Merit-Based Scholarships

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For years upon years, major public universities in the United States have utilized funds provided to their institutions to award various scholarships to qualifying students. In most cases, many of the universities put this money to use by giving students merit-based scholarships depending on their high school achievements. Some of these awards are based on achievements like grade point average, standardized test scores, or community service projects with which the student has worked. For many years, this has been the ground scholarships were awarded on, but now this process may be endangered. Today, colleges are concerned with making sure every person is able to attend an institution of higher education. Therefore, many institutions are using …show more content…
When colleges lower the cost of attendance by providing scholarships, a vast number of students apply for admission and enroll in that institution (Doyle). High-performing students ponder over the amount of money schools provide them with to determine which school they will attend. These students perceive the amount of scholarships they receive to be the value the university has for them, and this statement proves true in many cases. James Monks claims that a student’s ability to pay for their higher education used to decide how much financial aid a student received, but now the amount of financial aid a student receives is dependent upon how strongly a university wants a student to enroll in their institution. A statement by Christopher Drew in the New York Times backs this up by saying universities try to maximize the number of desirable students brought to their university by offering scholarships without exceeding the money the institution has for financial aid. High-achieving students are looking to receive the best quality education at the lowest price. These students know how expensive college can become, and they want to seek out every opportunity to decrease the amount of money they owe to the university for their education. Even though high-achieving students know they won’t receive tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships for their achievements, they at least want a small amount of recognition for their achievements (Zalaznick). However, when high-performing students receive scholarships for their achievements, it not only proves beneficial to them but to the university as

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