<p>Gladmom: I am sadly aware of the present caps the Ivies are using. I find the, upper income limits for families of students receiving FA at Harvard [at] $180K, Yale-$200K, Princeton-$200K already to be abhorrently high, given the many other uses such money could be going to (university driven cancer research, more debt write down for graduates in fields like public health, so on). But when I refer to the route they are going, there is now a lot of discussion afoot about deeply cutting the cost of attendance for every student by engaging in tactics like eliminating UG tuition or offering free housing across the board (as their endowments begin to dwarf many developing countries GDP). While no doubt the leader in this approach would likely pull down many more cross admits, this would also be cash indiscriminately placed into the pockets of parents and students that do not need it (the aforementioned doctor / lawyer example). It is fine for Oxbridge to more or less give away their educational offerings to high net worth students, since their parents have paid bundles into the UK tax system. But John Q Consultant whose kid gets into Yale is unlikely to have sent along his own students tuition many times over in donations before little Johnny ever gets to New Haven. In this vein, I am glad to see Chicago has been able to limit its merit funds to, 20 full tuition rides and about 100, $10k/yr. rides, since merit aid again correlates highly with family income. </p>
<p>CountingDown: Merit aid constitutes and earmark if the school does not elect to do it generally. Some donors only care broadly that the students receiving funds are chosen on strictly on academic merit or promise rather than with a collective consideration to their socio-economic or prior educational circumstances. I would presume this covers most of the awards going out, but bear in mind that this approach in contrary to the general holistic tenor of the admissions office. However, I personally had a good friend whose was informed that his merit funds were largely in light of winning a major science prize in high school, and he was encouraged to write a letter of thanks to a donor who has been a long term patron of the sciences at Chicago.</p>