Hi, new EA admitte’s parents need help! With our income and saving, we didn’t apply for the financial aid at all. Net price calculator shows $3k for loan, and $2500 for work study, with the rest being our responsibility. Now I am afraid that we should have applied to aid to at least keep ourselves in consideration. It seems to me a lot of the financial aid given by U Chicago has merit component on top of need base, and what we can do at this point after EA admission? Note they have ED this year too. Please help!
Hello, not sure if this is your question or not but… Merit awards do not require a FA application. They are given out regardless of FA status so your child would have received one if UChicago had decided to award one. Not sure there is anything you can do for next year but you could apply for need based aid for the following year if you want to try.
Also, UChicago does give $4K for NMF, if your child achieved that.
@SincererLove, from what you are saying you thought that you did not qualify for need based financial aid and did not check that box and paid for the application.
Please be advised that UChicago waives the application fee if you tell them that you are applying for financial aid.
Why did you think that you did not qualify for any need based aid? Did you go to the school’s NPC and it let you know that your EFC was really high? You then applied to UChicago knowing what it costs and were willing to pay for the total costs?
As far as I understand, you can still apply for fin aid and send everything in. You also need to fill out Profile.
Yes, UChicago stacks their need based and merit based aid. So your fin aid package can include for example- a federal program grant, an institutional grant, work study, a loan and a merit scholarship.
But I get the feeling that since you have a high income and savings and maybe assists you indeed won’t qualify for fin aid.
Yes, the advise was right here- with UChicago you can get merit aid through a scholarship without having applied to fin aid. So if your kid was not given a merit scholarship I don’t think it had to do with not applying for financial aid.
There are some schools that clearly state that to receive merit aid the student MUST apply for financial aid because the school is trying to allocate grants judiously to students that have a need component. Carnegie Mellon is such a school although they got more monies to dispense more merit to entice top students regardless of need more recently.
I don’t think that UChicago has dispersed all of the merit monies because they still have RD round. But the longer it goes forward the less monies will be available for your student.
Apply for fin aid as soon as you can. See what happens after that. Look to see if it’s affordable for your family. Let them know if it is not with reasonable solid reasons.
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UChicago is not very transparent with their merit based scholarship guys. They have some information on their site but not all of it. They are a top caliber school trying to attract the best students and they want the wiggle room to do it.
Go look at last year’s EA thread- a number of students accepted with the University Scholarship that ranged from $10,000 per year to $30,000 per year. One got them to bump it up to $35,000 then decided to go to Harvard ( not need based aid). The family was going to pay full fare at Harvard.
But I think those days are dwindling down TBH. UChicago wants to be on top and they are needing to be judicious with the merit to ensure that this goal gets met.
You can still apply for aid now and they will let you know a decision once they have it. It definitely is worth a shot if you were anywhere close to the cut off. Our FA package is somewhat better than the calculator indicated. It seems like UChicago is offering less merit each year in terms of amounts and number of people getting it plus it seems very random not something you can rely on getting.
Merit scholarships are really fuzzy at UChicago - nobody really has any idea why they’re given out or how many they give. I read a lot of resumes because I hire undergrad research assistants for a lab, and they definitely aren’t correlated much with academic success in college, even the huge ones.
I just did the calculator from college board and my S would most likely get a reasonably large grant from UChicago due to our financial situation. I would also think he would possibly get a reasonable amount of merit scholarship. However, I would think any merit scholarship would simply cut into the grant moneys. Is that how it normally goes with these types of things? My older son got the Presidential Scholarship from TU and decided to go there, so we haven’t dealt much with financial aid issues. Thanks for any input you might have. My S seems smitten with UChicago and we want to figure out how possible it is, especially if TU also offers him the Presidential Scholarship (free ride).
Merit aid should not cut in. Check the FA website to confirm. But thought I read that it might cut into work study but not grants. But, FYI, my D17’s NM scholarship didn’t even cut into her work study this year (she’s class of 2021).
My D was offered Merit Aid on top of her Need grants and it all stacked. Just be aware that your first Financial Aid offer may not include Merit Aid with the official response being that the Scholarship Committee meets though April. Most people think that is code for UChicago throws merit at certain students that still really want based on their Yield at the time.
Thanks JBStillFlying! That would be fantastic if he can get a merit scholarship from them on top of financial aid. I also assume he can apply for other outside scholarships. Is the NM scholarship in the $4000 range as mentioned above?
@liecdre not anymore - at least for those who applied ED/EDII. D17 receives $2,000 per year which is the amount they sponsor through National Merit Corp. They may continue their recent history of supplementing that to a total of $4,000 per year for those who are admitted under non-binding. Not sure - didn’t ask that specific question. Definitely got the impression that the $4,000 guarantee has come to the end of its useful life. However, need based (at least for us) was more generous than we expected. D17 was accepted under EDII.
@liecdre They often use “merit aid” as a means of getting kids to commit rather than rewarding true merit. Such was the case with me as finances were a barrier to my attending. Nondorf worked directly with me and gave me a merit scholarship on top of my financial aid. I’m pretty sure it’s easier to get these scholarships if you apply EA or RD because that gives you the leverage as they want to maintain high yield. Obviously that makes it harder to get accepted, but if you want financial leverage it’s the way to go
@elmejor21 is correct, and that is the dilemma, as the RD dropped to around 2% with the addition of ED1/2. Personally I encourages my DD to apply for outside scholarships because I didn’t think they would offer merit aid after being accepted ED. She was able to reduce her tuition bill with the outside scholarships, but UChicago reduces the grant as an even split with the scholarships. IOWs they take half of the outside scholarship money.
@CU123 so outside scholarships are not stackable? That’s good for people to know. NM was stackable and I thought at least UChicago merit aid is as well.
Best for anyone with these questions to check out their website. Also, there’s a bit of a timing glitch in that FA sets its policies for the upcoming academic year in the midst of - or perhaps at the end of - application season. So whatever you read now might change by the time you are getting your FA package. Best just to keep up with the FA office guidelines throughout winter and spring.
Yes, outside scholarships are a 50/50 split and if it comes from UChicago then it’s stackable. So if an outside scholarship is $4k then you get $2k and the other $2k is applied to the grant. This split occurs until the grant is wiped out and then of course you would receive the entire benefit of the scholarship.
^^You know that wasn’t my experience. My son got a National Merit, a UChicago merit, then late in the game, just before bills for the 1st quarter were to be paid, my son received a scholarship through my company. I called the aid office and they said not to worry, that none of the other scholarships would be reduced. Maybe that’s because it was late in game and the company scholarship was only $3k.
Not for me, they just changed it, to reflect the 50/50 split. Of course that is for this year…
I guess it’s not too bad, there are schools that take 100%.
Yeah, even at a 50/50 split, you can still try and get close to covering most of the costs.
Thanks!
@kaukauna is your son class of 2021 or prior? FA told me that everyone needs to read the guidelines that are in place when they matriculate. If they make a subsequent change (say, reducing the amount of NM merit aid or whether certain scholarships are stacked), that will apply to future classes. From what I understand, a lot of changes were made for the class of 2021 and beyond. Not entirely sure about this but it looks like they might be shifting away from merit aid and toward meeting need.
JBStillFlying: My son is Class of 2017. You are right, lots of changes could be occurring. But I wanted to relate this experience, for what it’s worth.