My daughter received a letter of acceptance to UM. She had heard from a few friends that she should wait for a bit to accept the offer because it will increase the chances of a merit-based scholarship. Is this true? If so, how long is the recommended wait time?
Thanks!
Is your D in-state or OOS
Did you run the net price calculator what are your D’s Stts
In-state.
Already ran net-price-- only qualify for work-study.
My question is only in the context of merit-based.
University of Michigan…great school.
If your daughter applied and was accepted early action, there is no need to accept any offer of admission until the very last day of April.
Will this increase her merit aid chances? Who knows? But what’s the rush to accept. Just wait.
She might get an awesome offer from another college in the meantime!
If your D was going to be offered merit, it would have been granted by admissions and part of her acceptance letter. Does her stats place her at or above the 75TH percentile or top of the applicant pool
What are her test scores?
I don’t know the answer, but I’d think that Michigan isn’t waiting for students to snap up the offers so that they can give the money to the students who hold out. They have offers out to thousands of students. They have applications coming in from thousands of students.
I think if you want merit aid, you need to follow up and see what you can do to push it along.
I believe the information above about Michigan’s acceptance letter including merit aid is incorrect. The merit aid information comes out around late January. EA applicants found out if they were admitted around December 21. Our student was admitted and is probably around the 90%+ range of applicants based on published information. May not get merit aid, but certainly are not ruling it out just because the admissions information only said “congratulations” you are admitted…
That is not true. Most accepted students would not pay the deposit until much later while most merit scholarship notices will come out in Feb to March. These are unrelated processes. There are different levels of merit aids. Some are relatively easy to get, like the nonrenewable Regents scholarship for in state students. Other major scholarships are very difficult to get. If your stat is not at least above the 75th percentile, you should not expect any. Less than 2% of admitted students receive the large scholarships between $5000-20000 per year. In any case, you may want to hold on till you receive the financial aid package before paying the deposit. Even after you receive the estimated financial aid package, it will be revised throughout the summer.
Hard to know about ‘general’ and ‘specific’ to Michigan; also things are with a changing paradigm. Who knows what Michigan is looking for for some of their merit awards, and maybe it does depend on some specifics on the student – or maybe even departmental…an under-represented base with admitted student.
Perhaps being in-state, you may know some students that have won recent merit awards, or your HS GC can be helpful in knowing specifics with Michigan and some of their merit awards.
Qualifying for work study, does that also mean you qualify for Pell Grant and perhaps other state grants? I am not in MI so I don’t know the paradigm there.
Tagging @romanigypsyeyes
Qualify for work study just means you have need after other financial aid. It is totally different from Pell Grant eligibility. There are school specific scholarships, for example, for LSA or CoE. The real departmental scholarships are mostly for sophomore or above that have declared major with some exceptions like music performance. Most departmental scholarships have a need component. There are some changes in need based aids at UMich recently, while there is no major change in merit scholarships.
I’m not an expert but I seriously doubt when you accept has anything to do with it. Merit here is for the very tippy top as they’ve adopted more of a need-based model.
Wow. Thanks for all of the input. I had her accept the admissions offer. We will wait and see.
.My daughter is going to wait to accept her U of M admission until we see her financial aid package. I don’t know where she falls in with the rest of the students, probably not the tippy top for the exclusive merit awards given, but we are going to wait and see!