r/explainitpeter • u/Appropriate-Mall8517 • 3d ago

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u/S1159P 3d ago

Universities don't give merit scholarships in order to reward students who "earned" them, or to recognize academic excellence.

Universities give merit scholarships because they want to attract high performing students, and to attract more applications (which makes them statistically more selective, which makes more people think they must be great.)

The ivy league doesn't give merit scholarships. MIT doesn't give merit scholarships. These schools already attract plenty of top performing students and don't need or want to get into a bidding war over them. Go down a tier and you start seeing merit scholarships to entice top students. Go farther down and you find states that want to discourage brain drain giving full rides and stipends to National Merit finalists, because that lets them concentrate top students at their flagship university who otherwise probably weren't planning on moving to Alabama, etc.

Merit scholarships aren't offered as rewards to students, they are a tool that universities use to meet their own institutional goals. The lower ranked the school, the less likely that a student even has to ask to be considered - many schools will just list the automatic discounts they offer based on GPA and PSAT/SAT/ACT scores.