I didn’t really mean to turn this into a Northeastern vs “Other Top School” thread- there are lots of great reasons why kids chose NEU over other top schools. I’d hope that cultural fit and academic alignment (including coop) are equally/more important than merit aid, assuming adequate need based aid.
Back to the original discussion, I think it would be great if Northeastern put up a merit aid “predictor” like UofR and some other schools have. But somehow I doubt there is a hard-and-fast formula that they would be willing to publish. In my experience, there are some decisions (e.g. Honors) that don’t make a lot of sense when you compare candidates. Honestly, without the merit aid program, Northeastern would not be where it is today. So the fact that it is somewhat unpredictable is kind of a head scratcher.
I think this is what this thread is about- how does an applicant get accepted into Honors but get less than 10K merit awarded, but a 25K or 30K merit applicant doesn’t get Honors? Every year you see posts come up about this and I think it would be great if applicants could get an idea where they stand before they apply.
Granted, if my daughter had received any merit $ I probably wouldn’t care that much… 