<p>The list of 100 larger schools was printed in the paper's Education Life section today.</p>
<p>A sortable list of more than 600 schools, including many smaller ones, is online, with this story that mentions Chicago's stats:</p>
<p>Wooh. $10,600 to 16% of students. That’ll pay for college.</p>
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<p>Remember: this is a MERIT scholarship. U Chicago has a need blind admission policy that provides financial aid on a need basis. This merit scholarship is in addition to the need based financial aid the school provides to the students. </p>
<p>U Chicago is a very rare USNWR top 10 schools that provides merit scholarship. I believe this was made possible by an donor who gave the school money specifically earmarked for merit scholarship regardless of the financial needs. </p>
<p>Almost all tippy top USNWR top 10’ish schools ONLY offer need based financial aid. NO merit scholarship.</p>
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Caltech and Duke offer merit scholarships as well, though clearly less than UChicago does. I don’t see why the Ivies don’t give out merit scholarships as well to attract more superstar applicants.</p>
<p>AFAIK, being an Ivy League automatically disqualifies you from offering merit scholarships. Something about the terms of affiliation. That gives the non-Ivies a big leg up in the race to attract the best students.</p>
<p>That may be right, Phuruku, but more to goldenboy’s question, I can’t see that the Ivy’s really <em>need</em> to do anything more to attract superstar applicants. They have tons of superstar applicants already, without merit aid.</p>
<p>rlmmail:</p>
<p>That’s the incorrect line of reasoning, I think. Top universities, by their nature, can never have enough - this is why so many aspects of higher ed resemble arms races. Does Harvard really need to start a capital campaign when it already has a $36 Billion dollar endowment? Does Yale really need to spend $500M on the creation of just two dormitories? </p>
<p>Similarly, without such restraints on athletics, ivies would pour considerably more money into its sports teams, and create mini-arms races there. </p>
<p>Schools always want more, and they’ll act predictably when restraints are lifted. Keeping this restraint in place lessens the arms race nature of admissions at ivies. At the same time, merit aid becomes a big drawing point for schools that traditionally could not compete with the very top ivies (i.e. UChicago, Wash U, etc.).</p>
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I’m sure the Ivies could just “bend” need-based aid in many cases, though. I’ve heard speculation of this happening for some athletic admits.</p>
<p>Yeah I think “need” becomes a very vague term with the ivies.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, having the restraint in place - however tenuous - is better than not having it at all. </p>
<p>If merit aid really played into it, I think schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (aka the richer schools) could just dominate even more over the “poorer” schools like UChicago, Penn, Brown, etc.</p>