<p>I’ve been looking into Amherst for a while, but merit money and scholarships are very important to me, as my parents aren’t particularly excited about the prospect of paying for my college education, and my guess is that we’re not going to get a tremendous amount of Financial Aid.</p>
<p>I was on the Amherst website, and it said that it gave out “generous scholarships.” This really surprised me, because I always just assumed that Amherst, being private and small, wouldn’t offer any scholarships at all.</p>
<p>Does anyone know of anybody who has received merit money from Amherst? It seems too good to be true! Thanks.</p>
<p>Amherst does not give merit scholarships. The scholarships they are referring to are based on need. When talking about need based financial aid, schools will differentiate between scholarships/grants, which don't need to be paid back, as opposed to loans and work study. </p>
<p>In general, Amherst is supposed to be generous with need based aid, but as with all things concerning college admissions, your mileage may vary...</p>
<p>Amherst, despite being private and small, has a huge endowment reaching 1 billion. It's one of the richest liberal arts college in the US along Swarthmore, Williams etc. So it's got a lot of money. </p>
<p>But that is not to say you will get it. Amherst doesn't give out merit scholarship. All the scholarship is strictly need-based. So if your guess is that your family wouldn't receive much, you probably wouldn't receive much. Regardless of the willingness on part of your parents to pay up, as you know, financial aid calculation just takes family income and assets into consideration. So you really need to talk to your parents. Amherst will be generous, but they won't take "my parents won't pay although they have the capacity to," sadly enough.</p>
<p>What some people would call a grant, Amherst calls a
"scholarship" in their FA packages. Fill out the FAFSA and if accepted, compare their package to others that you might receive. The FA was actually better for D than huge merit award at other school. Also, their way of calculating the FAFSA SAR give you the benefit.</p>