Early Action Scholarship Eligibility

The Georgia Tech website states that one must apply by the Early Action deadline for scholarship consideration,

“This is the early action application deadline for Georgia Tech. You must apply by this date to be considered for the Stamps President’s Scholars Program.”
“Students who wish to be considered for academic scholarships, such as the Stamps President’s Scholars Program, Scheller Dean’s Scholarship and others, must apply by October 15.”

I applied Regular Decision before the Oct 15 deadline because I was unsure about my other applications, and thought I would still be eligible for the scholarships, but was I supposed to apply Early Action for the scholarships??

I sent the admission office an email but it may take a week for a response.

Not sure that I understand the question. I thought that any application received before October 15 was considered EA. EA isn’t binding, so there should be no reason to require someone to declare EA or RD. EA applicants can be accepted, denied, or deferred to the RD round where they will be evaluated with all applications received after the 15th.
D applied through the Coalition App and I don’t recall their being an option for RD or EA.

I do not recall if there was different options for EA vs RD, as I cannot look back at Georgia Tech specifically, but for other schools (Michigan for example) there are options for either EA or RD. Perhaps that is just to remind us of the deadline, but the application would still go to EA. Btw I submitted using the common app so there may be some differences

The reply from the admissions office was that one must apply Early Action to be eligible, even though that is not stated anywhere. My whole reason for applying there was in hope of getting a scholarship. Waste of $100

Contact the Admissions rep for your area and ask if you can convert your application to EA since you applied before Oct. 15. If you live nearby, I would suggest even visiting campus to make the request. I must disagree with your statement that GT does not state you must apply EA for merit consideration. It is all over GT’s website, materials and presentations. This link is just one example. https://www.finaid.gatech.edu/incoming-freshman

Explain to them that you thought you were applying in time for scholarship consideration and met all the deadlines for EA consideration. Good luck.

@itsv
Thank you, I already contacted them explaining my information and asking to convert it but have yet to hear back. I do see now through the link that you posted that one must apply Early Action. I spent much time researching but all I could find was the two statements that I quoted above in my original post, I must’ve missed that one page.

What I find odd is the fact that you even have to specify EA or RD. There’s no reason that I can see at all for picking RD if you’re submitting your application before the EA deadline. Who would intentionally want to not be considered for merit aid or would want to delay their decision notification until March?

I think we’re in the same boat with D’s Coalition App submission. The Coalition App is showing that she selected Fall 2018 (Regular Decision) as the term, but she submitted her application 9/25. Her stats won’t put her in the running for merit aid, but we do want the EA consideration and January notification.

What really bothers me is that GT waiting until 10/16 to start accepting Coalition Apps. They’ve stated that apps submitted by 10/25 will be accepted for EA, but I’m concerned that the Coalition flag for RD will negate that. If they had accepted the applications earlier, we would have had more time to fix this.

GT admissions is very helpful. Contact Rick Clark or your local rep for assistance. He has a blog which has useful information so you could post a comment to a recent post if you don’t get a response from admissions. I found emailing my local GT rep always got a prompt response. I don’t have much familiarity with the Coalition App and always try to get my students to use the Common App. I think it being the first year will cause GT to be more flexible with deadlines. It is always a good idea to apply EA to Tech, the results are much better and why drag out a decision to later senior year. If a student’s stats are an issues, they will simply defer the student and wait for updated grades.

The reason why an EA vs RD designation matters is because some schools have a Single Choice Early Action (SCEA) application policy.

For example, a few select institutions such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford offer single-choice early action or restrictive early action. These admission programs incorporate some features of both EA and ED. The result is a policy that is less restrictive than early decision, but more restrictive than early action:

-You CANNOT apply to other colleges through an early admission program.

Changing an application from RD to EA after admissions decisions are being released could possibly violate other school admission policies.

With early intentions such as Early Action come early benefits, one of those being considered in the first pool of scholarship applicants.