For what it’s worth, I looked up the data for 5 schools and found interesting nuggets on a few:
Northeastern: Average merit amount dropped from $20,784 (freshmen) to $12,959 (all undergrad), a 37% decrease (wow)!
Stony Brook: Average amount dropped by 15% ($4,953 to $4,230), but more telling is the number of recipients. They had 368 freshmen, but only 664 total undergrads (including freshmen). Sounds like there must be a mistake in their numbers but if not, I find that troubling.
Hofstra: Both numbers and amounts dropped. Average award dropped 25% from $16k to $12k, and the number went from 366 (freshmen) to 1339 undergrads (would’ve expected more like 1460 or so).
Skidmore: According to their website, offers 5 math/science scholarships and 4 music scholarships. However, only list 3 Freshmen receiving merit, and only 11 undergrads (which indicates that the 3 is pretty consistent). I think this answers one of my other posts about whether or not colleges “scale up” their awards to end up with (in this case 5 and 4). Guess not…
The only school I looked at that had nothing noteworthy was Lafayette. Consistent number of recipients and not a huge drop in $.
Thanks for the great advice everyone. I’m really going to need to do some “deeper dives” into this analysis as we narrow down D’s college list.