<p>Hi- my son is considering applying ED to WUSTL. I think he is a good fit either ED or RD, but he is concerned about being waitlisted and then having to wait and hope to be picked off the waitlist. We are not candidates for financial aid (although I guess he might apply and see if by some miracle he is since he has a twin brother that will also be going to an expensive school) so I'm hoping that he might be eligible for some merit aid through some of the scholarships that they offer.</p>
<p>My question is:</p>
<p>Does anyone have any experience with getting accepted ED and also receiving merit aid? Or, since they know they have you do they tend to not offer it to the ED students?</p>
<p>The merit aid wouldn't necessarily be a deal breaker but getting some money would be nice and if the odds of getting it are substantially higher just by waiting I might encourage him to do that.</p>
<p>I think that with limited knowledge of the inner workings of the admissions and scholarship committees, it is virtually impossible to determine how much (if at all) applying ED reduces one’s chances of getting scholarship money. My hunch is that it does have some negative impact, although I do know a girl who was accepted ED and received a full tuition merit-based scholarship. (That said, she is quite incredible.) My personal advice is to apply Regular Decision unless you know that WashU is absolutely your top choice school and you are very concerned about being waitlisted or rejected. I’m sorry I can’t say anything more concrete, but the application process is somewhat arbitrary and it’s hard to know what the best approach is.</p>
<p>I don’t really know how much I can tell you about the inner workings of admissions and scholarship programs, but I can tell you that I was accepted ED and also am a Danforth scholar. I also know several other Danforths who were accepted ED. I’m not really sure of the ratio that they accepted but I know that they did accept a significant number of EDers for scholarships.</p>