<p>"Good grades and high test scores still matter — a lot — to many colleges as they award financial aid.
But with low-income students projected to make up an ever-larger share of the college-bound population in coming years, some schools are re-examining whether that aid, typically known as merit aid, is the most effective use of precious institutional dollars. </p>
<p>George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for example, said last week that it would cut the value of its average merit scholarships by about one-third and pare the number of recipients, pouring the savings, about $2.5 million, into need-based aid. Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., made a similar decision three years ago.</p>
<p>Now, Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., says it will phase out merit scholarships altogether. No current merit-aid recipients will lose their scholarships, but need-based aid alone will be awarded beginning with students entering in fall 2008."</p>
<p>*But for rankings-conscious schools in between, merit aid has served primarily as a tool to recruit top students and to improve their academic profiles. “They’re trying to buy students,” says Skidmore College economist Sandy Baum.</p>
<p>Re-evaluating aid </p>
<p>Studies show merit aid also tends to benefit disproportionately students who could afford to enroll without it. That’s where demographics enter the picture.
*</p>
<p>I don’t believe that is the case for schools that use merit to entice students from regions of the country who would not otherwise consider that school.</p>
<p>I can see why some NE (and Calif) schools don’t offer any or much merit…they already get enough local (& national) kids clamoring for seats. But, for schools in areas where students often aren’t looking, merit can inspire students to broaden their self-imposed geographical restrictions.</p>
<p>Furthermore…schools like to be able to say that they have students from all 50 states because it suggests a broader diversity on campus…so, offering merit can help get those distant state students on campus. It’s rather easy to get OOS students from bordering states, the trick is to get them from 750+ miles away.</p>
<p>ha ha…just saw the posts about the article being from 2007. Since many schools are still offering merit, that article proved not to be forecasting much. And, many of those schools who’ve removed/reduced merit have mostly done so because of endowment issues/bad economy, and not because of the desire to move more towards need-based aid.</p>
<p>I agree about getting kids from about 750 miles away etc & considering a school they might not have even looked at! What I don’t like about it is a student must stay healthy for all 4 years to ensure maintaining that GPA to keep that merit aid. </p>
<p>We had a situation with one child (Freshman & Senior Year) who needed extra time to finish everything due to health issues. In those kind of situations, we are very thankful that all our FA (Past & Present) is need-based. I think it would keep me awake at night, worrying about illness, a tough professor, a difficult course etc if a child had merit aid.</p>
<p>It obviously hasn’t happened and I don’t think it will be happening. Why? Because need based aid is based on EFC or FAFSA which relies heavily on current income. What is the problem with that? It overstates how much people can afford. Just an example of our family- we are military, our wages are highly progressive. A good portion of the total income is based on where we live. So if we live in a low cost housing area, we look poorer and if we live in a high cost, like right now, we look richer. With out current income and with their projections that you have been saving since birth, they give us an EFC that is totally not possible for us. We have only had the income anywhere near this level the last few years and when these children were born, we were way below median income so there was no savings for college- that was used for things like food and clothing. Without merit aid or low COA, we couldn’t afford college. I am sure many, many others are in the same boat. Colleges also use merit aid to discount the price to a more affordable range. Otherwise, why would some colleges give almost everybody some merit or need based aid?</p>
<p>If schools want to eliminate Merit Aid of course they can do so. I would hope if these schools give out athletic scholarships they’d eliminate them as well.</p>
<p>This is a pretty ridiculous system. MM brings up a great point-FAFSA is very biased against people who live in high cost of living areas-where incomes are higher because it costs more to live there. </p>
<p>The preliminary FAFSA number we have is ridiculous and so our S will need to factor in cost when he picks his college. What a shame that some great schools didn’t even get looked at by us since they offer no MA. They can do what they want but it does seem odd that schools would give money to him and preference if he could play a sport at the level they would like but won’t give him a cent for academics. Their loss.</p>
<p>We wouldn’t want to send a message to hard working students that they might get rewarded for their efforts in the classsroom, would we?</p>
<p>Unless all colleges eliminate merit aid, which won’t happen, an individual college that does so may find that top students who aren’t eligible for need-based aid but are price sensitive will go elsewhere. This would reduce the college’s yield and average statistics, possibly making it less attractive to non-price sensitive, full pay students the following year.</p>
A lot of us fall into this boat for one reason or another, but it seems to me that the schools which don’t give out merit aid are, for the most part, ones where the accepted class is made up of uber-students all of whom would have to be given merit aid based upon one merit or another. If they have to give it to everyone, then it’s really just charging less tuition. Or something.</p>