Hi All!
This may seem like a dumb question because everyone seems to know, but I"m wondering how to research a school to see whether or not it offers merit aid? For reference, these are the schools on my son’s list (prioritizing schools with excellent research opportunities in neuroscience). Penn State, Pitt, Drexel, Haverford, WashU, William and Mary, Macalester, Vassar, University of Rochester, Wesleyan, Case Western
Do a Google search. I typed…”does Vassar give merit aid”
And here is the answer:
Funds come from the College, the federal government, your home state, and outside sources. At Vassar, scholarships are awarded exclusively on the basis of financial need, not academic merit.
You can start just by googling “[school name] merit scholarships”.
You can also look at Section H of their CDS. I like to do both if I am serious about a college because you can’t always tell from their website how many people actually get substantial merit.
Beyond the websites, use section H of the CDS to calculate the proportion of students that receive need based and/or merit aid.
Here is a resource that contains info from all CDSs, but the data are for class of 2026, so it is dated.
And Wesleyan:
Wesleyan does not offer merit-based financial aid (however, you can apply scholarships you have received from other sources to reduce your work-study package). Wesleyan’s need-based aid can include part-time employment (work-study), and grants.
Haverford:
What type of aid does Haverford offer? All of Haverford’s financial aid is need-based; we do not offer aid based on merit , such as academic or athletic performance.
Yes, I find a quick googling is the quickest path to figuring out if they have merit at all.
If they do, you can see what programs they actually have listed on their website. You might not qualify for some, you might automatically receive others, it might not be clear if you would get still others, and so on.
Then Section H of the CDS will give you an idea of total merit funding, percentages receiving merit, and so on.
Haverford, Wesleyan, and vassar do not offer merit aid. It looks like the others do.
You can read the websites to find out the criteria used, or what (if anything) needs to be considered for merit awards. Usually, these are competitive awards.
Once you Google the school and determine whether it gives merit…you need to decide how competitive that merit award would be for your particular student. You also have to decide how much merit you need.
For example, a strong student may get a large award at a less competitive school, and little or no merit at a more competitive school.
I see that the University of Rochester is on your list (great school). Would a $15,000 merit award work? Do you need more? Higher awards are very competitive.
And remember to look at the actual net cost…not just the merit award amount.
I note once I reached the limits of what I could learn from their websites and the CDS, my next best source often seemed to be . . . forums like this one. Like you can go to the threads where people talk about merit offers and see who was getting what with what sorts of credentials.
Yes, and part of that is making sure you understand their “stacking” policy with merit.
That’s so important, unfortunately most NPCs don’t include merit aid.
So, using the merit aid average in the CDS is often the best one can do before applying unless it’s a school with grid type merit aid.
One can also take a look at each school in College Navigator which shows average cost by income range, but those data only include students who received any federal financial aid (including student loans.)
Penn state is not known to be generous, I’ve heard merit at pitt is decreasing (they were one of the least generous schools my daughter applied to).
There’s a list of schools that have no merit aid. On your list here, it will be Haverford, Vassar, Wesleyan.
Others will offer aid - but not necessarily to you. And some (W&M) are harder to get than others.
Good luck.
Are you from Pennsylvania? If so, are Pitt and Penn State affordable without merit (not necessary to answer here)?
This is the easiest and fastest way to find average merit aid info. The data is pulled from common data sets and updated every fall with the previous spring info.
For need-based aid you need to do the calculators at the school. If you do 5 or 6 and they all give around the same number then you can feel pretty comfortable with that range at most (though not all) schools.
Pitt merit also seems to be major-dependent. Like don’t expect any if you’re applying for CS, but they’ve been generous with engineering applicants.
Reading the recent Pitt threads here is a great way to get a sense of that, as are the threads for each individual institution.
We were also dependent on merit aid in our kid’s search, and just had to research school-by-school to eliminate schools that didn’t offer much/any.
Road2College has crowd-sourced, actual merit awards from many colleges. You have to enter your I fo for a college to see other people’s awards. This can be blank / pending.
I’ll also add this: I wouldn’t worry too much about prioritizing neuroscience research opportunities. That’s hard for a non-academic to assess accurately, and for someone chasing merit, it wouldn’t rank high on my list of priorities.
Every college you’d be looking at has bio professors that take on undergrad research students, which is what your kid needs at the minimum. If your kid wants to do research, he’ll just need to be proactive and have a bit of hustle to land a position at any school.
He doesn’t necessarily need a school with a neuro PhD program, even though he’d get good exposure to that world there. He’s likely to be mentored by a grad student or postdoc in that setting. In contrast, smaller schools (even those without formal neuroscience majors) can offer intensive mentoring directly from professors. There are tradeoffs for each setting.
For anyone interested in a science PhD program, I recommend aggressively applying for an REU (and he should find a prof to mentor him through doing an application as soon as he arrives at school as a freshman).
I’m a neuro prof who works at an R1, but I’ve also taught at a LAC. Feel free to DM me if I can be helpful.