<p>I’m generally not favorable to disclosing personal assets. My children will have access to a grandparents’ trust fund to help with some of their college expenses. However, some of them are bright enough to qualify/earn merit-based awards (“MBAs”) or scholarships. How does a student / parent apply for “MBAs” without having to disclose assets?</p>
<p>Many don’t ask for that information. The merit/athletic/talent scholarships from their schools was based entirely on their scores, try outs, statistics. Many scholarships from local clubs (Lions/Elks/DAR) don’t ask.</p>
<p>You are asking for other people’s money. If getting that money requires disclosing financial information then you should do so honestly or forego the money. It’s fraud not to do so.</p>
<p>Lots of colleges give merit based scholarships to students who fall at the top of the applicant pool, and do not require you to disclose financial information to be awarded the scholarships (by the way, the “MBA” acronym isn’t really commonly used, most people would call just call it merit aid or merit scholarships.) </p>
<p>Here are some ways to figure out if your kid is a candidate for merit aid at a school and some tips on merit aid:
- Go to the school’s financial aid website and look for information on merit based scholarships. Note that most of the top schools don’t give any merit based aid, and for those that do it is highly competitive.
- One thing you can’t usually tell from the school’s webpage is how many of a given scholarship they give out. So your next stop is to look at the Common Data Set for the school. Usually you can find it by Googling “<school name=”"> Common Data Set". Open the most recent year you can find and look in section H – there is a lot of information in there about financial aid, and one thing they show is % of students receiving merit based aid and the average award amount.
- You really have to take a realistic view of your kid’s chances for merit aid. If your kid is not in the top 25% of their past admitted class in terms of statistics (esp. standardized test scores), odds are not good of merit aid. Top 10% of is better. But the tradeoff is that your kid may not want to go to a school where they are in the top 10% of the pool of students.
- If merit aid is important, your kid will likely want to apply to several schools where merit aid is offered and their stats are on the higher end. They are going to want to skip any schools that don’t offer merit at all and focus in on the schools that will “pay for their stats”.
- In almost all cases students are considered for the merit scholarships offered by the colleges without extra paperwork or applications. You can figure that out from the college web page on scholarships, though. Some schools want students to apply earlier to be considered for merit scholarships (Kenyon is an example).
- Almost all the merit aid from colleges is given for four years, although there is often a minimum GPA to retain it.
- Outside scholarships (not given by the colleges) are often quite small and only for one year. A lot of work for small return to apply for a lot of them. The big outside scholarships are very, very competitive – unless your kid is a superstar, probably not worth applying for.</school></p>
<p>Using these approaches, both my kids got quite a bit in merit aid offers. One attended an LAC with about 1/3 of her cost covered by merit aid. The other chose a college that did not offer her merit, but she did have offers that ranged from $5K to $25K/year off the list price (across 5 different colleges).</p>
<p>It’s actually somewhat rare for financial info to be required to apply for merit scholarships. The rare cases I know of require only FAFSA, not the more invasive Profile.</p>
<p>Many colleges award merit scholarships and never ask for financial info. both of my kids got nearly free rides and we’ve never disclosed anything.</p>
<p>If you are asking about 3rd party scholarships, those often do have a need component.</p>
<p>so, have your kids apply to SCHOOLS that give merit for THEIR stats…this means that your kids stats need to be high for the school. Usually the biggest awards are given to those in the top 5%</p>
<p>Just look for ones that are merit based that don’t ask for your assets. They do exist. My daughter got one for 10K., payable in 2.5K increments for the next 4 years. We didn’t have to disclose any financials. Just her grades, which were stellar, an essay, two recommendation letters, and an interview. Her high school had the scholarship listed on its website. </p>
<p>ETA: Also twoinone is right. Try rotary clubs, local chapters of sororities, fraternities. Good luck.</p>
<p>As Bobwallace said, most merit awards do not ask for financial info. So you just avoid those that do and your kids are not in the running for them. I don’t know what state you’re in, but some state merit awards do request the FAFSA completed, even though they are not income/asset based. They use FAFSA a vetting tool. </p>
<p>None of my kids were asked to submit financial info for the awards they got.</p>
<p>I want to add that if you are concerned that your child will lose a pure merit scholarship based on your assets it is unfounded. I had to fill out FAFSA for my D’s NMF scholarship. The school requires it to make sure all the federal aid is used if it applies. We were well above that level and the merit aid still applied</p>