Dependancy on ED/EA

soozievt
Sat, 22 Oct 2005 13:12:04 +0000

BHG, nice to see you back here too.

Actually that might be true about merit money in some peoples’ motivations but not all. For instance, for my older D, barely any schools on her list even GIVE merit aid…like Ivies and some of the most selective schools just have need based so merit aid is not the motivation in those cases for ED or EA. In fact, for need based aid, it is better NOT to do ED as you can compare packages plus schools may be less motivated to make a generous offer when you have committed to going there no matter what.

As far as merit aid, we never got involved in applying to schools to get that. For D1, we assumed none of her schools offered merit aid. As it turns out, two do but we did not realize that until April when she got generious offers (one was Smith and the Lehigh one was a $15,000 merit scholarship) in RD. For D2, again, we were unaware of the merit aid as well. Turns out, every school that admitted her offered her merit scholarships, plus need based aid, pleasant surprise. Right now, she is going to a school where she got a $20,000/year scholarship (all four years) in the RD round. So, in my kids’ cases, for schools that DO offer merit awards, they got them and they got them in the RD round.

So, what you are saying about merit aid as being the reason for applying EARLY may be true in some cases, but I am not sure that is the main thing driving the ED/EA frenzy. Lots of CC kids are doing ED and lots of them are going for the Ivies and elite schools and those do not have merit aid so I’m not sure we can use merit aid as the main reason for this ED trend/frenzy.

Susan

PS, to BHG, on a second read of your post, I realize you MAY be talking of rolling admissions schools and in those cases applying early and if going for merit, makes sense. I know one of your kids is at a rolling school. I was not really talking of that type of situation. You mentioned applying by Dec. and I was only discussing the ED schools where you apply by Nov. 1 or 15.