Merit Scholarship Paperwork - The many flavors

Seniors and parents - As early action decisions are in or looming, and most regular decision applications are in, students are asking about merit scholarship opportunities - private scholarships or from the schools to which they applied. Below is information that might clear the fog.

• Automatic Merit Scholarships - Most schools that give merit scholarships (and not all do) review the student's academic information within their application. Some scholarship amounts are more of a "coupon code" which means everyone gets something. Other scholarship amounts are larger for the top academic applicants in the pool of students.

• Competitive Merit Scholarships - Some schools have subsets of institutional scholarships for the most competitive academic students that are very generous and require additional applications.

• "Scholarship Central" Application Portals- Other schools will require a student to complete scholarship applications to be considered for any merit scholarship available and this paperwork is typically found within the student's application portal for each school. Examples include

• Auburn University - Scholarship application due by 2/1

• Virginia Tech - Scholarship application due by 1/15

• Colorado State - Scholarship application due by 3/1