Do Georgetown or WashU offer merit aid to undergraduates?

WashU is the one to look at if merit aid is a major factor. Washington University in St. Louis does offer named merit scholarships for undergraduates, including programs such as the Danforth, Ervin, and Rodriguez scholarships, while Georgetown’s undergraduate aid is much more centered on need-based financial aid. At Georgetown, merit awards for first-year undergraduates are extremely limited and not something most applicants should count on.

That matters because at WashU, merit scholarships are an established part of the undergraduate funding landscape, even though they are still highly competitive. Some awards can cover substantial tuition costs, and the university has long-running scholarship programs tied to leadership, academic excellence, service, and community impact.

Georgetown is different in a pretty direct way: for most regular undergraduate applicants, the school is not a place where merit aid is a realistic planning assumption. Georgetown is better understood as a school where affordability depends primarily on your family’s demonstrated financial need, not on winning a merit scholarship for strong grades or test scores.

If your family would need non-need-based help to make attendance possible, WashU deserves much more attention than Georgetown. I would treat Georgetown as a school to consider only if its need-based package would be enough, whereas WashU is at least a place where merit scholarships are an actual, visible possibility.