There was nothing extraordinary about this scholarship notice. My
daughter received countless mailings from colleges, solicited and
unsolicited, that outlined their respective scholarship opportunities.
That frankly is the point. Merit awards have become a ubiquitous partner
in today’s courtship between colleges and high school students.
Increasingly the question to ask is not, “Do you offer merit scholarships?,”
but rather, “How generous are the ones that you provide?”
Merit money is particularly important to families that don’t qualify
for financial aid. But students who qualify for need-based financial
aid, are also eligible. If you’d like a shot at capturing some of this
money, here’s how to increase your chances:
Find the right fit. Don’t make the same mistake as the prosecutor
who tried to convince a jury to convict O.J. Simpson of murder. To
bolster his case, the prosecutor asked the ex-football star to try on the
notorious bloody glove without knowing what would happen. Of
course, as we all know, the glove didn’t fit—legal experts suggested it
had shrunk from the blood. And the chances for conviction withered
right before the courtroom television cameras.
So what does this have to do with you and your teenager? I’d suggest
that a teenager should never apply to a college without already
having a good idea of what the admissions committee is going to say
about his or her application. But more importantly, you should also
pretty much know what kind of financial package the school will ultimately
award your child. With the higher ed price tag so exorbitant,
you could be committing economic suicide if you don’t narrow your
search to schools that you believe will be generous to your child. In
fact, one of the initial questions that you should ask when looking at a
university’s or college’s glossy marketing material is this: How likely is
it that this school will extend a price break?
Know where to look for cash. A quick way to discover whether
a school awards merit money is by looking at college profiles on the
College Board’s Web site (www.collegeboard.com). Type the name of
the school into the Web site’s College QuickFinder. Once you’ve
pulled up a school’s profile, click on the Cost & Financial Aid link. This
section includes the institution’s “average non-need-based aid” per
recipient. This is another term for merit money. If you see a blank in
this space, that’s an excellent tip-off that a school doesn’t dispense
merit awards.
What the College Board’s Web site won’t tell you is what percentage
of the freshman class wins merit awards and what it takes to get
one. You can often find the answer to one or both of those questions
by visiting a school’s Web site. I’m using Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland as an example because it’s a school that
aggressively awards merit cash.
According to the College Board, Case Western Reserve’s average
merit award is $16,174. Armed with that information, I visit the
school’s Web site and learn that more than 93% of first-year students
receive some type of financial aid. The average financial aid package
is $26,989, while the cost of tuition and room and board is roughly
$44,000. The percentage of incoming students who snag a merit
award is 61%. The average award is $18,590. The school’s own figure
is more generous than the College Board’s, which is why it’s good to
double check outside figures.
The private school doesn’t provide many details on how you qualify
for this money, but the Web site does explain that even Bill Gates’
kid could qualify for a scholarship since financial income is irrelevant.
The admissions office states that scholarships are awarded to students
considered above average in the applicant pool, and it mentions that
SAT or ACT scores provide one measure. The school also notes, however,
that scores are only one measure, so many students submitting
scores below the median also receive scholarships.
Because standardized test scores are factored in, you would want
to take a look at Case Western Reserve’s range of SAT scores. For that
piece of the puzzle, head back to the school’s profile on the College
Board’s Web site and click on the SAT link. The College Board publishes
the middle 50% range of the critical reading, math, and writing
sections of the test. Few schools, at this point, appear to be using the
writing scores. At Case Western Reserve, the middle 50% of the
school’s freshmen scored between 600 and 700 on the critical reading
section and scored between 630 and 730 on the math section. That
means, for instance, that the bottom quarter of the class scored below
600 on reading, and the top 25% of the class received a score higher
than 700.
Go to the source. You can track a school’s financial aid footprints
by checking its Common Data Set. Each year, colleges and universities
compile this gold mine of statistics that includes information on
financial aid, as well as graduation rates, freshman class profile, student
retention, and many other areas.
The format for any school’s Common Data Set is identical, which
makes comparisons of different institutions a snap. If you get your
hands on this document, you’ll obtain far more data than you would
get curling up with any college guide. An easy way to find a school’s
Common Data Set is to Google the term, as well as the school’s name.
You can also type “Common Data Set” into a college’s search engine.
To illustrate what you can find in the Common Data Set, I’m going
to use Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, which is my
daughter’s school. I picked Juniata because it provides most of its students
with both need-based financial aid and merit scholarships.
For this exercise, I headed to Juniata’s five-page financial aid section
within the Common Data Set. Here’s what I learned: Of the 388
freshmen in a recent Juniata class, 347 students applied for needbased
aid. The school concluded that 310 students or 89% qualified
for need-based aid. Of that number, 304 freshmen received needbased
grants that didn’t have to be repaid. For the freshman class, the
average financial aid package was $18,763. Tuition and room and
board at the school that year was roughly $35,000.
What parents will want to know is whether the average financial
aid package contains a bunch of loans or whether it provides valuable
grants. Juniata reported that the average loan that its frosh financial
aid recipients received was $3,448 or 18% of the typical package. So
for this school, most of the aid is the desirable kind.
What I also learned by looking at Juniata’s figures is that most of
the kids who received financial aid also captured merit money. In fact,
278 students of those who qualified for need-based financial aid also
received merit money. In addition, 72 students, who were too affluent
to qualify for need-based aid, received merit awards that averaged
$12,358. The figures Juniata provided for its other students were similar
to the freshmen statistics.
When you use these figures, it’s much easier to calculate whether
a school will be affordable. If your son or daughter has assembled a list
of potential schools, print out the Common Data Set for each one of
them. Only after comparing the generosity of schools and their
requirements for merit money and financial aid, can you form a pretty
good idea of whether these schools make financial sense or whether
the hunt should continue.
Action Plan
• Investigate how generous a school is by looking at its Common Data Set numbers.
• A quick place to look for financial aid numbers is the College Board’s Web site.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
