I was actually surprised that my daughter didn’t get a penny of merit money from Dickinson. It’s a moot point because she will not be attending there, but she has gotten pretty generous merit aid from all the other schools that have accepted her, including her top choice school, to which she applied ED2 and was not, in my opinion, an applicant who would have stood out above other applicants and been so deserving of merit money. (just an aside, she has withdrawn her applications from the other schools as she is supposed to, It’s just that a few schools sent out acceptances either before or at the same time as her ED2 acceptance.)
Am I misunderstanding how this works? Isn’t merit aid awarded based on academic achievement in comparison to the “average” accepted applicant? She was offered merit scholarships ranging from $14,000-$27,000 from other schools. If she hadn’t applied ED anywhere, or if she had been rejected from the ED school, I think she would have wound up choosing another school over Dickinson for this reason, which would have been a shame because she really liked it there.