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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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. [b]Need based aid is much more equitable than merit aid[/b].[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

Yes, that's the point, however the healthy percentage was in fact much lower pre-pandemic.  Regardless, no one is handing out merit coupons when there are wealthy kids lining up to pay full freight.[/quote]

I always think it is funny when a private school proudly says something like "50% of entering students receive financial aid".  That means the remaining 50% is paying full freight.
 [/quote]

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