Thank you for your response @thumper1 By Early Decision to med school, i meant that she would be committing to a specific medical school and would not be applying via the regular applicant regular decision cycle. What i meant by “leverage” was that if she has not applied/committed to a specific med school via Early Decision, then she would have the freedom/ability to consider and choose the best merit aid offer, assuming that med schools offered any merit aid. Another assumption is that we would not qualify for any significant need-based aid.