<p>mommafrog, is acceptance of the scholarship separate from acceptance of the offer of admission? Your post seems to suggest it is. In either event, I would also check to determine whether the admissions deposit is refundable up until May 1. The papers your daughter received should spell this out. What I would then do (assuming this is not an ED situation), is accept the scholarship offer. The only consideration I would think through first is whether you must accept the offer of admission in order to accept the scholarship and if so, whether the admissions deposit is refundable. As a general proposition, once your daughter has all her acceptances and financial offerings in hand, you are in a better negotiating position because you can tell the school that you have (hopefully) higher packages elsewhere and really need them to sweeten the deal to enable your daughter to attend. At this point, they have no incentive to increase their offer; when you can say that your daughter may have to consider going elsewhere due to finances, they may be inclined to increase their offer and will also know better at that point whether they have any money left over to spread around. </p>
<p>This sounds like another variation of the theme “accept the money we offer you now or risk losing it”. I would be a smart consumer and hedge my bets now, while maintaining full freedom to make a different decision later. Schools that do this really are ridiculous. I wouldn’t but a car based on the “special price today, act now or lose it” approach to sales, why should families feel pressured to buy a college education that way? And that’s really all it is, discredited and disreputable tactics from consumer sales now applied to college education.</p>