So we know at least last year (or at least more than what we have seen reported on the forum here this year) Syracuse was offering late merit offers, and later confirmed it had not met its enrollment target (discussed in link). The news yesterday is that it will not meet its enrollment target again for this year. They blame, among other things, the number of high school graduates having peaked and the issues with international students - factors that could be expected to apply to other colleges as well of course, and possibly the motivation behind some of the merit offers mentioned above.
SU is already focused on 2027 fall enrollment and Haynie plans to use “entrepreneurial recruitment strategies suited to these conditions” to attract more students next year.
It will be interesting to see what these strategies are and whether they include higher merit. As balancing the books is the issue, they would presumably need to find the balance between enough merit to attract and not so much as to make it financially infeasible to have a particular student attending.