I know someone that is applying to Caltech because he thinks he can earn some merit based scholarship. But hes only applying so that he can use this to bargain with other really good schools for merit based aid. Can this work? The really good schools are schools that arent supposed to give out merit based aid (e.g. stanford, harvard). But Ive heard that these schools do shel out a small amount of merit based scholarship money for their top applicants. Is this scheme even feasible?
<p>With that kind of pretentious attitude, I doubt that he will get in anywhere.</p>
<p>Unless the person you know is an amazing genius who has developed the cure for cancer, no it probably won’t work. The top schools might (I would if I were in their case) get annoyed at this type of bargaining. Besides, keep in mind that there are plenty of well-qualified applicants to these schools that Harvard or Stanford can choose from. If this person is not truly one of the top students in the nation, it will be easy for any of the top schools to just let him go.</p>
<p>It’s probably safer to go for financial aid than to risk offending one of the top schools by trying to sucker merit scholarships out of them when they don’t offer them.</p>