Press and data desk
Original college merit-aid data, with the source trail attached.
MeritPlaybook studies what colleges publish about automatic merit awards, renewal rules, and outside-scholarship policies. Reporters and researchers can download the records, inspect the methodology, and request a focused cut of the public data.
Published reports and datasets
Counts below are derived at build time from the same report modules used on each live report page.
Merit Scholarship Renewal Rules by the Numbers, 2026
2,506 renewal records · Published August 14, 2026We analyzed 2,506 source-linked renewal-note records from 597 verified colleges: GPA, credit, full-time, academic-standing, and unknown-rule signals.
Automatic Merit Scholarships by the Numbers, 2026
1,318 automatic merit tiers · Published August 14, 2026A national source-linked inventory of 389 verified colleges and 1,318 distinct automatic merit tiers.
The Scholarship Displacement Census, 2026
749 colleges checked · Published July 21, 2026We checked 749 colleges' financial aid pages for a published outside-scholarship policy and classified every one we found.
The State of Merit-Aid Transparency, 2026
588 policies classified · Published June 10, 2026We read the published outside-scholarship policies of 588 colleges and classified every one. Original research on what schools tell families about merit aid, and what they leave out.
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