Three years ago, I started a thread for parents who noted merit aid went up closer to May 1st and after an initial offer. But that thread auto-closed.
Anyone care to add their experience this year.
So far, I’ve read about Furman, RPI and Wooster.
@NemesisLead - maybe you can give the before and after on Furman…and anyone else that can add schools. I know Baylor was in the past thread
RPI added $4K per @beefeater . I’m not sure what the original offer was.
The list 3 years ago had these below - doesn’t mean they are the same today. But you never know - and it is more a buyer’s market I think than 3 years ago - meaning the school’s need the students more than vice versa. I’ll also note the article on Syracuse U last year which talked about many students getting huge late offers.
Thank you, tsbna44. Furman went from $42K to $48K per year, which was great. They are the only “merit school” on D26’s list that has increased their offer.
University of Tulsa originally gave D26 a $24,000/yr merit tuition scholarship. A couple of wk ago, they offered another $3000/yr off of tuition. We don’t qualify for need-based aid and D26 didn’t have a high enough SAT or ACT test score to qualify for applying for their competitive scholarship that pays for all of the ~$52k/yr tuition.
So with the extra $3k/yr off tuition, Tulsa’s tuition, room & board would be ~$42,266 for our family. Definitely not affordable. Subtract a $5500/yr student loan off of that, and that makes it $36,766/yr, not including travel expenses to go home for breaks.
D26 has 3.59 UW/4.44 GPA, attends rigorous public charter high school.
Meanwhile, University of Arizona (in state for us) gave D26 $6000 off of tuition, which means that tuition, room & board is $26,870. Add in the $5500/yr fed student loan and the total per year becomes $21,370.
So $21,370 compared to $36,766. $15,396 more per year to attend Univ of Tulsa. But if you factor in travel expenses (minimal for U of A since we can drive there in 1.5 hr vs plane ride to OK) of probably $2000-$3000/academic year, that makes the difference upwards of $18k/yr more.
Are any colleges offering more financial enticements at this late date? Someone suggested elsewhere that this was occurring, and it seems to me that unless it was related to a waitlist offer and a student turning around to decline the first school, or responses to a request for professional judgment, it is difficult to discern any other reason would exist the school would be throwing more enticements out in June. I would not imagine a school that was turned down by the student would suddenly be throwing more money at that student to try to get them to change their mind. Has anybody heard of such a thing at this late date?
So we know at least last year (or at least more than what we have seen reported on the forum here this year) Syracuse was offering late merit offers, and later confirmed it had not met its enrollment target (discussed in link). The news yesterday is that it will not meet its enrollment target again for this year. They blame, among other things, the number of high school graduates having peaked and the issues with international students - factors that could be expected to apply to other colleges as well of course, and possibly the motivation behind some of the merit offers mentioned above.
SU is already focused on 2027 fall enrollment and Haynie plans to use “entrepreneurial recruitment strategies suited to these conditions” to attract more students next year.
It will be interesting to see what these strategies are and whether they include higher merit. As balancing the books is the issue, they would presumably need to find the balance between enough merit to attract and not so much as to make it financially infeasible to have a particular student attending.
I forgot I posted this. Following on from the above post about Syracuse, maybe worth mentioning that UMN sent an email to us on 8 May saying “While the priority confirmation deadline was May 1, we continue to accept confirmations on a space-available basis. Encourage your student to reserve their spot as a Golden Gopher as soon as possible. ” So, possibly similar motivations.