Merit can take a while before they actually award it. However, with 4.0/1540 I’d be surprised if she doesn’t receive the $20k merit scholarship.
I do not know if UMN awards need-based financial aid to OOS students. Have you run the NPC?
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We have. Unaffordable unless she receives more than the 20k. UMN has a number of need-based academic scholarships, however – which I guess are technically merit, not need-based aid – which could stack and make it possible if she got lucky.
So… not really FA technically – tho she’s Pell-eligible and that’s a known quantity – but I’m assuming it takes a while to award those need-based merit awards.
Hello, just wondering if people here know that there will be admitted student days (CSE) in January, February, or March? Unfortunately we have schedule conflict, so we couldn’t make the December one…
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My D26 applied early action 10/24/25. She is oos, 4.0 UW, 4.15 weighted, 7 APs, AP Scholar, test optional. She was accepted 11/3/25 into the college of liberal arts. Accepted into the honors college 11/10/25 and she just found out today she received the National Scholarship of $20,000 a year for 4 years. A really great option for her!
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Just heard back and she got $20k national + $10k gold (contingent on NMF) 
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Did you find out merit via email or snail mail?
How did you hear?
she got an email saying to check her portal
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She got an email to check her portal
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S26 received the same package as well. I think we received the email regarding portal update early last week.
Grateful for the offer. Makes it cheaper for us than in-state UCs, so a really strong option for S. He’s excited.
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I’m more excited than she is! But she’s still not done with applications, so – I get it.
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Is there a specific pattern (time of day/day of week) for decisions? Do they send high GPA/scores earlier? By major?
They send out decisions every Monday evening.
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So technically UMN has an EA decision date of end January, although they send some decisions out on a rolling basis earlier. Judging by last year’s thread, the majority of students heard in January while the higher scores (I guess the sure admittances) tended to hear during the rolling decision period.
I will say that although the majority do come out Monday’s around 4:20pm CST, there are still students who hear other days. I’ve even seen some on Saturday’s!
They list EA 1 as Nov 1st, and EA 2 is Dec 1st app deadline; I do find it offputting that they’re sending out some decisions to students within a week, while others have submitted in August or September and still haven’t heard. It would be nice if they’d state that they basically auto-admit 4.0gpa’s immediately, and anyone else is going to take weeks/months.
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I didn’t even realize there was an EA2. They give this on their website:
Students who submit their complete applications by the November 1 Early Action I Deadline will receive an admission decision of admit, defer, or deny in Application Tracker by January 31
Students who submit their complete applications by the December 1 Early Action II Deadline will receive an admission decision of admit, defer, or deny in Application Tracker by February 15
Tbh if it wasn’t for CC I would have had no idea that they release any rolling decisions - it’s not mentioned anywhere on their website that I saw. My C26 got asked to upload 1st semester grades when available, so I’m assuming that we won’t hear till after that. (The portal did say they were still considered EA.) It’s probably last on my kid’s list at the moment (mainly because their major has competitive secondary admission and they already have other good direct admit options) so they are not too fussed about this but if it was a top choice it would be extremely frustrating.
Was your child emailed about uploading first semester grades? Or did they happen to check the portal and see it was requested? My son’s counselor sent off quarter 1 grades to all schools in the common app, after my son requested. So now it shows the Option Report 1 as being downloaded by every school that he applied to. We figured it couldn’t hurt as it shows all A’s and he’s in 4 APs right now. UMN is my son’s top choice so the waiting is really starting to get to him. His only bad grades were in freshman year, straight A’s since. But because of freshman year his UW gpa is 3.47 and W is 3.58. He has a 35 ACT that he submitted, with a perfect subscore of 36 in science and math. He’s applied to CSE, wants to major in Chemistry or Physics.
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They do state on their website (though it is hard to find): Applications completed by their corresponding deadlines will receive an admit, defer or deny decision by its provided date. The University of Minnesota sends admission decisions on a rolling basis beginning in the fall. Because our committee conducts holistic review and is considering students for direct admission to eight U of M colleges, our review takes time to complete.
I will say, I am on reddit more than CC forums, and in the reddit groups (umn and A2C) many 4.0 and higher students are hearing decisions from UMN very quickly - within less than a week for some.
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No, it was just on the portal and needs to be updated on STARS when available. I believe it was there the first time they logged in - their portal Invite also seemed to take a couple days longer than some others here reported. The STARS setup was initiated by UMN and there were errors with the common app import, including not having listed any senior year courses .. no idea whether that was part of why they asked for S1 grades. (We didn’t actually realize that they had prompted the STARS set-up until C26 went to set up STARS for Pitt, which was maybe a week or two later…)
Our first quarter grades are not an “official” report so our counselors say to only send those to schools that specifically request them so we didn’t (though I would have loved to).
Oh, this sounds similar to (a little better than) C26. 3.4 uw and 1500 SAT. Counselor explained poor freshman year grades.