Common statements that "transfer students do not get financial aid"

[ucbalumnus]

@austinmshauri

I think that outside of the CC world, people don’t differentiate between need based aid and merit aid. Financial aid includes both. When people speak of transfer aid, I think they do mean merit aid.

However, the financial aid FAQ (first link in reply #3) has that quote in the section specifically about need-based aid.

@austinmshauri

Are there a lot of colleges that offer great merit aid to transfers? I don’t mean the highly selective schools that meet need. I mean colleges that students have reasonable acceptance rates. Why would they be willing to pay for transfers? I thought the purpose of merit aid was to buy freshman stats to help their ratings.

Not all colleges have motivations limited to ranking climbing when offering merit scholarships. State schools may have other motivations, perhaps to offer incentives for students to choose the transfer pathway and do well there. However, it is true that there are fewer merit scholarships for transfers than frosh (this is not controversial).

Interestingly, most (but not all) UCs offer Regents’ scholarships to transfers, even though they are probably mostly competing against each other and CSUs for transfer matriculants (they may also compete somewhat against USC, which does offer transfer merit scholarships, but substantially less than those for frosh).