I was reading some posts and don’t understand why there would be a difference with merit aid when applying EA vs ED? Why are the posts thinking less money or no money will be given to ED?
Let me start by saying that Tulane admissions says that they will NOT be using the fact of applying ED vs. EA to determine merit awards. Having said that, here is the thinking involved. It’s pretty simple, really.
When you apply EA you are not committed to Tulane if they accept you. Therefore Tulane, presumably, has a strong motive to incentivize the academically strong students with large merit awards and better chances at the full tuition awards, lest they choose another school. So continuing that logic, if you apply ED and are accepted, you are committed to Tulane, so why offer you as much money? There is, presumably, no motivation to incentivize those students, since they cannot choose other schools.
So if you only take the thinking that far, which is easy to do, there is every reason to believe that applying ED to a school like Tulane, who is well known for strong merit awards, would be risking the one piece of leverage the student seems to own, which is their choice of where to attend.
But of course there are a few flaws in that simple reasoning. First is that the statement, “they cannot choose other schools”, is not really accurate. If Tulane turns out to not be affordable to that student, they are perfectly free to choose another school. Since in most cases Tulane will not have the financial information for that student at the time of the admission decision, they would be shooting blind if they didn’t treat that student just like others. And that is even putting aside whether admissions even sees the financial needs of a student, or if there really is a kind of Chinese Wall between FA and admissions. Either way, if the information isn’t in anyone’s hands yet, then it cannot be used to guide a decision.
Second, it assumes a level of cynicism at how admissions works, and particularly Tulane admissions. Of course no one can really know what goes on sometimes, but for the most part admissions is made up of young people, many recent graduates of Tulane, who tend to be on the more idealistic side. Add to that in this case, at least, that the more seasoned people that I know in Tulane admissions have NEVER, EVER, given me reason to doubt their honesty, integrity, and genuine desire to do what most of us would consider the right thing. Add to that even further that Tulane admissions, like most, have a number of student interns working there. If they were to engage in such a practice, don’t you think it would get out? Of course it is possible to be careful and hide such things I suppose, but in general it just seems like if they are going to say one thing and blatantly practice another, it would come out.
Third, and highly related to that, incoming students talk. They will find out quickly if they were treated unfairly, and that makes for very unhappy students and parents, which is awful for the reputation of the school and the stats, since I have no doubt retention would suffer in such a scenario. That directly affects its ranking, and also directly affects 6 year graduation rates which is even more damaging to the ranking. Especially in this day and age of sites like CC, where as we know (and Tulane admission ABSOLUTELY knows) that students readily post their stats and what award they got. A couple of members were quite diligent in keeping a running list and segmenting it by award received, and it made it beautifully clear that there was a strong correlation between a students test scores plus GPA plus strength of schedule and which award they received. It’s very much like the check our free press keeps on government. They try to get away with stuff, but it’s very risky and often blows up in their face. This is even more transparent. So even if you want to be a cynic, which I still maintain is unfair to Tulane admissions given their track record, but even if you still want to be then this makes it very hard to see how they would be able to keep up such a pretense.
Now this is something I have been thinking about since Tulane announced ED, and I am neutral to slightly against the change overall. Why? Mostly because I think too many people will think exactly as far as the simple reasoning and no further, or not be convinced by the other arguments, which is their right of course. They have no history with Tulane, why should they think anything but cynically about it, or for that matter why should they believe me? But in thinking about the merit award angle, which is one of a couple of potentially highly impacted facets of Tulane admissions, this is the way my thinking has gone. I am not claiming it is exhaustive, nor have I discussed it with Tulane admissions in any way at this point. I do hope to when it gets closer to the new admissions cycle to kick in, like perhaps early August. But for now I welcome thoughts on the above.
Thank you, @fallenchemist - very informative! Let me ask your opinion on this- is a student more likely to get merit aid by applying ED then EA to a school like Tulane (one that commonly gives merit to top students)? If a student NEEDS merit and knows that Tulane is their 1st choice, would they have a better chance of getting a large merit award during the ED phase or the EA phase?
I honestly don’t know, but my instinct is to say no. Tulane seems to have been really consistent in making the merit offer match the stats. I won’t say there haven’t been one or two that seem a bit off compared to the hundreds of others, but even if accurate that is a very small percentage. And we are relying on the students to be honest in their reporting, it is certainly possible that a couple said they had higher stats than they actually did. Also we don’t see the entire record, so in a very few cases there could be mitigating factors that affect the decision one way or the other.
Which is all to say that given the highly consistent nature of stats to awards in the past, until we see otherwise I think there is no reason to expect that ED will increase the chances for a higher award. Now it might, and should in many cases, increase the chances for acceptance. Especially for those students that complained Tulane blew them off as overqualified, which meant using Tulane as a safety, when in fact they maintained that Tulane was truly a top choice and somehow Tulane just didn’t pick up on that. ED certainly takes that out of the equation.