Merit-based aid is designed to induce smart kids to attend schools lesser in rank than the highest-ranked schools where they would be admitted. At the extremes, merit-based aid is not available. Harvard and MIT do not give any merit-based aid, because they do not need to to fill their classrooms with the smartest kids on the planet.
It's true that Ivies, Harvard, Duke, U of Penn, Columbia, Brown, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, etc, do not offer merit scholarship. Schools such as Stanford or Cal do not offer merit scholarship either. Some well known universities, such as U of Wisconsin, U of Minnesota, U of Chicago do offer merit scholarship but in small amount, i.e., such as $1000 - $2000 per year. They do, however, offer full-tuition scholarship but only in very limited number, i.e., 20 to 30 awarded per year. So far we have received letters from the following colleges that offer attractive scholarship (full tuition to full ride): Texas A&M, U of Texas -- Austin, Arizona State U (
up to $86,000 - wow), U of Alaska - Fairbanks, U of Nebraska, U of Tulsa, U of Oklahoma, U of Kansas, U of Florida, SMU, Washington U - St. Louis, Vanderbilt, and Rice U. They do require my daughter to declare them as first choice for the National Merit Scholarship program. These are all well respected colleges. Some of them have ranking higher than those of the Ivies. Obviously, the ranking varies among different magazines or ranking agencies.
I am tired of articles that criticize the increased number of colleges offering merit scholarship. They claim that the trend puts the poor at a disadvantage. I do not share the rationale that they use. That is, the rich can provide the resources to send their kids to the best high schools, and thus the kids naturally can score better in college entrance exams and get better grades while the poor cannot. That's ridiculous. My parents were poor. We went to public schools. We received good grades and high SAT scores. We were able to attend Cal then. What are the disadvantages? It is sad that the U of California has abandoned the merit program in favor of increased funding for the financial-need program. My daughter goes to a public high school and becomes a national merit semi-finalist. I am glad that "lesser ranked" schools are still offering generous merit scholarships. The colleges in Hong Kong in which I grew up only offered merit scholarships. They may have changed since then. Parents of middle class or lower should feel fortunate that their kids can attend prestigious universities via financial aid. It would cost me $200K to send my daughter to Stanford. I am not rich at all. Our income puts us at the bottom of upper-middle class. So far, she has applied for admission to a couple of local universities (U of Minn. and Wis.) and also plans to submit a couple of applications to those that offer attractive scholarship.
) and received $2K annually for that plus a few small schlorships from local civic groups. We paid the remaining 90% of the cost for him to attend an out-of-state top ten engineering school. He met other students, one his freshman roommate, who received more from the school, based on need, than he did based on schlorship. Sometimes much more. No complaints here. We weren't "stinky rich" and were trying to save for RE, so it was a burden. But we just buckled down and did it.
