Wondering how generous Chicago is with these awards. In an incoming class of 1,500 how many will have these awards?
15-20% I think. They give a chunk of them out with the admissions letter and then reserve the rest of them to give out if people email/call saying they need more money b/c they’re comparing Chicago to another school. “Sorry, we can’t give you more financial aid…but you’re so great, you just earned a merit award!” is a pretty effective persuader, apparently.
Does anybody know what the range is for merit? I read somewhere that the max was 15K but I can’t remember the source.
A few years back it was 5K, 10K, 15K.
This year I have seen a couple of people posting 25K.
My kid received $0. But she was at the bottom of the admitted pool…smart enough to get in but not smarter than her classmates.
And don’t forget NMF award of “minimum 4K.” IIRC, there are over a couple of hundred NMSF kids each year so that’s over 10% of the class right there. Not a large amount in terms of overall cost but not insignificant. Don’t know if it stacks with other merit awards though as we were not offered any other :(.
NMF doesn’t stack with most merit awards . So there could be significant overlap between the ~10% and other merit scholarships. This could be more than you’d expect by pure chance, because giving a 10K/year award is “cheaper” when UChicago is on the hook for 4000/year already.
@NotVerySmart Your CC name is so not you!! Very astute observation. Makes perfect sense
I have no idea what percentage of the class receives merit scholarships. I can tell you this though. I was admitted EA and enrolled around Christmas and didn’t receive anything (in either merit (but I wasn’t expecting any at all) or financial). I am right around the 50th percentile for admitted students in terms of SAT score or maybe a little lower and probably bottom third for GPA.
@HydeSnark I have a separate related question. Would you have any idea about the success rate for appealing for better financial aid after already having enrolled? I got literally $0, but I enrolled anyways. Do I have any leverage at all? Is it worth trying, and if so, what do you think is a good starting asking point for someone who received no aid?
@jarrett211 seeing as you committed, probably not unless something drastically changed in your financial situation since then. Always worth a shot, though.
@mamaedefamilia I think that the max for University Scholars is $30K of merit (that’s what I got)
There is someone who posted that they got a $35,000 merit award. Pretty lucky kid.
@apricotgirl Did you qualify for any need based aid or submit FA forms? Curious to find out if the amount of merit aid is somehow based on the efc or totally divorced from it. I know UChicago is a need blind school and there is the need based aid part, but wondering if the size of the merit award is somehow connected to family efc as well.
For me I think merit was connected to need. I called them and told them I can’t afford it and my situation, which basically just meant I couldn’t afford to pay a lot but my EFC would say I’m full pay, and they gave me a very generous scholarship. My regional counselor told me that it was a good thing that I got rejected in the initial review for financial aid.
So, @VeryLuckyParent you theorize that UChicago basically uses ‘merit’ aid to get strong candidates down close to their EFC?
@2muchquan Don’t know what to theorize, still trying to figure out how they decide how much to award in merit aid and to whom.
@VeryLuckyParent No, it was all merit-- I qualified for NO financial aid.
One kid got $35,000 a year as a University Scholar and he reported the income was >$200,000.
Another kid got a University Scholar and Provost Scholar and the family income is > $270,000.
Incidentally, both of these kids turned down UChicago for an Ivy.
You can’t extrapolate from these two obviously but I wonder if UChicago offers merit to really high stats students that they believe will be applying to Ivies. And using the merit to attract them in.
Were these kids URM? That would make more sense, since UChicago doesn’t have to go ** Stat Shopping** like other schools. They already get high stat kids without offering merit aid. They would however have to give very strong merit aid to high stats upper class URM students, because these kids are the highest status kids in college admissions today. They may not qualify for need based aid, but every college will chase them down because the universities can achieve their diversity goals as well as enhance their metrics. It is a Win-Win for the schools and that really heats up the competition to get these kids
My son had a few friends in his class who were like this. Oh Boy! they lived in another world altogether 
Ok, let’s see. The first kid- $35,000 merit EA (posted here on CC) is URM male. The second kid- Univ Sch and Provost is Anglo female. Personally know the second one.
What do you mean that the high stats upper class URM kids are highly sought after? I guess I always thought it was the low SES high stats URM kid who the schools were chasing after. Interesting take. Hadn’t heard of this before.