Very Disappointing Merit Scholarship Offer

I am extremely frustrated by the small merit scholarship I was offered by SCU. I was hoping I would receive a half tuition or full tuition scholarship. However, I was offered a $2600 incentive grant, and my family does not qualify for need-based aid, so $60,000 costs per year will be unaffordable. I go to a difficult college-prep school, and I am at the top of my class with a 3.98 GPA and a 33 on the ACT. I have taken most of the AP and honors courses that my school offers. I am the co-president of my school’s math team, captain of the varsity tennis team, and president of a tutoring program, and I have been deeply involved in these activities for all four years of high school. My letters of recommendation were outstanding, and my essays were also very good. I feel insulted and very disappointed that I was offered such a minuscule scholarship (in comparison to the total costs). This small award seems very unreasonable, since I had good statistics well above the average, and great extracurricular involvement as well. What scholarships did everyone else get? Hopefully you are more lucky than I was.

You shouldn’t feel insulted. It’s a marketplace, with colleges and applicants being both buyers and sellers.

Santa Clara won’t be insulted when you respond to their offer by going somewhere else.

Those are good stats, hopefully you get some good high UC offers. I can’t image paying full boat $60K for Santa Clara.

I am from Hawaii, so UC schools were out of the question (very few out of state merit scholarships).

So the common data set shows that about a quarter of income freshman are offered a merit scholarship, and the average amount is $14,000. Your stats are just above the 75th percentile (putting you near the tail end of that 25% mark), so you really couldn’t expect to be competitive for a huge scholarship.

You have great stats but they’re under no obligation to offer you large amounts of merit aid. With limited amounts of aid to give out and quite a few applicants their limited amount of merit-based aid likely is going to those perfect/near perfect GPA and test scores (or otherwise outstanding applicants.) it’s nothing personal just like if you reject their offer they wont take it personal.

Did Santa Clara indicate that you would be getting a full ride at anytime?

If you did’t qualify for need-based aid (Calgrant), nor State aid, then Santa Clara can’t offer much, and, as you found out, isn’t going to be affordable.
My dd, 4 years ago, had great stats, ec’s and letters of rec and was a recruited athlete. She received 1/2 tuition offer. It wasn’t affordable so we said no. It’s not going to hurt their feelings if you decline their offer. You just go and move on.
They don’t offer you money to insult you; they offer what they think your need is. So you either accept it, or you move on to the next college.

They don’t offer many full rides because they don’t have the money. Did you run the NPC’s before you applied? Hopefully you had safeties.

Yea, our S was offered a 1/2 tuition scholarship from SCU but was told that he’d likely be required to withdraw (losing his scholarship and place in the dorm) if he missed more than 2 weeks of school in a quarter, even if it was due to pre-existing medical issues which they were informed of. S declined to attend and went elsewhere. We felt it was very punitive and none of the other schools he was accepted at had similar policies.

For some reason I thought you were from Calif.

Anyways, those are good numbers. Hopefully you applied to several of the schools that are known to give significant aid (some guaranteed) for numbers like that.

SCU has much more money banked than schools that give much greater scholarships. (Their endowment is much greater than a lot of WCC and other private schools comparable in size. Twice that of LMU and USD and 4 times that of Chapman, about the same as Pepperdine who also give zippo pretty much.) It’s just that SCU has never given free merit money compared to other schools, they don’t have to. Supply/demand, plenty of people willing to pay for it. I assume they throw their money at community and charitable foundations associated with the Jesuits.

Thank you for your replies everyone. I found it particularly disappointing because a student at my school last year with similar stats received a full tuition scholarship. I still have other options though; I have received 2 full tuition scholarships at other schools.

Try not to make those sorts of comparisons. I know it’s tempting, but remember that you have no idea what that other student’s essay looked like, what their teacher and counselor letters of recommendation looked like, or how they responded to the writing supplement. It’s not all about “stats.” Furthermore, every year is different.

1 Like

There is no harm in letting them know that you would really like to attend but, need more money to swing it. Maybe they change their offer, maybe they don’t. Either way, what do you loose?

If it’s any consolation, I have similar stats to you and they gave me the least amount of money of any of the schools I have applied to (about 25). So I won’t be attending either.

Sounds like you should go with one of your other two generous offers.

Yup - go with the others. My S (higher stats) received about the same from SCU, and far more from just about everywhere else. It’s OK. Just as students are looking for ‘fit’, so are colleges. He wasn’t insulted at all - it’s just part of the process. We live fairly close, and maybe they wanted to branch out. Or had enough CA Catholic school kids. Or wanted more in XYZ major instead of ABC. Or knew that we’d still love the school and visit for other reasons, as we have a lot of ties there. It’s not personal. The NPC suggested he’d get a lot more, but he didn’t. Oh well. We move on.

Some schools give grants automatically to students who meet certain criteria. Two schools are offering my S money for NMF, in once case a lot of it. Another is offering $0 (and costs more than SCU). This is life, and there’s no rhyme or reason to the whole system. There’s no entitlement. It’s a wonderful school, but so are a lot of others.

Including, I expect, the two full tuition offers you have now. Congratulations - those are rare and great to get!