La Salle University sophomore Therese Pomeroy was accepted into Penn's Class of 2007 and even agreed to attend, but she never set foot in a Penn classroom.
Just a few weeks after sending her letter of intent to Penn, Pomeroy retracted her statement and registered at La Salle.
For Pomeroy, the academic scholarship that La Salle offered her was a huge draw that Penn, the rest of the Ivy League schools and other notable universities simply do not provide.
University President Amy Gutmann said that Penn does not award scholarships based on student achievement because this would inhibit the University's ability to provide need-based financial aid.
"It makes best use of our resources to target them to the students who truly need them to come here," Gutmann said.
Pomeroy -- whose brother Jon is a senior in the College -- said that while her eventual decision to attend La Salle was not completely financial, her full-tuition scholarship to the school was a factor.
"Considering it was Penn, I guess I was just fortunate that I got [the financial aid package that] I got," Therese Pomeroy said, "but compared to La Salle, it wasn't that great."
Although all eight Ivy League schools have decided not to offer merit-based aid of any kind -- from academic to athletic scholarships -- other comparable universities do provide merit-based scholarships.
Duke University selects 22 to 23 students from the general application pool for both full- and partial-tuition academic scholarships.
But even schools that offer merit-based aid note the necessity of a need-based program.
"Merit-based scholarships often go to students who could otherwise pay the freight," said Jim Belvin, director of undergraduate financial aid at Duke University. "Our real focus is on need-based aid."
While administrators extol the advantages of a need-based program, some students feel that need-based financial aid programs are inadequate and that merit-based aid is a necessary component of aid packages.
"I just feel like if you earned it, then you should get it," Pomeroy said regarding scholarship money.
Despite Pomeroy's decision in favor of La Salle, Director of Student Financial Aid Bill Schilling said that in general he is not especially concerned with the possibility of losing students to schools that offer merit-based aid.
"Like anything else, people are not going ... to just buy the cheapest if they can afford the product they want," Schilling said.
"The purpose of our aid program is to make Penn affordable for every family, not necessarily make it cheaper."
According to the Student Financial Services Web site, the University is committed to meeting 100 percent of a student's need, as determined by Student Financial Services.
Schilling added that Penn's decision to only offer need-based aid has been a longstanding policy.
When financial aid programs were first being created in the 1950s, "the idea that was pushed is that financial aid should be a tool for providing access to higher education for students who couldn't afford it -- way back when higher education was particularly for the well-to-do," Schilling said.
"And that philosophy sort of gave birth to need-based financial aid as we know it."
Schilling noted that over 40 percent of Penn undergraduates have financial need and are eligible for aid, and offering merit-based aid would only detract from the amount of need-based aid that the University could offer.
"Students who want to go to college should be able to go to college," Schilling said. "And cost should not be a deterrent to that."
