It's too late for this year's seniors but there are some large, national application required merit based scholarships like Coca Cola Scholars, Amazon Engineering and Regeneron Science Talent.

The handful of merit scholarships available at Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Chicago, Notre Dame, WashU, and Northwestern are basically lotteries for every admitted student. The Ivy league schools don't offer merit scholarships. Nor do Stanford and MIT.

"Merit" scholarships - these days - are just discounts given to selected students to boost the school's statistics and thereby either boost or protect a school's rank. This means the better ranked schools won't need to offer them.

The Jefferson Scholars program (which is independent of UVa) serves much the same purpose -- attract well qualified students to attend UVa who otherwise likely would go to a higher ranked university.

DC turned down full cost of attendance at a T25 plus summer funds to go to the ivy. Best decision ever. The peer group and academic focus of the school is much better. The faculty connections and research options on campus are much better than the merit school.

Anonymous wrote:Merit scholarships have died out and older parents are slow to get it.

They haven’t died out, there’s just little or no incentive for top schools to implement merit scholarships to buy students with top profiles. That’s what a merit scholarships is. Alabama has to lure NMSF to Tuscaloosa with extra money. Princeton does not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you read the description of the various Duke merit scholarships? In most cases, they are not based solely on academic merit but rather are looking at civic engagement and leadership potential, etc.

A.B. Duke is academic. Not sure what the profiles of those admitted is.

Also I wonder how yield works with these small cohort scholarships. If you can only afford to give, say, 10, then how many do you offer considering how variable yield can be?

Yes, but Robertson, BN Duke and others are less so strictly academic. I work at Duke and have known a fair number of AB Dukes over the year. I would describe them as quirky.

Interesting. Any insight into this year’s ED cohort. Demographics similar to last year or different? Duke has been slow to release stats compared to previous years. Especially curious about the percentage of ED public vs. private school kids compared to previous years at all T20 schools, including Duke.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you read the description of the various Duke merit scholarships? In most cases, they are not based solely on academic merit but rather are looking at civic engagement and leadership potential, etc.

A.B. Duke is academic. Not sure what the profiles of those admitted is.

Also I wonder how yield works with these small cohort scholarships. If you can only afford to give, say, 10, then how many do you offer considering how variable yield can be?

Yes, but Robertson, BN Duke and others are less so strictly academic. I work at Duke and have known a fair number of AB Dukes over the year. I would describe them as quirky.

My kid was offered the Trustee (IIRC) at Rice and a full ride at a state school. NMSF/1600/4.0/lots of other awards….turned down the merit to be full pay at HYPSM. But there’s so much more to admissions and merit scholarships that just stats —- what the kid will contribute to the school community is so important. My kid had led some community service that received media attention. Pretty sure the stats were not really a factor in admissions!

Anonymous wrote:Merit scholarships have died out and older parents are slow to get it.

Can you explain what you mean? From what I see, many lower tier privates are offering merit in an effort to bring the pricetag down to the $60k range, while places like Duke, Hopkins, Rice, Wash U and Notre Dame offer merit to a.select few as a means of attracting tippy top students.

Merit scholarships have died out and older parents are slow to get it.

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Anonymous wrote:Seeing the profiles of the scarce merit scholarship recipients at Duke, Hopkins, Washu etc and is anyone else underwhelmed?

They are surprisingly average and do not stand out academically. No presidential, national merit scholars even let alone top awards like IMO or IPO gold / ISEF winners.

My kid got one of these - we don't do presidential, was a national merit scholar but that wasn't listed in any bio (there are too many) - nor was his 1600 sat, he's humanities so none of this other stuff either.

Where do you find bios?

Anonymous wrote:Have you read the description of the various Duke merit scholarships? In most cases, they are not based solely on academic merit but rather are looking at civic engagement and leadership potential, etc.

A.B. Duke is academic. Not sure what the profiles of those admitted is.

Also I wonder how yield works with these small cohort scholarships. If you can only afford to give, say, 10, then how many do you offer considering how variable yield can be?

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of these scholarships are need-aware. Most recipients probably come from high schools where no one has ever heard of that alphabet soup of acronyms OP cares so much about.

My kid has a merit scholarship at Notre Dame. We'd be full pay, as would (I think) many of the others who are in the scholarship group.

Are they going?

We'll see! It's very tempting. On top of the scholarship, they have an honors program and tons of summer money. We hear they have great grad school exmissions (which is important to DC, probable more important than the tight alumni network). So even if kid gets into a T5 (hasn't yet), we'd have to think.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of these scholarships are need-aware. Most recipients probably come from high schools where no one has ever heard of that alphabet soup of acronyms OP cares so much about.

My kid has a merit scholarship at Notre Dame. We'd be full pay, as would (I think) many of the others who are in the scholarship group.

Are they going?

Anonymous wrote:Most of these scholarships are need-aware. Most recipients probably come from high schools where no one has ever heard of that alphabet soup of acronyms OP cares so much about.

My kid has a merit scholarship at Notre Dame. We'd be full pay, as would (I think) many of the others who are in the scholarship group.