Also, I was looking into certain high value named merit scholarships, and I found out that the one at UNC has (had) a deadline of October 1st, AND you had to be recommended by your school, AND only certain schools were eligible/registered/vetted to be “referring” schools. Wow. They do take “referrals” from the early action pool, whose application deadline is October 15th, too. But it really seemed that you have to be well-connected to even know about these scholarships, let alone to be able to jump through all the hoops early enough to apply for them.