Clear answers before you buy.

One scholarship found, or one trap avoided, pays for it many times over. Most families avoid one or the other. Plenty avoid both.

Fastweb is a generic list. Generic AI chatbots hallucinate. We check your specific schools' published aid policies and only include awards that actually matter to your student.

Your counselor knows your student, not the stacking rules at dozens of private colleges. Most outside scholarships never cross their desk. We cover the ground they can't.

No. At private colleges like TCU, SMU, and Baylor, institutional merit is based on academic profile, not financial need. Middle-income families are often the biggest winners. We'll show you what your student qualifies for.

30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, request a full refund through our contact form within 30 days of delivery and we'll refund you in full, no questions asked. Prefer a fix? We'll revise it at no charge instead.

We don't. Not to advertisers, not to schools, not to anyone. You pay us once. That's the whole deal.

Every playbook is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, request a full refund within 30 days of delivery through our contact form and we'll refund the purchase price to your original payment method, no questions asked. Prefer a fix? Tell us what's off and we'll revise it at no charge instead. The full mechanics are in our Terms.

New test score, new target school, or changed finances? Tell us and we rebuild the whole playbook at no charge, up to two times within 12 months of purchase. Reply to your delivery email or use the contact form, tell us what changed, and the rebuilt playbook replaces the old one at the same link. Juniors without test scores yet are the most common case: buy now, get the junior-year moves, and send the PSAT or SAT when it lands. Fixes to our own mistakes are separate and always free within 30 days.

No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something they can't deliver. Scholarship awards depend on the awarding organization, the applicant pool, and factors no third party controls. What we guarantee is a thoroughly researched strategy that maximizes the chances at every angle: which awards stack at your target schools, which to skip, what order to apply in, and what your realistic aid range looks like school by school.

College counselors typically charge $3,000 to $15,000 for a multi-month engagement that covers admissions, essays, school list building, and sometimes financial aid. MeritPlaybook is $79 for a one-time strategy document focused entirely on merit aid and scholarship stacking. We don't help with admissions or essays. We don't run a multi-month coaching relationship. If you need full-service admissions help, hire an IEC. If you need a focused merit aid strategy, that's what we do.

No. We focus on merit aid and scholarship strategy, which is a deep specialty in itself. Admissions and essay coaching are different products with different expertise. We're happy to recommend other resources if you need that support.

We can still help, especially if you haven't accepted an offer yet. A late-stage playbook focuses on which acceptances to revisit for appeal, which institutional aid offers can be improved, and which late-deadline outside scholarships are still worth pursuing. The financial aid appeal letter strategy alone has changed the picture for several families.

That's fine. The intake form has a section for geographic preferences, school size preference, intended major, and any schools you're already considering. We use that to identify a working list of merit-friendly target schools as part of the playbook. If you already have a list, we work with it. If you don't, we build one.

Not currently. Our research is focused on US institutional merit aid, federal aid (FAFSA, CSS Profile), and US scholarship programs. International student aid follows different rules at different schools and isn't something we can do justice to right now.

Homeschool students are a strong fit for merit aid because their academic profiles often differ from traditional applicants in ways schools value. The intake form has a section for education context including homeschool, dual enrollment, and online programs. We've researched merit aid policies at every school we cover with homeschool admissions in mind.

Transfer merit aid follows different rules than freshman merit aid at most schools. Some schools have generous transfer merit programs, others have almost none. We can do a transfer-focused playbook that covers transfer merit thresholds, articulation agreements where relevant, and the smaller pool of transfer-eligible outside scholarships.

The playbook is built by our automated research system. Your student's profile is checked against each school's current financial aid pages, scholarship rules, deadlines, and renewal conditions. Where a rule is clear, the playbook says what to do; where a school leaves it unclear, the playbook marks it and gives you the exact question to ask the aid office. The output is a single ranked strategy: a Recommended, Worth comparing, Backup, or High risk verdict on each school, and an Apply, Verify eligibility, or Skip call on every award.

Institutional merit policies, award amounts, and stacking rules change. We pull from the school's own financial aid pages and Common Data Set filings at the time we research your playbook, and every figure is dated and sourced. If a school updates its policy after we deliver, the playbook represents the rules at the time of research; for a high-impact school change within 30 days of delivery, ask and we will update it free. If your own circumstances change, each purchase also includes two free re-runs within 12 months.

Every school's own financial aid page, the Common Data Set filings each school publishes, the Department of Education's College Scorecard, the College Board, named scholarship organizations' own application materials, and our verified merit database. Every figure is checked against the school's own current pages, and anything a school leaves unclear is marked, with the question to ask the aid office.

Yes. Intake responses are stored in a database with row-level security, accessed only by the automated research pipeline that generates your playbook, and never used for advertising. We don't sell your data or share it outside of the systems that build your playbook. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.