Merit aid is usually a tuition discount

I saw this somewhat misleading post in Facebook here recently, and one of the biggest sources, still one of the biggest sources of confusion with merit aid is what is the source of aid. And this one references that this is from, is based on achievement, merit, or any other non-need-based reason, all of which are true. Here is the challenging part. In most cases, in almost all cases, merit aid is simply a fancy expression for tuition discount. We live in an age where colleges are approaching desperate for being able to get more students to enroll in their, enroll in their colleges, and so they are offering additional financial aid. They're calling it scholarships, they're calling it the President Scholarship or the Good Student Scholarship or something like that, but it's effectively just a discount. There are no budgeted dollars behind these merit aid discounts that we see so many places. What's the practical impact of that? Use sources like TuitionFit and others to be able to get a better handle on what your financial situation and college situation should be paying. Then you're in a position to go back to the college if you don't like the discount offer, which is almost always what it is, and say, hey, we think based on the research we've done, our tuition should be closer to $12,000 per year instead of $16,000 per year. So make sure you understand that merit aid, while indeed in some cases has its roots in merit of some sort, in more cases than not, it's just a tuition discount.