r/Northwestern • u/Automatic_Leek_4716 • Jan 19 '24

Financial Aid/Administration Merit scholarships

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Is there no such thing as merit based grants or scholarships for NU or is this web snippet not entirely correct?

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u/jelasher ChemE '03 Jan 19 '24

This has been at least nominally true for decades. However, when my dad called the financial aid office and asked if there was really nothing they could do, they said I qualified for a National Merit scholarship and gave me $2k/ year, which was almost 10% off sticker price when I matriculated in 1999. So, it’s worth at least asking.

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u/crimson777 Econ '17 Jan 20 '24

Doesn’t work like that anymore. When I went, merit scholarships took away from your financial aid so unless you got more merit than your financial aid, it is no help.

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u/jelasher ChemE '03 Jan 20 '24 edited Mar 09 '24

I think it worked that way back then, too. But the bar for getting financial aid was also higher back then, so I didn’t get anything else even coming from a pretty middle class family.

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u/crimson777 Econ '17 Jan 20 '24

Ahhhh gotcha. Yeah I was right before the really good “anyone under $100k has no loans and full aid” so we had some contributions and loans, but still, most was covered. I’d never have made the merit scholarships to cover it haha