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June 16, 2025 
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This weekend, I published a column about how Syracuse University had been offering up to $200,000 in merit aid to students who had not accepted its offers of admission as of May 1.
A reader wrote in to say that the term “merit aid” was fuzzy. No kidding.Let me explain it a bit more.
There are two kinds of financial aid, in theory at least. First is need-based aid. You fill out the federal FAFSA form and, for a few hundred schools, the more detailed CSS Profile form as well. Schools use one or both to determine what you can afford to pay — and then offer you aid that may, or may not, meet the gap between their list price and what you can afford to contribute.
Then, there is merit aid. In its purest form, the best students get the most. And the better the students you attract, the theory goes, the easier it will be to lure other great students in the future, hopefully without as much merit aid. Over the last decade or two, however, merit aid has lost its meaning at many places. Syracuse didn’t offer it to many of the students it admitted, only to turn around and offer six-figure sums this year to those same teenagers when they decided not to come.
Why did Syracuse do that? Not because the students had improved in the months between when they applied and May 1, when the big offers started dropping. It’s because Syracuse didn’t have enough students signed up to attend as of May 1, so dangling giant merit aid awards in front of people was the quickest way to poach them from other schools.
So in this instance, the term “merit” was close to meaningless. We probably could use a new one. Suggestions are welcome at yourmoney_newsletter@nytimes.com
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