DoctorMagic

Hello, please disregard this post because I just found that Caltech "redirected" its merit-based awards to its need-based program. That is so disappointing because Caltech was the only top 5 university that I thought offered merit scholarships....

TRT

Caltech offers a few (maybe 8) full-tuition scholarships to sophomore, junior, and senior undergrads. The people in admissions didn't tell me the specifics regarding how they are awarded, but said that the criteria for the grants are not entirely academic.

http://finance.caltech.edu/documents...2012_final.pdf

(see section H2A)

mazewanderer

As a normal rule, Caltech does not offer merit based scholarships. I saw section H2a and 1 freshman student got $5000 and about 8 other students get such scholarships.

Out of about 225 students in an incoming class and 900 under graduates, this is less than 1% and the dollar amounts average to about $4000 or so. I would suspect that these were some grants or endowments i.e. something special and unique. The very phrase "not entirely academic" suggest that there is some other aspect to it., Caltech used to have merit scholarships but gave that up a few years back and do not use merit scholarships to entice students to join. So if I were you, I would not bank receiving any non need based aid.

TRT

Maze

So you don't know any of the students that have received merit scholarships? The common data set indicates that they are rare, but worth $36K annually...

RacinReaver

There was a thread about the Axline scholarships a number of years back. It was discontinued because I think they felt it caused an undue amount of stress on both students competing for it as well as those receiving it. If you want more info hunt through a bit of backthreads on here. It was a pretty lengthy discussion.