What GW doesn't tell you about merit aid

Lets face it GW and college in general have become very expensive in the past few years and most families of college students now feel great benefits from both merit and need based aid. Opon comming to GW President Knapp made it very clear that controlling tuition and helping students and their families with the cost burden was one of his top priorities, discussed in a recent Hatchet article:

Knapp pointed out that there are ways to escape such debt. He said since his first day in office he has sought to reduce this burden, and pointed to his recently revealed plan to moderate tuition increases, lower freshman housing costs and increase financial aid to incoming students.

However there are ways that Knapp could begin to accomplish this already that he isn't implementing. I found out from a professor this week that when students apply for and recieve departmental aid they often loose merit based aid given by the school as a whole, essentially replacing one aid package with another. This inhibits people from decreasing their debt burden. We as a student body need to lobby our President to convince him to address this issue. Our pockets will be grateful.