§ Methodology

Merit profile

The merit profile combines source-reported CDS Section H aid facts with federal College Scorecard affordability and outcome context. It is built to answer what a school says it awarded, not to predict any applicant's financial-aid package.

What we use

§ H.2

Need-aid recipients and average aid packages

H.2 gives first-year and all-undergraduate counts for degree-seeking full-time students, aid recipients, average aid packages, average need-based grants, and average self-help aid. We use the first-year full-time values for the school-page headline because they are closest to the entering-student decision.
§ H.2A

Non-need institutional scholarships and grants

H.2A reports students who had no financial need and received institutional non-need scholarship or grant aid. The section excludes athletic awards and tuition benefits. We display both recipient count and average non-need grant when reported.
§ H.6

Aid for nonresidents

H.6 records whether institutional need-based or non-need-based aid is available to students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and the average aid package for those students when the school reports it.
§ H.14

Institutional merit-aid categories

H.14 is a checkbox list of non-need scholarship and grant bases. We surface academics when the school checks it for either full-time first-year students or all undergraduates.
§ College Scorecard

Net price, outcomes, and debt

Scorecard fields provide federal context: average net price, net price by income band, graduation rate, retention, federal-loan use, debt, and median earnings. These are joined by IPEDS UNITID.

What H2A does and does not mean

H2A is the closest CDS-standard field for merit-aid prevalence: students with no financial need who still received institutional non-need scholarship or grant aid. It does not include students who had financial need and also received merit aid inside a mixed package, so it can understate the full footprint of merit awards.

We compute the displayed no-need recipient share as H.2A01 divided by H.201 for first-year full-time students. When either field is absent or the denominator is zero, the share is left blank.

Missing data policy

Missing CDS fields stay missing. We do not impute merit awards from peer schools, marketing copy, or third-party scholarship pages. After the May 3, 2026 Tier 4 redrain, direct H.2A02 answerability was 244 of 365 latest primary 2024+ schools (66.8%), and effective first-year merit answerability was 252 of 365 (69.0%).

What we do not capture

  • Applicant-level scholarship probability or final price.
  • Major-level, residency-level, or honors-college award splits.
  • Automatic scholarship grids unless they also appear in CDS fields.
  • Appeal behavior, negotiation, or one-off institutional exceptions.
  • Non-CDS press-release counts for merit scholarships.

Sources and API

The public serving view is school_merit_profile, one latest primary 2024-25+ row per school. The school page links to the archived CDS document used for the displayed Section H fields. For field-level audits, query cds_fields directly.

curl 'https://api.collegedata.fyi/rest/v1/school_merit_profile?school_id=eq.bowdoin&select=school_id,school_name,canonical_year,first_year_ft_students,non_need_aid_recipients_first_year_ft,avg_non_need_grant_first_year_ft,non_need_aid_share_first_year_ft,avg_net_price,graduation_rate_6yr,earnings_10yr_median' \
  -H 'apikey: eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5...' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5...'

The broader public API is documented at /api.