Why don't most of the top LACs offer substantial merit scholarships?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, WashU, Emory, and UVA are larger than the SLACs, and the amount of merit they offer as a % of their enrollment is miniscule.

Southren schools try to overcome location disadvantage by offering merit to some students they really don't want to lose to Ivies. Schools mentioned above want top middle class applicants as well, doesn't want to only have rich and poor students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Pomona, Wellesley, Middlebury, Colby, Haverford, Vassar, Carleton, Barnard, Hamilton, and Colgate are just some of the best known examples of LACs that have essentially no merit aid, outside of maybe 1 or 2 $2000 national merit scholarship awards a year from alumni restricted funds.

These schools have some of the highest endowments per students of any institution, making it easily attainable to finance a merit scholarship opportunity covering minimum 20K a year and up to a full ride. The first five schools above all have over 1 million dollar per student. Given that they tend to lose cross admits to top universities, why not offer merit aid to attract the best and brightest to their schools? Several universities already do this to lure in HYPMS level candidates: Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, WashU, Emory, and UVA.

They don't give merit aid because it would disproportionally go to Asian Americans, and that's the group they are fighting hard to contain anyway.

Another way of practicing discrimination?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Folks, the reason most of the schools listed (as well as Ivies, UVA, Georgetown, ND) don’t offer merit aid is that they are need-blind/meet-full-need. That means that they award aid exclusively based on need; it’s a policy designed to ensure that ability to pay does not affect admissions decisions and that students who are admitted are given the financial resources to attend.

How this is managed, especially the meet-full-need part, varies significantly based on how wealthy the school is. Most (all?) of the Ivies have eliminated loans from financial aid packages. So has Amherst, I believe. Others with lower endowments (e.g. Georgetown) have not.

But the point is that most of the top-rated national universities and SLACs have adopted this policy, which explains why they don’t offer merit scholarships. It’s also true, of course, that these are schools that mostly don’t need to offer money to compete for students; instead, they’ve decided to admit who they consider to be the best students for their institution regardless of financial need and then make sure that they are offered the resources necessary to attend.

Exactly. The only people who pay more in the absence of “merit” aid are UMC and wealthy kids who can use their test scores and expensive extracurriculars to game the system. Need based aid is much more equitable than merit aid.

Some of these schoold have billions in endowment and can easily lower cost of attendance to make colleges affordable.
It is, offering only need based aid is a goal, and being able offer it to a large percent of the incoming class requires a strong endowment. DC was admitted into a class that was 26% full-pay pre-pandemic at a small school that is not need blind. This year's incoming class is 76% full-pay. That's how they'll recoup pandemic loses. This hasn't hurt their yield or their test scores. The idea that schools need to shop for good test scores from MC families that don't like to pay is naïve. Test scores corelate to wealth, and many schools can fill their class with nothing but UMC/good stat kids.

They use full-pay students to subsidize the need-based and merit aid programs. If they don't have a "healthy" percentage of full pay, that system becomes unsupportable.

[Anonymous]

Some of these schoold have billions in endowment and can easily lower cost of attendance to make colleges affordable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of these schoold have billions in endowment and can easily lower cost of attendance to make colleges affordable.

....aaaaaaand that's exactly what they do!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of these schoold have billions in endowment and can easily lower cost of attendance to make colleges affordable.

Isn't that financial aid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of these schoold have billions in endowment and can easily lower cost of attendance to make colleges affordable.

Isn't that financial aid?

No. Financial aid is targeted at individuals based on their need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps they are attracting the best and brightest through meeting their demonstrated financial need, with need-based scholarships?

You should put your kid through school. If you can afford it, why should someone else be paying your kid's way? The entitlement of those seeking out the best merit deals is so high on this board.

NP. That's BS. These places charge what they can get. Not a matter of someone else picking up the tab. All these schools could charge $50 rather than $80 and they'll be just fine. Ego thing.

Found the UMC merit chaser.

You say it as if it were something bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of these schoold have billions in endowment and can easily lower cost of attendance to make colleges affordable.

Isn't that financial aid?

No. Financial aid is targeted at individuals based on their need.

Need and merit based aid are both forms of financial aid for whatever that's worth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“You should put your kid through school. If you can afford it, why should someone else be paying your kid's way? The entitlement of those seeking out the best merit deals is so high on this board.‘

+2

Sounds like people making more than 250k a year talking. Some of us earn less and are coming in at 75k EFCs. Don’t side with $1b endowed institutions over working families.

Yep. And it's the colleges that have come up with this merit aid game instead of just straight-forward pricing. It's not entitlement to try to figure out the best cost for college in an environment where most colleges won't just tell you what it costs. While the ones that do tell you expect most to pay $70k+

Usually the colleges EFC is more generous than the FAFSA EFC unless you have a lot of assets tucked away in places that the FAFSA doesn't look (Back door Roth IRAs, lots of home equity).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Pomona, Wellesley, Middlebury, Colby, Haverford, Vassar, Carleton, Barnard, Hamilton, and Colgate are just some of the best known examples of LACs that have essentially no merit aid, outside of maybe 1 or 2 $2000 national merit scholarship awards a year from alumni restricted funds.

These schools have some of the highest endowments per students of any institution, making it easily attainable to finance a merit scholarship opportunity covering minimum 20K a year and up to a full ride. The first five schools above all have over 1 million dollar per student. Given that they tend to lose cross admits to top universities, why not offer merit aid to attract the best and brightest to their schools? Several universities already do this to lure in HYPMS level candidates: Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, WashU, Emory, and UVA.

They don't give merit aid because it would disproportionally go to Asian Americans, and that's the group they are fighting hard to contain anyway.

Another way of practicing discrimination?

As has been mentioned above, SLACs have been for a decade trying to actively recruit MORE Asian Americans as they have tend NOT to apply to SLACS over universities that are larger and have more international name recognition. Whereas top 50 universities have far more Asian-American applicants than would be expected by demographics, Top 50 SLACs have historically had less. The recruitment efforts are starting to pan out where the top SLACs are getting more Asian-American applicants but this *theory* about merit aid being anti-Asian discrimination makes no sense. The middle ranked SLACs that do offer merit aid would LOVE to have more Asian-American applicants because they are often under-represented in their applicant pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“You should put your kid through school. If you can afford it, why should someone else be paying your kid's way? The entitlement of those seeking out the best merit deals is so high on this board.‘

+2

Sounds like people making more than 250k a year talking. Some of us earn less and are coming in at 75k EFCs. Don’t side with $1b endowed institutions over working families.

Yep. And it's the colleges that have come up with this merit aid game instead of just straight-forward pricing. It's not entitlement to try to figure out the best cost for college in an environment where most colleges won't just tell you what it costs. While the ones that do tell you expect most to pay $70k+

Usually the colleges EFC is more generous than the FAFSA EFC unless you have a lot of assets tucked away in places that the FAFSA doesn't look (Back door Roth IRAs, lots of home equity).

Do you have a cite for this. This was not our experience at all. The FAFSA EFC goes to the college and that's the document they use (unless they use the CSS) to figure out a financial aid package. We got zero for both kids so only the $5500 unsubsidized federal loan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“You should put your kid through school. If you can afford it, why should someone else be paying your kid's way? The entitlement of those seeking out the best merit deals is so high on this board.‘

+2

Sounds like people making more than 250k a year talking. Some of us earn less and are coming in at 75k EFCs. Don’t side with $1b endowed institutions over working families.

Yep. And it's the colleges that have come up with this merit aid game instead of just straight-forward pricing. It's not entitlement to try to figure out the best cost for college in an environment where most colleges won't just tell you what it costs. While the ones that do tell you expect most to pay $70k+

Usually the colleges EFC is more generous than the FAFSA EFC unless you have a lot of assets tucked away in places that the FAFSA doesn't look (Back door Roth IRAs, lots of home equity).

Do you have a cite for this. This was not our experience at all. The FAFSA EFC goes to the college and that's the document they use (unless they use the CSS) to figure out a financial aid package. We got zero for both kids so only the $5500 unsubsidized federal loan

I was talking about SLACS--all the ones DC applied to used CSS or other institutional profile along with FAFSA. If you look at their net price calculators, they ask for information that figures most into their calculation. We found a) many SLACs NPCs gave us a lower EFC and some were lower by a lot because their institutional profile/CSS configuration used COLA to adjust EFC, b) when it came time for financial aid they beat their EFC estimate. So I would encourage people to carefully enter data in different schools NPCs and see. The NPC calculation of your EFC will be accurate (or even run a little high) because it needs to give accurate FA info. for ED applicants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Pomona, Wellesley, Middlebury, Colby, Haverford, Vassar, Carleton, Barnard, Hamilton, and Colgate are just some of the best known examples of LACs that have essentially no merit aid, outside of maybe 1 or 2 $2000 national merit scholarship awards a year from alumni restricted funds.

These schools have some of the highest endowments per students of any institution, making it easily attainable to finance a merit scholarship opportunity covering minimum 20K a year and up to a full ride. The first five schools above all have over 1 million dollar per student. Given that they tend to lose cross admits to top universities, why not offer merit aid to attract the best and brightest to their schools? Several universities already do this to lure in HYPMS level candidates: Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, WashU, Emory, and UVA.

They don't give merit aid because it would disproportionally go to Asian Americans, and that's the group they are fighting hard to contain anyway.

Another way of practicing discrimination?

As has been mentioned above, SLACs have been for a decade trying to actively recruit MORE Asian Americans as they have tend NOT to apply to SLACS over universities that are larger and have more international name recognition. Whereas top 50 universities have far more Asian-American applicants than would be expected by demographics, Top 50 SLACs have historically had less. The recruitment efforts are starting to pan out where the top SLACs are getting more Asian-American applicants but this *theory* about merit aid being anti-Asian discrimination makes no sense. The middle ranked SLACs that do offer merit aid would LOVE to have more Asian-American applicants because they are often under-represented in their applicant pool.

PP is absolutely spot-on re: Asian Americans and SLAC representation. -- parent of current (white) student at a SLAC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, WashU, Emory, and UVA are larger than the SLACs, and the amount of merit they offer as a % of their enrollment is miniscule.

I didn't know ND or Vanderbilt offered merit aid. OP, it would be nice if they offered substantial merit scholarships, but it is what it is, at the moment.