Merit Scholarships

[Anonymous]

The PP is correct about Chicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Rice, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Wash U, and Emory offering merit aid. In my experience (anecdotal and not statistical), the large awards at these schools go to students who were admitted just about everywhere they applied (including HYPS), but choose the lower (but still top-20) ranked school because of the generous merit aid offer. Just my 2 cents, but if your DC is not accepted to one of the most prestigious schools, he or she is unlikely to be offered significant merit aid by the schools listed above, because they use it to try to lure students who could have gone HYPS but choose not to because of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The PP is correct about Chicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Rice, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Wash U, and Emory offering merit aid. In my experience (anecdotal and not statistical), the large awards at these schools go to students who were admitted just about everywhere they applied (including HYPS), but choose the lower (but still top-20) ranked school because of the generous merit aid offer. Just my 2 cents, but if your DC is not accepted to one of the most prestigious schools, he or she is unlikely to be offered significant merit aid by the schools listed above, because they use it to try to lure students who could have gone HYPS but choose not to because of money.

This is entirely correct.

Also, note that most of the universities listed above offer merit aid to very few students. For example, as shown here:

https://finance.provost.duke.edu/sites/default/files/u24/CDS_2015-2016.pdf

on page 18, line H2A, you can see that at Duke, the number of freshmen who had no financial need but were awarded a non-need-based scholarship or grant (excluding those who received athletic awards) in the 2015-2016 school year was 20. That's 20 students out of 1741 freshmen, or less than 2 percent. Based on the number on the line below ($61,000), it is likely that these 20 students all got free rides to Duke.

By contrast, at Northwestern:

http://enrollment.northwestern.edu/pdf/common-data/2015-16.pdf

more students get merit aid--88 freshmen out of a class of 2,017, or 4.3%. But the average award was $3,189, so most of the merit awards are small.

It's possible, of course, that more students get merit awards at Chicago and Northwestern, but they are given to students who also receive need-based aid, so they aren't counted in these numbers (which include only students who had no financial need). Still, it is safe to assume that significant merit aid is relatively rare--if not nonexistent--at all top 20 universities and LACs.