Below is the list of schools my daughter applied in 2021 with merit awards. My daughter ended up choosing UMD (in-state) and we paid $27000/year for that year. However, it went up a couple thousands more per year for tuition, room and board. Hope that will help someone with some ideas of merit awards for schools in the East Coast-ish area.
Kenyon College, a wonderful liberal arts school outside of Columbus, Ohio fits at least your first two criteria. (Not sure what you mean by no gap.) It gives extensive merit aid to around 30% of students I believe. Itâs also need blind for domestic students. It also happens to be ranked as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country (12th on the recent travel and leisure rankings).
Gettysburg College gives generous merit, my son also got substantial merit from GW ($27k per year) and Grinnell ($15k py if I recall). Alas, of course he chose Colby (full $80k!)
I wish every family would start their college search by figuring out what their real budget number for college is. Would make much of the process clearer from the get go.
I am generalizing here a bit but let me try to explain. For most private schools, tuition discount on an average is 55%. So, if a parent is paying 45% of the sticker, that is not really a merit package. It is basically what the school is asking everyone to pay on an average.
True merit is when someone pays way less than that. Most parents are happy to pay the discounted price disguised as merit awardâŠit is not.
Schools with stronger brands have zero incentive to pay merit aid unless it is to fulfill institutional needsâŠBIPOCs, athletes, rural, first gen etc. They get enough strong applicants. I wish parents would understand this. Come March you will see the number of bewildered parents and kids on here asking why they got waitlisted or denied with excellent stats at these schools. Hint â its because they cannot pay enough and do not meet institutional needs.
Also, the budget number is a difficult game to play. Letâs say the average for a college is $45K. Well, thatâs likely the average for all students. Depending on your income bracket, it might well be higher.
Typically, this is what colleges will ask YOU to pay using a combination of resources like savings, loans, work etc.
Let me give you a personal example. My son got into a small engineering school (Clarkson) and they gave him a fabulous aid package. COA would be approx. $30K. In truth, that is the discounted price every student is asked to pay minus a privileged few that meet institutional needs. There was another poster who got in with a leadership award. Guess what he was asked to pay? $30K.
Thatâs great info - I guess it goes to show that after the perceived elite, people donât see the value in the schoolâs brand - and they need to get to that point of max revenue / target enrollment. There are very solid names, like Clarkson, putting out heavy discounts - the Kalamazoo, Beloit, Depauws of the world and so so so many more.
Some schools have simply cut up front prices - in an effort to spur demand. not sure if itâs worked or not.
Others are, unfortunately, simply closing their doors.
âIn the 2022 NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study , 341 private, nonprofit colleges and universities reported an estimated 56.2 percent average institutional tuition discount rate for first-time, full-time, first-year students in academic year (AY) 2022-23 and 50.9 percent for all undergraduatesâboth record highs. By providing grants, fellowships, and scholarships, these institutions forgo more than half the revenue they otherwise would collect if they charged all students the tuition and fee sticker price.â
This looks like the study you linked to is talking about both financial need based aid and merit aid.
There are colleges that provide merit based aid that stacks with their need based aid. Which often drops the cost below what a family would be expected to pay solely on their âfinancial needâ.
Are you talking about preferential packaging? That some students get better merit aid offers than others? And most student hit the âaverageâ packageâŠnot getting a âpreferentialâ package?
All three of my kids were offered merit awards (non need based) that left the COA substantially below the âaverageâ price paid at their schools. Is that ârealâ merit? Preferential packaging? Who cares if the price was well below what we would have needed to pay and well within our budget?
Without knowing the schools and how much they got and your income, it is impossible to tell.
Did those numbers work out to be much less than what was predicted by the net price calculator? If the answer is yes, then congrats! You got real merit aid. If not, well you are not alone. At the end of the day, if it is a price you can afford or are comfortable with, thatâs all that counts.
Real merit awards are things like auto merit at places like Arizona, Alabama, Auburn etc. If you hit certain numbers, you get the $$. Does not matter how much you can afford. Other examples are awards like Robertson scholars at UNC etc. Some private schools have these as well.
Why arenât those awards considered just âtuition discountsâ based on stats?
As a full pay family, the 55-60% off (per year) âdiscountsâ they were awarded in merit aid was money we would have been expected to pay if they hadnât gotten those awards. We were merit hunting, so all the schools they targeted were ones where their stats put them in the top 10-25% of applying students. They were also offered spot in honors programs. Does that make the merit ârealâ?
Not sure our discussion matters much practicallyâŠwhich is why I posited it was more important for families to know what their budget is because if a school works for your budget - why does it matter if they gave you money because of financial need, or academic/athletic merit or as a âtuition discountâ? Either you can afford it and want to pay or you canât.
I was coming here to say this exact thing - the distinction doesnât really matter when folks are trying to get a sense of what schools are affordable. Say ohio wesleyan gives everyone 35k - and calls it merit. Still useful information!
I was thinking of schools like Kalamazoo - who are upfront that their non-need based merit aid ranges from $30-42k/yr. They are also upfront that everyone accepted to Kalamazoo will get at least $30k. Is that a tuition discount? Is any money over the $30k âtrue meritâ? Does it matter?
At the end of the day, you can afford what you can afford and it doesnât really matter if schools call it âmeritâ or a discount or need based aid. And it doesnât really matter if itâs a âtypical discountâ or a unique scholarship. Though it might be important to know if something is a longshot financially in terms of getting merit.
When school shopping, you can get a good sense of this in the financial aid section of the common data set how it plays out for schools. In that section, you can figure out what percentage of students get need based aid vs. non-need based and what average awards are.
âMeritâ as discussed here is labelled âNumber of students in line a who had no financial need and who were awarded institutional non-need-based scholarship or grant aidâ in the common data set.
Anyway, highly recommend digging around in those common data sets. That was super helpful for us and Iâve helped other families dig around for this info and do that math.
I agree with the posts emphasizing that merit is merit⊠whether it is an auto-award, tuition discount or competitive award is not that important. Affordability is the goal.
If need-based aid is a factor in making it affordable that is fine, but one should remember that need-aid changes from year to year. Merit aid is a known quantity for 4-years, as long as the criteria are met (typically a minimum GPA). This thread is about merit so I donât want to get into a discussion of need-aid, but felt the distinction should be pointed out since several posters mentioned it.