 AP classes senior year. Decent extracurriculars, including a little bit of research experience. Decent essays. Excellent recs.</p>