SATs vs Financial Aid

It is probably a school policy at his institutiom

Be aware that all info is not on the internet and what you not find on the internet do not take as "gospel" ---talk to the school in question personally

TR,
I was able to find some information on guaranteed scholarships in general by getting a little smarter in my search. At that particular school it turns out a 1320 SAT (math and verbal) and 3.75 gpa are required. He got a 1300 and will probably end up about a 3.6 if we stay on him. The 1320 might be doable but the 3.75 probably isn't doable at this point.
Thanks

Many private colleges (not Ivy's, though) and some state schools have automatic merit 'ships. They often use SAT's (or ACT's) and GPA as the criteria. Some also include a class rank criteria.

The merit 'ships can be quite significant at some colleges. They are certainly opening some options for Texan Son.

Usually, the criteria will be posted on the school's scholarship webpage.

Texan,
Harvard has a program where if your income is under somewhere around $180K then your yearly cost will not exceed 10% of your income. I don't have any idea on the details.

Our local private D3 while not quite on a par with Harvard academically has a program where a student who is accepted at UCSB or UCLA doesn't have to pay any more for tuition than they would at those schools. I understand that this is more of a marketing ploy than anything else as most students would be able to get that much aid anyways. However, this could be useful for a student athlete who couldn't qualify for need based aid and isn't quite good enough to play at a D1.

Harvard and a couple of other schools have just released plans for the caps to which you referred. Some think they did so to try & keep the government from sticking its nose under the tent. Harvard and others have come under fire for having multi-billion dollar endowments while continuing to charge unearthly amounts for tuition.

That is not merit aid, of course.

Other Ivy's may well follow.