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Everyday millions of parents across the nation faithfully remind their high school students to take AP courses, join a variety of school boards and functions as well as participate in community events all in order to get the highly coveted financial aid package that colleges offer. However, I never thought that I would see the day that getting excellent grades, being a well-balanced student and graduating top of your class would mean less financial aid to help parents pay for the cost of college. Over the last several years I have seen a growing trend of colleges exclusively giving out the majority of scholarship money to families that demonstrate a financial need. I completely agree with giving out financial aid to families that demonstrate a need, but not at the expense of the student who has worked diligently to achieve excellent grades. The major critics of merit-based aid claim that the majority of merit based aid usually benefits the students that can afford to attend colleges without aid. However, I do not have a problem with students who work the hardest and put in the time, effort and energy to do well in all relevant categories of school admission criteria, getting the bulk of merit-based aid. When you are searching for merit-based financial aid there are a couple of resources to help you online, but you really have to be a hound dog to sniff them out. It is also important to know that there are many schools that only offer a limited amount of several different scholarships which are then awarded to the same students. When this happens the number of scholarships that the schools state as available for students is skewed because the same students are getting multiple scholarships so the number of scholarships that they report as available is not truly representative of what they are offering. For example, many students win college merit awards as well as national merit awards. The other factor to remember is that most students do not pay full tuition at private colleges. Nearly every student that I advise who is attending private colleges receives some type of aid, either merit or need-based. However, none share the same dollar amount. When pricing college the awards given can be compared to paying sticker price or negotiating the price down. Only a small percentage of students pay full price, but most get a discounted tuition. Here is a short list of colleges that give the most merit based aid dollars based on usnews.com: Duke University 24,000 Georgetown University 25,000 George Washington 20,155 Brandeis University 19,000 Tulane University 19,000 Boston University 17,000 Vanderbilt University 17,000 John Hopkins 17,000 Pepperdine University 15,600
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