<p>^ Let’s take it away from blame and look at it as an opportunity for the colleges to improve their upfront disclosure.</p>
<p>If the college can make webpage space available to tout a merit scholarship, that college can add a few lines to describe how the merit award “stacks” or doesn’t in the case of FA for financial need applicants – colleges should certainly anticipate that some (most?)merit hopefuls will have a FA profile.</p>
<p>Not difficult, not an endless path down the never-ending complaints trail, not leading to fluoridated water or other Dr. Strangelove commie-pinko entitlement society results. It’s just basic acknowledgement of a FAQ that would be asked if the typical family were in the know enough to ask the right questions.</p>
<p>electron, your comment is absolutely pertinent.</p>
<p>A true merit aid award would stack and take-out EFC for FA students, reducing their out of pocket just like out of pocket is reduced for full pays.</p>
<p>There is no reason a merit award program could not be designed as such; the question is is the program so designed or not?</p>
<p>You have a very different definition of merit award than I do and almost all colleges that give them do. There is a certain reward (award) for having achieved scholastic success regardless of financial circumstances. I know this country is getting more socialistic all the time, but this is amazing to say that in essence that either the high EFC student gets no award because they are high EFC, or the school has to basically double the award to low EFC families. Because that is what you are saying. If they simply reduce the out of pocket without lowering their true sticker price less the merit, then that money is coming from loans instead of out of pocket and you are just kicking the payback down the road. That’s an option in most cases anyway.</p>
<p>^^fallen…i consider myself to be pretty intelligent, but I had to read that post 3 times before I understood it…maybe that’s the problem…colleges aren’t being CLEAR with their financial aid policies</p>
<p>Rocket - well, this has nothing to do with financial aid as it exists. You didn’t understand it because they are proposing a convoluted system where merit awards are worth more the poorer you are. Kind of goes against the definition of merit.</p>
<p>I guess I just feel like I earned the merit more or less…and I specifically picked schools with it so I could afford to go…and now it’s all basically being taken away…</p>
<p>Like I said…i would have made drastically different decisions two months ago</p>
<p>I hate to say this but your anger, disappointment, or feelings that you are being treated unfairly are misdirected as they should be directed at your parents.</p>
<p>Your parents are first in line when it comes to paying for your education. As fallen has stated, while this is not a legal obiligation is is a social and moral one. Your parents have made a conscious decision that they are not going to pay for you to go to college. Unless you have some really extenuating circumstances that can get you deemed as an independent student, you are still going to have an EFC that your parents are responsible for paying (if they are unwilling to pay, the school is not going to increase your FA to cover it). THink about it, as Blossom mentioned, who do you think is putting up the money for schools to offer institutional aid; other people’s parents and alumni who give back to their schools. So in essence because your parents are not willing to pay for your education, they are esentially saying let someone else’s parent pay. And that part is not fair.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, no college owes anyone a free ride, merit money or insitutional aid. If your parents have shared with you their income and assets and you have run the numbers using both the federal and institutional methodologies, you may have some idea as what the EFC is going to be.</p>
<p>I understand and feel for you being in a financial bind (I have plenty of students on my case load who have taken your parent’s position) but if a parent’s unwillingness to pay was all it took to get FA, you would have droves of parents saying they are not paying for their child’s education. I hope that there is a financial safety in the mix that you would be happy to attend.</p>
<p>I learned early on here on CC that merit aid would first be applied to need-based aid up to the point that it fully (or mostly) replaces it. For example, if need is calculated to be $10K and a student receives a merit award of $8K, need-based aid is reduced to $2K. If need is calculated to be $10K and a student receives a merit award of $12K, need-based aid is reduced to zero and the student uses the additional $2K to pay part of his or her EFC. </p>
<p>I don’t necessarily have an issue with this way of allocating Federal and institutional funds, but I have somewhat of an issue with how local and regional scholarships are applied. If a student makes the effort to win a local or regional scholarship (and these are generally fairly competitive even with a smaller applicant pool), then why not let him/her keep the entire amount rather than reducing other aid correspondingly?</p>
<p>In following the discussion on this thread, I went back and checked the financial aid pages of the colleges S2 has applied to. Not a word regarding the interaction between merit aid and need-based aid. Zip, nada, nothing. So if I’d been an uninformed parent who hadn’t been devouring the subtleties of the college application process on CC since S1 went through this process last year, I wouldn’t have known how merit and need-based aid works in practice. I do know that the award letters themselves refer to the big picture of financial need, and indicate merit awards get put into the mix.</p>
<p>The financial aid pages were only a little more forthcoming regarding how merit aid is actually awarded. These I had looked at carefully during both my sons’ application processes because merit aid is key to whether or not we can afford to send them to a given college. Some colleges basically said “we’ll consider you for merit aid as part of your application”, while one college laid out explicitly what it took to get what level of award: </p>
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<p>I had assumed that most merit awards were based on a combination of test scores and GPA, plus an intangible amount of “gee, vballson’s a good kid, let’s throw another thousand at him”. I assumed the worst case scenario, and prepared S2 for the possibility that merit wouldn’t be enough to make the college affordable. To my great surprise, in all but one case the merit award was much higher than expected, in one case double. So perhaps the intangible outweighed the strictly stat-based calculation.</p>
<p>I haven’t read this whole thread, but it is interesting as I’ve had some of the same thoughts as many of you. We will have our first child in college next fall. She is an excellent student, so we were hoping for some merit aid. At one private school, we met with an admissions officer. He asked my daughter what her GPA was-4.0 unweighted. He then asked her what her ACT score was-35. His eyes lit up and he said that most likely she would get a Founder’s Scholarship worth $14K/year. It sounded fantastic. Then recently we filled out the FAFSA and our EFC is $28K. Thus, this scholarship would meet our need since COA is less than $42K. I then read on this college’s website that their AVERAGE aid given per student is $18K. So their average student (say 3.3 GPA, and 24 ACT) gets more money than my daughter. I just feel that the merit aid is a little misleading. The one group of people it REALLY can be considered a true merit scholarship is for those with EFC’s abouve say $50K, as without merit aid they would get nothing. It just doesn’t quite seem right given that those with average stats and below average incomes get more aid than those students whose stats put them in the top 1% of entering freshmen.</p>
<p>As an aside to my previous post, our D received a full OOS tuition scholarship to Auburn, along with other “goodies”. The value of this is about $90K when you factor in increased tuition costs over the next four years. Now that is a real merit scholarship, as it only leaves room and board. If D wants to attend Auburn is a whole 'nother story!</p>
<p>There is still confusion about “need” and “deserve.” Of course, below average income students “need” more so they will get more “need” based aid. Those making above average income start out with more so they “need” less. Whether someone deserves more or less is an entirely different beast.</p>
Do you know what kind of EFC is typical for that average aid award of $18K? Who knows, maybe that average aid recipient has a need of $28K and they’re getting gapped $10K, which means they’ll have to take out big loans while your daughter is getting her full need met. That family might very well feel that they’re not being treated fairly, either. </p>
<p>Boy, I wouldn’t want to work for a college FA office at this time of year…</p>
<p>Look…I believe my college costs are 100% MY responsibility which is why I chose schools with generous Merit and need based aid…I just feel a bit swindled is all. I thought I read the policies clearly and was hoping to get merit to help cover my EFC…</p>
<p>I do have a financial safety, but I still feel like quite a few of my college choices are being swept up under me</p>
<p>It it not that simplistic. it is almost like saying the average temperature in a particular part of the world is 70 degrees. You go in April the temerature may be 50 degrees, you go during the dog days of august the temperature could be 90 degrees. Not every day is a 70 degree day but the average is still 70.</p>
<p>Mustang - I think what you are missing is that AID that is not merit money has to be paid back at some point. People seem to miss that over and over again on here. So while you may be out of pocket more on day one, they have a bigger burden in the end.</p>
<p>In the eyes of financial aid offices across the country, need based aid is going to be given based on your parents income and assets. </p>
<p>There are very few schools that will pay for the full cost of attendance with merit $$. You may end up getting merit money for full tuition, but you may have to pay for room and board. </p>
<p>You are accepted to a school that gives both merit and need based FA.You receive a full tuition scholarship. School deems you have no demonstrated need because your EFC is 15,000 so you will not be eligible for need based FA.</p>
<p>Now if this is your decision that you are going to pay for all of it yourself, no one sweeping anything from you. You simply have to come up with your EFC of $15k</p>
<p>Scenario 2</p>
<p>NYU Cost of attendance: $54,000 EFC=15,000 Scholarship $ 25000</p>
<p>family receives $3000 work study and $3500 stafford loan</p>
<p>family will have to come up with $24k (15k EFC + 9K gap that NYU has left).</p>
<p>Mustang, average aid means grants, loans, and work-study. An average award might mean getting $12k of loans and $6k of work-study and no grants.</p>
<p>fallenchemist–that’s why I like the fact that a certain college information site (which shall remain nameless due to CC policies) includes loans in their bottom-line cost estimates for various colleges. So if both college A and college B have COA of $50K and offer estimated aid packages of $30K, but in college A’s case loans will be $6K of the total, and in college B’s case they will be $12K, the site will list your annual cost for A as $26K and B as $32K, even though your out-of-pocket is $20K for both. I think that’s a realistic and helpful approach, though the numbers are a bit alarming the first time you see them.</p>
<p>There are people who finance their EFC using credit cards. In the good old days, many people just set up a HELOC and paid their portion using “the house” to finance their obligation. Surely this is unfair to those with poor credit (but at the same income level, and with kids equal to or superior on terms of “Merit”.) Why shouldn’t those folks have the option to pay their EFC out of future income (and get those yummy miles at the same time)?</p>
<p>It’s not fair. How many times must this be repeated? It’s not fair. It is an imperfect system which tries to level the playing field somewhat for truly needy kids whose parents have no assets and limited income, parents who have some assets and higher income, and parents who either have tons of income or tons of assets or both. In all of these situations, the parents would prefer to pay zero and have someone else shoulder the burden. So the fin aid system is set up to try and find a not hideous solution between nobody paying anything (what we’d all prefer) and everybody paying everything (clearly not possible unless you want a college filled with the sons and daughters of the top tier income/asset folks.)</p>
<p>Again, why is this hard to understand? The system was not set up with your family or your kids in mind. The system is not set up for every eventuality (you inherited money from a long lost uncle two years ago but you’re planning to use it to adopt a baby next year.) It shows up as an asset and your “need” will be adjusted accordingly. Doesn’t matter if you “plan” to use the money for a swimming pool, a kidney transplant, or to divorce your no-good husband and start over again. You fill out the forms, the college uses a pretty standard methodology to determine how much of the windfall is available to pay tuition.</p>
<p>So not fair since Uncle Henry intended the money for the pool. But so not fair to other families with exactly the same income as you who didn’t have an Uncle Henry.</p>