<p>I know U of C gives out 130 scholarships each year, but I want to know what kind of people receive them. I'm sure a lot of the decision-making relies on the essays, but if there are people you could tell me about who have earned these scholarships partly due to any "outstanding" achievements, I'd really appreciate it. My dad has told me basically that we have too much money to get significant financial aid but not enough to afford any private institution out of state, so I'm going to have to earn my way through college on merit money, so I would just like some examples of merit award winners to gauge myself against to see if I even have a chance at getting money here. </p>
<p>Let me know if you want to hear anything more about me in regards to my interests or accomplishments or anything that might help you decide what you want to tell me about this.</p>
<p>From what I saw during my D’s four years, the process is rather random. The winners she knew were good, but undistinguished students. </p>
<p>Put it another way:</p>
<ul>
<li> don’t count on one. Don’t even hope for one.</li>
<li> there is nothing you can do at this point to enhance your chances.</li>
<li> no one knows how the U decides to award these.</li>
</ul>
<p>^ Well, that’s not entirely true. I think we know basically what the process is – admissions send files to a faculty committee, the committee makes the awards. The basic criterion seems to be “people we would like to teach”; obviously, the essays figure strongly in that, which makes it hard to predict outcomes, since the objective factors are secondary.</p>
<p>From the recipients of whom I am aware, the range is even wider than newmassdad suggests. Some were superstudents weighing offers from HYPS and Chicago, but far from all such students were offered scholarships. Some were people whose “stats” made them look marginal, but whose writing ability and thoughtfulness were off the charts.</p>
<p>“The basic criterion seems to be “people we would like to teach”; obviously, the essays figure strongly in that, which makes it hard to predict outcomes, since the objective factors are secondary.”</p>
<p>JHS, maybe you know that the essays figure into the decision process. But I have never seen anything that says so. I certainly don’t know what “like to teach” means, either!</p>
<p>I personally have no knowledge of UofC’s intent with merit aid, but have seen nothing in their practices that would contradict Fallow’s points, except that UofC is no doubt not as revenue hungry.</p>
<p>Newmassdad is right to raise the question, but there are some significant differences between what the University of Chicago does and the pattern Fallows describes. (For those of you who don’t automatically know what “the Fallows article” stands for in college admissions, it’s a description of how colleges use merit scholarships as a system of price discrimination to maximize tuition revenue from the non-needy.) Chicago offers a defined number of merit scholarships to about 4% of admittees – far fewer than the aggressive merit purveyors – and does not re-allocate scholarships turned down by students who enroll elsewhere. They come in only two sizes, $10,000 and full tuition, while most universities give out a much wider range of amounts. They are determined separately from the financial aid office. They are, as we have noted, pretty unpredictable, which would not be very efficient if Chicago were revenue maximizing.</p>
<p>The one argument the other way, however, is that I think the way Chicago financial aid is structured, for financial aid recipients a merit scholarship does not reduce parental contribution. (It reduces the student’s contribution, then university loans, then university grants.) The result is that the $10,000 merit scholarships (and maybe even the full-tuition scholarships) are much less valuable to students who already receive significant financial aid than to those who do not receive need-based aid or only relatively small need-based aid. Thus, they are more likely to affect enrollment in the higher-income group – like the merit scholarships Fallows describes. (I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.)</p>
<p>Also, admissions staff have a role in selecting candidates for merit scholarships and in deciding who gets them, and who knows how they exercise that role?</p>