Does applying ED effect Merit Aid?

Parent Cafe
21

It has always been my understanding that merit money is used to entice high performing students away from higher ranked schools. Giving merit money during the ED round means that the money is now being given only as a reward… rather than as a way to entice the student to attend. I won’t say it never happens… because it was reported that it does and I have no way of knowing for sure. Is it common? No.

If your son has stats that place him at the top at GW, he should not have a problem getting in … and then you could see if merit is awarded.

22

Don’t apply ED if your decision is depending on merit scholarship. If admitted, you have a very small window to decide while the merit scholarship notification may be not out yet. By the agreement, you need to withdraw all other applications once your son is admitted ED. Are you willing to do that and lose the chances at other schools? Even if you turn down the ED admission and apply again to other schools RD afterward, you may want to talk to the GC at school to see if there is any restriction. In my D’s school, if one rejects an ED admission offer, the school would only process in state public school applications afterward.

23

Maybe, maybe not. Confusing “effect” with “affect” might, however. :slight_smile:

24

@menloparkmom

" guess I choose to believe that admissions officers and financial aid officers are not liars whose sole goal it is to deceive full-pay students into applying ED so that they can trick them out of being able to “negotiate” better merit".

wow. just wow…
Yes - when an admissions officer and a financial aid officer both say you will be considered for financial aid and merit the same as if you are applying RD I believe them. If they had responded something like “if you are concerned about merit I would suggest applying RD” then I would take that as you had better apply RD to get merit. I guess I believe what people say. I believe that people have honor and would not lie to me when directly asked a question. Wow indeed!

the rules of applying ED are clearly stated, and only those parents who think they can “negotiate” their way around them, by virtue of their wealth, or connections or who knows what else, would take offense that those who know how the process works are being “offensive” .
I’m sorry the word “negotiate” set you off. You could have an offer of financial aid/merit from which to “compare” the merit/aid you receive from your ED school by either applying ED 2 or applying to a school with rolling admissions. I don’t advocate trying to bend the rules because a person is wealthy or connected. I’m full pay not wealthy or connected in any way. Many families would fall into full pay situations without being “wealthy” or “connected”. I advocate researching each specific school in terms of merit. When you blanket statement that people should not apply ED unless they want to give up merit that is inaccurate for some schools. I know two private schools off of the top of my head that provide merit grids and you know exactly what you are getting for merit regardless of ED or RD. So I take offense at you misleading people to believe that all schools treat ED merit the same. I am offended by the things you say about people who are full-pay and are considering going ED.

The CC community is here to educate all students and parents of the realities of the college application process, regardless of their fortune. We do not “discriminate”.
If you don’t think the things you have said are discriminatory or offensive. You should re-read your comments. You clearly have an issue with full-pay students and feel they already have advantages and shouldn’t be using ED.

so sorry that you did not find others here who share your sense of entitlement.
not…
I don’t think I or my children are entitled to anything. I grew up poor. I earned my way through college with scholarships, aid and work while still being actively involved in my campus. A feat in which you said poor kids could not achieve in your early post. I earned what I have the old fashioned way through work and hard effort. What I do want is for people to have accurate information and not blanket statements and I take offense that you can’t even have a civil discussion on this board. That is why I am leaving not because other’s don’t share my sense of “entitlement”.

25

For what it’s worth, I think @sahmkc is more right than not, and @menloparkmom the opposite on this issue. (And, by the way, divergent opinions are usually expressed on CC. Just not always in a two-hour window on Suinday night.)

ED/merit policies and strategies differ widely from college to college. The standard folklore about not applying ED if you want merit aid is worth paying attention to, because there’s a lot of experience baked into it. But it’s not an absolute truth across the board. If you care about a specific institution, go deeper than that. If you are in the OP’s position, it behooves you to investigate the specific college carefully rather than relying on general bromides and anecdotes about other institutions. Or even anecdotes about the same institution that are a few years old, since these practices are definitely subject to change.

Yes, it’s true that in many/probably most cases, applying ED is inconsistent with getting the best merit aid, or any merit aid at all. Unless, that is, the college has automatic or first-come-first-served objective merit standards, which some colleges do have.

No, it’s not true that, as @menloparkmom put it, in an ED situation the college holds all the cards. The college holds more cards than it would in most RD situations . . . maybe. (What happens in RD if you don’t have a better financial option that the kid and family feel good about? That can happen, too.) A kid accepted ED can decline the admission on financial grounds. If he or she does that, that’s it for the college, there’s no RD round, but it’s absolutely possible to say to an ED college, “This is my first choice, I desperately want to come here, but it won’t work for my parents and it won’t be fair to my siblings unless I can get the price down by $X.” If you are prepared to walk on that basis, that’s a lot of negotiating leverage.

And more traditional leverage may come if you have applied to and been accepted by EA or rolling admissions colleges. Not all of them make merit offers by December, but some do. It may very well be the case that, say, an in-state directional public with rolling admissions and automatic merit could provide an excellent stalking-horse for negotiation with an expensive private like GW. "My family is willing to pay more for your wonderful college than we would pay East Podunk State, but it can’t be more than twice as much . . . "

As a matter of admissions strategy, it’s not obvious at all that colleges can ignore ED applicants with their merit money. Any college would love to have high-stats students who really love that college applying ED. If concerns about possible merit awards (discounts) are stopping students like that from applying ED, the colleges ought to be going all out to assuage those concerns.

26

I am an alumni ambassador for CWRU and i asked about ED and Merit and they said that the plan (ED, EA, RD) has “no bearing on merit money awarded.”. If you think about it, the purpose of ED is to get some of their class set early. If colleges are known for not giving merit awards to EDers, then who would do that?

One of my daughters applied ED to our State College…the cost was affordable (30K) with or without merit money (she got a little). She had a clear first choice school. The other one did not apply ED…she had no clear first choice but did apply EA some places.

27

The full ride to Vanderbilt (I believe) is from a separate scholarship competition that students have to write separate essays from the ones to get admitted to the school. So, it probably doesn’t matter whether an application was ED or RD in THAT case.

28

It completely depends on the college. Some award merit aid automatically if certain academic performance criteria are met; in such cases, applying ED shouldn’t matter. Some endowed merit scholarships are restricted to students meeting various other kinds of criteria (e.g., geographic or other demographic criteria, intended major, etc.); in such cases ED might or might not matter, depending on how much money is available for those scholarships and how many enrolling students might qualify. In other cases the school has broader discretion to tailor merit awards to the individual case, in which case it is usually used as selective tuition discounting to entice high-stats students who might otherwise choose not to attend. It’s in this latter category of cases that a school would be most likely to decide that those admitted in the ED round are already highly likely to attend, so most or all of the merit money should be reserved for the RD round to seal the deal with highly desirable students who are likely to be shopping around with other options.

I have no idea how GW uses its merit money or what strings are attached to it, and no one else on this thread seems to know, either, so people are generalizing from their own experiences and general hearsay. Probably best to ask the admissions staff at GW, or to ask on the GW-specific CC thread as others there may have some relevant experience.

29

Again, the issue is not whether or not merit aid is ever awarded in ED, it is the amount and quality of that aid. It is simple market economics. ED is choosing to reserve a spot in a seller’s market, depending only on the good faith of the seller to set the price and discount, if any. RD is choosing to participate in a buyer’s market, with opportunities to compare awards and potentially negotiate for a better discount, but with less certainty about whether the desired product will be available. In any financial transaction there is an opening offer or bid, and there is the final price that is agreed upon.

GWU has an enrollment management division with a staff of 100 employees – https://enrollment.gwu.edu/

See also http://consulting.aacrao.org/publications-events/publications/leveraging-financial-aid/ to understand the link between enrollment management and financial aid.

There obviously is no guarantee of merit aid in the RD round either – colleges will leverage their aid dollars depending on their institutional needs and that depends on multiple factors, not just a student’s stats. But the student who has multiple RD admissions is always in a better bargaining position than the student who is tied to an ED commitment. And as others have pointed out, the student who is a contender for significant aid probably is doesn’t need whatever perceived boost of admission chances that ED could offer, so isn’t really getting much benefit from ED other than the certainty of knowing early one where he will attend college.

30

ED students can apply to other schools but are required to withdraw those applications if accepted ED.

31

If I read the GW article correctly it’s possible that they’ll offer more merit aid in the fall to a high stat kid they want than they might in the spring when the run out of money. I really don’t know what to recommend to the OP because schools are so coy on the subject (including some cases of past lying) and each school probably does things a little differently.

My older son got an early (but not binding) acceptance at one school that let him know he would be getting some sort of merit offer, but they wouldn’t tell him what exactly until the sent out the spring acceptances.

32

I don’t think the colleges are being coy. I think families (and guidance counselors) are naive if they believe the merit aid is anything but an enrollment management tool. That’s what it is folks. It’s not like winning an Emmy because the Academy thought your kids performance over the last four years surpassed that of the other actors nominated. It’s not a Nobel prize or even “Miss Congeniality” at a beauty pageant.

It’s an enrollment tool.

To the OP- if your son has what GW wants, they will admit him early or regular. If your son REALLY has what GW wants, their models and algorithms will spit out the minimum amount they need to dole out to your family in order to get your son to say yes to attending. Not some random number, not a number which puts GW into the comfort range of affordability, not a number which allows you to allocate your college savings to your other children.

If GW is your son’s clear first choice, and if you can afford it even if he gets zero in discounts, and you’ve all decided that you’re prepared to commit if he gets accepted, then the real decision you need to make is whether or not the sure thing (admitted to GW but unable to compare their discount to that of other schools) is “worth it” to your family.

Many families would decide that they’d rather their kid cast a wider net so they could compare price tags in March/April. Which you will not be able to do by applying to GW early.

That’s your choice. But go into the process knowing that in general, the algorithms are designed to snag the kids and the class a college wants at the lowest possible price discount per kid. 20 kids who get to brag “i got a merit scholarship” of 10K per kid costs the university $200K in lost revenue. 10 kids who get to brag “I got a merit scholarship” of 30K per year costs the university $300K per year AND only gets them 10 high stats kids (fewer if it’s a low yielding school facing competitors with deeper pockets).

33

I wanted come back and give an update on our experience with ED and Merit Aid. True to their word to evaluate ED and RD candidates equally in the application of merit, AU awarded my son a Dean’s Merit Scholarship. His stats put him above the 25% and AU only awards 20% of their available funds to merit-based aid. Only the top 10-15% are awarded merit and our merit award fell in the middle of what is offered in automatic merit. This award was pretty much what we expected based on where his stats fell - above the 25% but not at the very tippy-top. He is still in the running for a larger selective scholarship through the Honors program. We are full-pay and our CSS & FASFA indicated this, so no financial consideration was given in the award of this merit. So my advice to future parents & students who are thinking of applying ED is to research the specific school. Don’t just blanketly decided that going ED means giving up Merit because not all colleges approach ED & Merit the same.

34

What AU are you talking about? Arizona? Auburn? American?

35

Sorry, @thumper1 American University. I think it was way earlier in the thread.

36

The hidden cost of ED is not necessarily knowing what merit money might have been offered from other schools to be able to truly compare. If an ED school is affordable without causing great hardship, no problem. But many families need to be able to evaluate more than one option.

As was said upthread:

Some schools send merit awards with acceptance letters. Others don’t send them until much later, often after they’ve had a chance to evaluate the entire pool of applicants. And some have competitive merit that isn’t awarded until April or May. So by withdrawing from those schools you lose the chance to compare.

We knew our kids needed merit so they applied EA everywhere (many merit deadlines required EA application dates). One kid didn’t hear from her top choice until May - it was nerve-wracking. She knew she had affordable options, but was elated to see the offer from her top school came in as affordable. If she’d applied ED and it hadn’t been affordable, she would not have had the other options since she would have had to withdraw her application.

37

The OP asked if going ED meant giving up merit. My answer has been and will always be - it depends on the school. My post was meant to show that some colleges do give ED applicants merit and quite frankly the merit my son deserved given where he falls in their applicant pool. If you are in the position of wanting or needing to compare packages, then obviously you should not apply ED. But that was not the OP’s question. In our case, we had already applied to a rolling admissions school and had received an offer of admissions & financial aid package. We were offered more merit at the rolling admission school, but I would expect that given the stats of both schools.

38

At Case Western " the decision plan has no bearing on merit money awarded."

39

Sounds like he decided to switch the ED from GW to American? Congrats to him!

Isn’t a kid that is competitive for merit quite likely to get in to the school either ED or RD? There would be no real advantage to ED in that case, unless the kid is absolutely certain this school is it and doesn’t want to take a shot at any others.

Nobody is saying that ED kids don’t get merit money, but only that a kid should not apply ED if they need merit money to attend as (with the very few exceptions of automatic merit) there is no way to know ahead of time how much will be given. I also thought the ED financial exemption was if the need-based aid did not match what was expected on the NPC, not because a merit scholarship did not come through (to me an exception would be if the school listed requirements for automatic merit but did not offer it). Kids can withdraw from ED but can face consequences in the RD round or from their HSs who do not want the reputation of supporting kids who withdraw from ED.

Ethically, the ED contract is to attend if admitted, with the need-based aid as expected from the school’s NPC. To those who have gotten lucky with ED and merit, that is great.

40

@mom2and I was not the original poster. I wanted to encourage the OP & other’s considering ED to look at each school and evaluate the track record of the school. At American high stats kids are often turned down during RD (23% acceptance rate) as they try to avoid admission offers to students who they think are using AU as a safety to GW and GTown. The American thread has several examples of this trend. AU was always my son’s first choice as they have a unique major he was interested in and he liked the traditional campus better than GW’s urban campus. Some posters adamantly believe that if you go ED you give up merit opportunities at your ED school. That because they have your commitment to attend, they will not offer you merit or offer lower merit. While this may be true at some schools it is not true at all schools. My DH and I had a range of where we felt American’s Merit would come in at and it literally fell right in the middle of that range ( it was a $4,000 spread). This is why I think it’s really important to research each school and not make blanket statements. If my son had applied RD there was a decent chance that he could have been denied admission, but instead, he has happily been accepted ED into his top choice school with what we feel is fair merit.