In terms of ED and merit aid, I think some schools advertise a minimum merit aid award in order to assuage the fears of people who think that if they apply ED that they won’t get any merit aid, rather than trying to bribe people into doing so. I suspect the schools that do so tend to be more of “buyers” for students of their desired caliber rather than “sellers” in using Jeff Selingo’s terminology. If St. Olaf was an hour outside of NYC or Philly, or if Grinnell was in the middle of NY or MA, they might not need to so strongly promote the fact that they give merit aid to their ED applicants.
In terms of schools that offer merit aid to very few students, but the packages are very significant in terms of $$$, I too am skeptical that ED applicants get as much of a look as the RD applicants that schools are trying to woo. I’d be very interested to see the percentage of full ride scholarship recipients (WashU, Vandy, Emory, etc.) who are coming from ED rather than RD. I doubt that it would be proportional to their admitted students.
With respect to WashU’s admissions updates, I like that their EA round will be decided prior to January 1. I hope, but doubt, that they will make it an up/down decision with no deferral or waitlist to RD. Of course, I wish that all schools that offered EA would share results prior to 12/31 and give an up/down decision.