The IB coordinator at my school said that high acceptance, mid/low tier colleges will “throw money” at academically strong students. I was wondering if this was true, and if so, which schools I would be the most likely to get a lot of money from?
See this thread: Schools known for good merit aid
I’d recommend starting from the end so you see the most current posts first.
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If open to a large southern, sports fanatic, largest Greek community nationally school the university of Alabama is notoriously generous.
The university of Tulsa is also generous and sports the largest percentage (of those schools that track) National Merit Finalists in the county at about 25% of recent incoming classes.
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“Colleges that change lives” combine solid academics and solid scholarships.
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Son got offered an extra 15k per year from 2 different schools today. A third phoned son and both parents today. They were all around 50% acceptance rate schools.
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There was a pretty good overview in the NYTimes today of how “merit” money is distributed at many schools. Of course, there are also schools with transparent criteria for merit scholarships, but the purpose is the same (to entice students who otherwise wouldn’t venture to Alabama or Utah or…).
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I think the bottom line is you can very much use good qualifications to chase merit, but you have to carefully do your research, and not, say, make assumptions based on generic rankings or acceptance rates.
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We visited Case Western a few weeks. When the head of admissions said the all-in price was $90k, I thought, who is going to pay $90k to attend Case Western? (no offense to CWRU which is a great school). Then they rattled off all the different types of aid including generous “merit scholarships”. The $90k number was just an inflated MSRP to make families feel better that their kid got recognized and are therefore receiving this amazing package. It just felt so fake and phony.
When I was researching CWRU for my younger daughter, I was reading posts of kids deciding between CWRU and some other school. Almost everyone got something between $20-$35k in “merit aid”.
We have a friend who was so happy their kid got this “merit scholarship” at Baylor. Same story.
Do parents not recognize this “game”? Do these fine universities need to resort to gimmicky merit scholarships because $60k doesnt sound as good as $90k - $30k in “merit” money?
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I suspect more or less yes. Meaning while in theory they could probably cut their full pay rate and give out fewer and smaller merit awards with the same net effect, in practice I suspect they have evidence that would in fact compromise yield rates.
But I agree kids and their families should really just focus on the actual cost of attendance for each college, and not whatever math they used to get there.
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It’s really never about what you get. It’s always about what you can actually afford. So many people brag about what their kid’s got but still can’t afford the school. It’s definitely a game to a certain point.
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I think lots of people are paying $90K to attend Case. It’s a great school. However, the discount rate (higher ed’s term for what you describe) is steep at tons of private colleges, and is not unique to Case at all.
Some full-pay families are thrilled that their kid got into Case or Baylor or similar schools and are happy to use their money to send them there even with no merit aid.
The merit money helps draw in high performing students that might have more expensive offers elsewhere.
Yeah, it’s a game but if you kind of understand the rules you might be able to benefit from it. That’s how a lot of people here can afford college without qualifying for a ton of need-based aid. We qualify for need-based aid but my kid is attending an expensive private for cheap because of merit aid.
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Please name the school. We are going to wait until the 04/30 to make the deposit when our time come.
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Ours were Puget Sound and Chapman for last minute $$.
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I would suggest…not to do this. We did this when our second kid couldn’t make up her mind…until the 11th hour. Went to pay, and it turned out the school didn’t accept our credit card type. Called, and they said we could overnight mail the deposit…which we did. Then realized our debit card WAS the type they took. So did the deposit using that too. We knew the overage would be credited to her account.
We knew a family who waited until the last minute and their area had a huge internet outage. Lots of angst there too.
I do not recommend waiting until April 30…just in case there is some snafu.
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Some colleges can/will cherry pick students they “want”. Some enrollment management tools have reportedly been able to discern how much $ it will take to get a desired student to commit.
Merit money can be seen as “throwing money at a student” and as others have mentioned, there are some particularly large NM scholarships to … “entice” students with easy applications and auto admit with $$$$ for certain academic programs and/or test score metrics.
10% of students are full pay at Case Western, 3% of students are full pay at Baylor.
Data source: here
Some interesting data on this page. First tab shows First-year Student Tuition Discount and Average Net Tuition Revenue, Fall, 2021. Third tab has the % Full pay and % Pell grant students.
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I think they do - read about ‘Chivas Regal’ effect (for example in ‘The Price You Pay for College’, p51-52, by Ron Lieber). The common wisdom is that lowering your sticker price will give the impression that your school doesn’t provide quality education and in turn yield/enrollment will decline. Enrollment is crucial for colleges that are tuition dependent. Some schools tried a ‘tuition reset’ - lowering the sticker price (and lowering merit aid). It didn’t result in increased yield and enrollment. Colleges just do whatever they need to do to survive.
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This is all very interesting, thank you to everyone for all of your help! I clearly have a lot more research to do before making a college list, and I will definitely be using all of the information provided on here.
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Excellent article on tuition discounting:
Colleges Know How Much You’re Willing to Pay. Here’s How.
Schools turn to little-known consultants, owned by private equity firms, to find applicants and calculate scholarships. Here’s how that affects the price you pay.
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Ty, quite amazing to see role of private equity firms and algorithms to have discounts at private colleges.
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