I agree with the others. The key difference is that when you apply ED, you’ve already committed. The other person applied EA (non-binding) so Tulane kept increasing their merit offer to entice that student to enroll. There is no need to incentivize an ED applicant that way.
Of course, you can break an ED commitment if a school is not affordable. Your best bet is to ask for a meeting with a financial aid officer to review your aid package. If there’s a target number you must get to for affordability be direct, but be prepared that it may not be possible if it’s a significant difference from the current offer.
Schools often use merit aid to entice students to enroll…something they don’t have to do with accepted ED applicants. Tulane admissions leadership changed over maybe 2-3 years ago (?)…prior to the new regime very very few accepted ED applicants received any merit aid at all, which Tulane was transparent about on their various blogs and info sessions.
You can certainly ask for more $, but assuming your D is already committed, the chances are slim.
Yep. We both said that. Seems the poster whose child accepted an ED admission is asking about merit offered to an EA or RD (I forget) admission to a student who is being cherry picked .
Things were very different when Earl Retif was at the admissions helm at Tulane. When Dattagupta came in, enrollment management changed a lot and frequently. Now we are watching Shawn Abbot. Don’t have a good feel yet.
Do not forget that tuition and room and board will increase every year! Scholarship will stay the same. It is not a good idea to overstretch yourself no matter how good is the school.
It depends on which scholarship is awarded. My s had a full tuition scholarship that covered the tuition no matter what it was. And he moved off campus after sophomore year.
Momsearch brings up an EXCELLENT point. Understand the dynamics (which means the small print, or what isn’t covered in the official letter) of your aid package! People don’t generally buy a car without understanding the warranty (what’s covered, what’s not) or buy a house without knowing whether the washer/dryer stays or goes. But we read so many sad stories on CC (and know folks in real life) who did not understand how their aid worked and are now between a rock and a hard place.
It’s ok to reach out to your adcom or financial aid officer to ask “Will the scholarship go up if tuition goes up, and if so, by how much?”. It’s ok to reach out to ask “If I have a medical withdrawal, can I assume that my package will stay the same once I come back?” it’s ok to ask “If I win a departmental scholarship or award my junior and senior years, will that stack on top of the merit award I’m already getting, or will that just replace it dollar for dollar?”.
Don’t be shy. And do NOT sign on the dotted line without figuring out if you can actually afford what you are agreeing to!
I recently met someone (IRL, not online) who did not know that work study didn’t mean that the college just stuffed that amount of money in her kid’s account every semester. So the kid never applied for a work study job first semester; is now behind the 8-ball financially because it’s April and the kid hasn’t worked and therefore, hasn’t earned what the WS award said he was eligible for. There aren’t enough hours in the week for the kid to “make up” the lost earnings and the family is now scrambling, realizing very belatedly that those emails urging their kid to log on and apply for a WS job weren’t spam.
Which student are you referring to? The one who was cherry picked or the ED one with the set FA package? I assume the latter? Their FA could change every year depending on circumstances too! More to worry about!
Gosh. Someone did not educate students what was Work Study. I can see how people can believe that it is some kind of scholarship…
On top of it, WS positions on campus are not guaranteed and all can be filled. So WS is never guaranteed. Most schools even write it down in FA packet…
Also WS is FA and is not guaranteed every year. We knew that DD’s WS will be there only for year one due to changes in FAFSA (we got eligible only due to 3 kids in college this year). Next year 3 kids in college will give us 0 WS. We are OK with it. (Actually the program in school allowed all students currently in the program to stay without reapplying somehow, but this is an exception).
Ah, thanks. They posted elsewhere that they got an additional $5k for applying for something (not sure what) and that they didn’t qualify for federal aid. I assume that means they are full pay. Am guessing too that FAFSA info still isn’t available…
And good point about understanding one’s student aid package! So many do not!
See it on a lot of threads this time of year where a family feels like they hit the jackpot because the kid got a $X (large) merit award… “now we’re waiting for the F/A package to see what that adds to it” - not knowing that for MOST schools in MOST situations that merit award is going to be considered part of the FA Package with the goal of getting the family to EFC/SAI.
And some families think their student can get a campus job (well yes some can, but…) many don’t realize that campus jobs are commonly part of a FA package
Brodaddy - my student applied Early Action, and also applied for the Paul Tulane & Deans Scholar awards, and upon Early Action acceptance was immediately awarded around $25k in merit scholarship.
We did NOT apply for financial aid (we had a one-time windfall the year before and decided not to apply for financial aid at all because it would appear that we made a lot more many than every other year - it was a gamble…we figured we could ask for financial aid the following year which was a huge gamble!! Stupid really).
So at this point we were thinking, “ok, instead of $80k, they are asking us to pay $55k total cost of attendance.” That was better than $80k!
But our student had lots of colleges to still hear back from. So we did not commit to Tulane at that point. I think not committing is an advantage. They have more incentive to incentivize you when you don’t commit!
Then around this time (March I think) they increased the merit scholarship to around $40k. That’s when we really started to consider Tulane. It brought the cost near public universities.
I think another reason Rulane may have increased the scholarship is because our student had really, really high levels of “demonstrated interest.” Probably was off the charts in demonstrated interest. My guess is the algorithm said to Tulane: this kid REALLY loves Tulane, and is well qualified (near perfect test scores and top 5 % GPA in his class), so you might have to incentivize this student to choose Tulane.
I hope this is helpful. I also think our student had a certain amount of luck. For some reason Tulane found something in our student that they wanted. Only one other college offered our student a significant merit scholarship (Northeastern). Also about $40k. The rest were either no merit money, or a very token amount (I think one offered $5k!).
I hope this is helpful. I think part of Tulane’s strategy was to admit a lot of students during Early Decision, and these tend to be families who are paying more tuition than those who apply Early Action or Regular Decision. Because they value their first choice college.
I hope you get a great aid package and that your student loves attending Tulane. It’s a great school with a TON of opportunities!! I think it is a wonderful university for any kid who is looking at opportunities to do research or work with professors or work anywhere on or off campus.