Merit Scholarship renewal?

bebopdeluxe
Tue, 25 Apr 2023 23:09:24 +0000

So…I have been thinking about this a little more, and it sounds like my daughter - at least as it relates to F&M - caught a break here. She ran up against a buzzsaw of applications for her top choices (Vassar/Wesleyan) - she was a test optional kid (and don’t tell me that elite schools are REALLY “test optional”) with great, but not amazing (i.e. not 4.5 weighted) grades…no AP’s (her school doesn’t offer them), applying in a year where schools had a ridiculous amount of applicants and these schools were not going to over-admit this year. In retrospect, it was a long-shot to get into her target schools…and she didn’t.

But it looks like F&M may be making a strategic decision here that my daughter seems to be in the right place at the right time to benefit from.

They just finished a capital campaign that raised over $200 million dollars - over $70 million of it earmarked for financial aid.

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I don’t think that their reinstatement of Merit Scholarships is pure coincidence. While I don’t know this for certain, the school must realize that there is an entire cohort of excellent students that come from families of reasonable means that look at “merit aid” as an important factor in where they are going to apply. In this thread, somebody said that there are families that may have taken F&M off of their list because they did not offer merit aid. Students that could afford to pay the entire cost of schools above F&M in the pecking order (or schools in F&M’s tier that did offer merit aid) were not going to pay sticker price for F&M.

But if the opportunity to get, say, $15,000 to $20,000 a year in “merit aid” was there, would they include F&M in the mix? Reading this thread, it sounds like once students/parents realize that F&M is back in the “merit” game, the school could see an uptick in applications - including applications from students who fit the “recruiting talent regardless of background” profile that is new to the F&M “Aid Philosophy” page.

I doubt that this will move F&M’s applicant pool and selectivity into that Vassar/Wesleyan tier…but could it separate F&M from the Dickinson/Oberlin/Lafayette tier and move them closer to the top 30 LAC tier? Maybe. I would guess that is why they are back in the “merit” game.
Alums want to see their school be more selective - I would not be surprised if that was part of the pitch for the capital campaign: more aid - especially “merit” aid - could move that admission rate below 30% (for what that is worth), with the bragging rights that come with that (for whatever that is actually worth).

To be honest, my daughter did not apply to F&M because they reinstated “merit aid”. We didn’t even know it existed. It is a school where she can do the specific double major she wants (Biology and Film), it has a solid rep in terms of grad school, and - candidly - she had a higher likelihood of getting in than at Vassar or Wesleyan.

The great thing is she really likes the school, the disappointment of not getting into her target schools has faded, the visit for Admitted Students Day went well (i.e. we bought her a sweatshirt), I think it really made her feel great that she is a recipient of these newly instituted "Merit Scholarships’ (they really geek it up in the e-mail to her), and it sounds like she is going to be a Diplomat. I am happy that she got a Merit Scholarship for sure, and it will be interesting to see how F&M being back in the “merit” game affects their applicant pool next year.