Hello all. I understand that the FAFSA has delayed financial updates. But if my child is to receive a merit scholarship would we have been informed by now?
If you look at their academic scholarships page, it is a wild list of many many scholarships.
Some a student would automatically be considered for at the time of acceptance. I don’t know if all honors students are awarded merit, but the one student I know accepted to honors also got a merit award at the same time.
Some academic/departmental scholarships are also at least partially tied in with need and VT will have to wait on the FAFSA info before determining those.
Have you already dug into this all the way, through the college and also major, and made sure the student applied to anything applicable (if an additional application was required)?
https://finaid.vt.edu/undergraduate/typesofaid/scholarships/academic-scholarships.html
Many of the individually named scholarships have very specific requirements and are in the $500-$1000 range.
Last CDS I looked at had only 10% of students without need receiving any non-need aid, and the ones who did receive merit aid averaged a little over 3k.
Long reply short, my guess is if there hasn’t been a merit award made yet, there probably won’t be one (of any significant amount) forthcoming.
If the student is in-state, high stat, and has significant need, the answer is not as clear.
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VT releases merit aid notification with the financial aid letter. I saw on FB earlier that they’re not anticipating releasing the bulk of letters until the week of April 22.
That being said, VT is well known for not giving much in the way of merit aid to freshman (see post above with common data set info).
Presumably having the FAFSA data is part of how they know how much Merit and other scholarships they can distribute. If some students are getting school fully funded by the gov’t, then Virginia Tech can redirect money they would’ve otherwise given to those students, now onto others (in theory). As painful as the wait is, makes sense from a fiscally responsible perspective…
What “government aid” would fully fund VA Tech? Even if a student got the full Pell grant and took the $5500 freshman direct loan…that would not fully fund VA tech.
To the OP, I think you just need to wait. Make sure your student checks their portal and spam folders.
I’m saying if students are getting Federal grant money, Virginia Tech is presumably waiting to see who’s getting money and how much, to see if they can then give to someone else.
FYI…
Heads up!! If your student didn’t provide their SSN# on their application, the school can’t tie their FAFSA data to them, and won’t have any Merit/Scholarships offered. So you may need to call and provide…
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FYI, we called 4/22 and provided the SSN#, and he did hear back yesterday 4/30 with a small Merit award and loan option. Just to give you an idea on turnaround time, and if they are still offering Merit to those who’s data wasn’t complete in the first round…
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