How do Notre Dame and Boston College compare for merit aid?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that Notre Dame is more need-focused and offers very limited merit scholarships, while Boston College also centers aid on financial need but is somewhat more visible about a small set of named merit awards. At both schools, merit money is the exception rather than something most admitted students receive. If merit aid is going to be a major factor in affordability, neither school is one to count on as a likely discount.

Notre Dame does have merit scholarships, but they are highly selective and awarded to a very small share of students. In practice, most aid there comes through need-based financial aid, and Notre Dame is especially known for putting institutional resources toward meeting demonstrated need rather than broadly using merit scholarships to attract applicants.

Boston College is similar in that it is primarily a need-based aid school, not a major merit-aid school. Its best-known merit programs, including highly prestigious full-tuition scholarships, are real opportunities, but they are extremely competitive and limited in number. That means Boston College may feel a little more legible if you are specifically searching for named merit awards, but it is not a place where strong applicants should expect routine merit offers.

So between the two, Boston College may have a slight edge only in the sense that its marquee merit scholarships are more commonly discussed and can be a meaningful draw for top applicants. But as a practical planning matter, Notre Dame and Boston College belong in the same category: excellent private universities where need-based aid matters much more than merit. If affordability depends on receiving non-need-based scholarship money, neither is an especially dependable bet, and Boston College is only marginally more promising on that front.