Which Schools Give the Best Merit Aid? Another Freakonomics Post

uskoolfish, thanks for sharing. The scholarship my D got upon acceptance to NYU/Tisch was called the Trustee Scholarship. At the time, I was told that merit and need were mixed. She also was selected as a Tisch Scholar (that no longer exists) but that did not come with money though it did come with free trips. The Trustee Scholarship, which was significant, was for all four years. But in senior year, upon getting our bill, they gave her a couple more smaller merit scholarships on top of that one, and we had no idea these even existed or could come at that point in her college career.

Anyway, back to the list that EmsDad shared and gathered, I agree with vvnstar’s post #17…it is a helpful place to start and then dig later for more specifics and personal accounts, etc. Thank you once again, EmsDad!

There is a website I found to be very helpful when researching costs, percentage of students offered aid, average amount of aid offered, etc. The site is playbilledu.com

Fantastic. I’ve already forwarded this to my students looking for BFA programs for 2016.

In our current year experience with 3 of the schools included on this list, D’s merit aid offer is significantly higher than what is reported.

I really appreciate all the work that went into the table above. Thank you. I do want to mention that, our D is about to graduate from Webster, and her merit aid is markedly higher than what is mentioned above. I think i remember correctly, that many of the schools she was accepted to, offered significant academic merit aid…….and my S who is in the current audition cycle is experiencing something similar. My own take on this, for what it’s worth is that many well regarded MT and Acting BFA programs are not housed in academic power houses (not all, just many)………and so if an MT/Acting student comes in with good/very good academic stats, then their chances of receiving merit aid is significant. Talent money is a whole other ball game! Webster gives the bulk of it’s talent funds to juniors and seniors…but some do get it earlier.

@mybroadwaybaby: Webster’s average Merit Aid numbers look low because they apparently offer lots of $1,000 to $3,000 scholarships, see http://www.webster.edu/financialaid/scholarships.html. My guess is that these likely lower their average scholarship numbers greatly.

They do offer much larger scholarships, but probably to a significantly lower percentage of students vs. the 19% listed in the table:

The notes accompanying the table site the example of Western Michigan as a school (like Webster) where significantly larger merit scholarships are available than the average amount shown.

My D has received significantly larger scholarships than the averages shown for several of the schools in the list, including Webster, but she has also received one or two that are significantly less than the amount shown. Many variables are involved. As noted in the OP, every school of interest should be investigated fully to get a complete picture of what merit/talent aid may be available for a particular student. The list in the OP is most useful as a comprehensive picture that helps separate the possible from the probable on a reasonable comparative basis.

What is the denoting of “most difficult” etc after some of the schools? Does that mean just dificult to get into academically or that its difficult to get accepted into the MT program itself? Like they take a crazy small number of kids?

@theaterwork: see Note 3 below the table in the OP. The MOST DIFFICULT and VERY DIFFICULT designations are academic acceptance ratings from College Data. They use the following criteria:

Most Difficult
More than 75% of freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school class and scored over 1310 on the SAT or over 29 on the ACT; about 30% or fewer of all applicants accepted.

Very Difficult
More than 50% of freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school class and scored over 1230 on the SAT or over 26 on the ACT; about 60% or fewer of all applicants accepted.

Moderately Difficult
More than 75% of freshmen were in the top 50% of their high school class and scored over 1010 on the SAT or over 18 on the ACT; about 85% or fewer of all applicants accepted.

Minimally Difficult
Most freshmen were not in the top 50% of their high school class and scored somewhat below 1010 on the SAT or below 19 on the ACT; up to 95% of all applicants accepted.

Noncompetitive
Virtually all applicants accepted regardless of high school rank or test scores.

I put them in the table because the more difficult the school is for academic admission, the higher the bar for merit aid (and vice versa).

This is consistent with what we found when researching schools, but it’s also worth mentioning that the most selective academic schools also tend to have the largest endowments, so when it comes to need-based aid this list might almost be reversed. For example, Northwestern is among the very few schools in the country that guarantees to meet 100% of demonstrated need for all admitted students. Also schools with large endowments often offer many additional perks to students once they are on campus.

Thanks for clarifying that for me. It just reiterates what I tell my D who’s a sophomore now. Even if by some minutely small chance you were ever accepted to those schools like Carnegie M and Nyu you couldn’t go anyway cause of the $. She’ll be fortunate if she gets into one of the small amount of schools we can afford …sigh …plus her academics would have to be stellar too. I would love to meet the few kids those schools take yo see their talent. They must be ready for Broadway upon hs graduation lol

Thanks for this great information. Here is why I am confused. When we went to many of these schools - NU, USC, Miami, UMich, etc. they touted merit aid for music students. It looks like that may not be true, especially for Northwestern. If you get into the music schools mentioned, do you just go into a pot for merit aid? If you have high scores and strong (not perfect, but close) GPA with AP and honors courses, does that matter? Any input would be great.

@beaglemom this thread is a couple years old.

@beaglemom - merit aid may very well be available from a specific department, such as Music, for specific students, well above the limited amounts normally quoted for highly competitive schools that typically do not dole out much merit aid, such as NU, USC, etc. Specific programs may have dollars to attract students with a desired “hook,” such as high talent in a sought-after area. For example, a star oboe player or bassoonist may well attract significant merit aid for schools that need them to round out their orchestra. Or maybe the Opera department is short on Heldentenors and they plan to perform selections from Wagner.

There are no blanket answers. Some schools give seperate music, theatre or arts scholarships ( departmental) that are merit based and are given out for talent, academics or a combination of both. This is in addition to scholarship/ financial aid money that might come from admissions. Sometimes this money is for those with or without need. Again, this is dependent on schools.

For example my D got a merit based scholarship based on academics from Muhlenberg. In addition she was awarded an art scholarship for a portfolio she sent in and a music scholarship after an audition. The last 2 scholarships were given out on a departmental level.

D also got a merit scholarship for MT from NYU. Talent based, non need based (Steinhardt.)

D also got a non need based music scholarship from GW. Based on an audition. No other $. It prob equaled what she would have gotten in a regular merit scholarship had she not auditioned. So it wasn’t stacked.

She also got a large merit based scholarship from American. And additional talent money from the music department.

I can tell you I got very good merit money from UArts…the kind of money that basically enabled me to go here. I have a little debt, but I’ve been able to decline about half of what FAFSA gave me in loans. It really takes the pressure off! And moving off campus here/not having a meal plan makes things so much easier. My parents give me food money but I think it still comes out to less than it was last year.

We had that experience, too, that expenses really declined when the S moved off-campus. I would guess it would be even more the case in schools that are not in major cities (or in cities where living costs are less expensive).

@MTVT2015 they must have REALLY been impressed with your audition OR you had top scholarly academics. Because couple years back, my D was accepted there BFA MT (and thrilled), 3.6 gpa, about 1200 sat and all the other stuff, but they only gave $10k. That made it impossible for us financially. So she ended up going to Ball State BFA MT, which with award made it similar to our state in state tuition.
Would love a response from you - because maybe over those couple years, UARTS started upping their awards because perhaps many were declining to attend. I ask, because (regrettably for me - as I didn’t “hope” for a second student pursuing MT - I have a senior who will be starting auditions for MT - and we do not have U Arts on the list - because we knew/know that it cannot be afforded, so why have her audition… thanks.

My D got accepted to U Arts this past spring. She ultimately chose another school.
They gave us $18000 in aid if I do remember .
Still not enough but more then $10.
She had average stats .

My D was accepted via video audition to U Arts for the Class of 2020 audition cycle. She had great stats, but only received a little over $20k in aid. It was a later acceptance and wasn’t enough $ to get her to change her mind from the school she had already chosen.