Many people believe that merit aid means aid awarded for students who are the smartest and most accomplished, but thats just not true. I just spent months reviewing state-funded “merit” scholarship policies and school-funding policies at flagship universities and what i found WILL SHOCK YOU!
All dramatics aside, my report found a few important, and somewhat surprising to me, things:
1. Metrics not merit.
Merit means nothing. There is no formal definition of merit. There is no formal determiner of who is meritorious and who isn’t. So getting a “merit” scholarships just means you met whatever criteria was set.
Many “merit” scholarships are given on the basis of random criteria, for example this one:
2. Lies, damned lies, and test scores
Test scores (SAT and ACT) were only required in 16% of state funded scholarships and 32% of school-funded scholarships. These scores are not opening doors to a vast amount of money. It’s not nothing, but its not what I thought it was going to be when I started this project. Also the mean required ACT score for eligibility for the school-funded scholarships I looked at was 28 and the mean required SAT was 1310.
If you are interested you can read the full report here:
Bellowings 
Akil, I thought this was well done and I appreciate you explaining the differences in merit terminology. The more folks understand the better decisions they can make.
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Thanks!
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