Does Harvard or Penn offer merit aid for undergraduates?

Neither Harvard nor Penn offers merit scholarships for traditional undergraduate admission. Both schools base their own undergraduate financial aid on demonstrated financial need, so you should not expect non-need-based institutional scholarships from either one.

At Harvard College, the aid model is explicitly need-based only. Harvard packages typically include university grant aid and a family contribution based on financial information, rather than academic or talent-based merit awards.

Penn is similar for its undergraduate schools. Penn’s institutional aid is also need-based, not merit-based, so strong grades, test scores, or extracurriculars do not unlock a Penn-funded merit scholarship for first-year undergraduates.

What can still matter at Penn is whether you are looking at special named programs or outside scholarships, but those are not the same as standard undergraduate merit aid from the university. The same basic reality applies at Harvard: outside scholarships may reduce what your family pays in some cases, but Harvard itself is not awarding merit scholarships to make up for insufficient need-based eligibility.

So between these two, the real comparison is not which one gives merit aid, because neither does. It is which school’s need-based calculator gives your family a more workable result.