My D was ED to Syracuse and received excellent merit aid. She did the optional admissions interview as we were told merit aid is determined by the interview. She could apply for 3 majors. If she didn’t get into her first choice major ED then it wasn’t binding.
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One school which provides specific ED merit on their website is St Olaf which guarantees $20k for those who apply and get accepted ED. The general experience with most schools, unless they specifically state otherwise, is that ED applicants get less merit since the schools don’t have to compete to get the ED student to enroll.
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@Socaldriver,
good luck to you and your D getting good merit aid with Mac! it seems they are considering it.
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Thank you to all of you who shared their experience/thoughts.
The common denominator is that there aren’t incentives for colleges to offer merit to ED applicants.
My conclusion based on a couple of colleges (not statistically valid)-
some colleges that are not really selective offer merit $$ to ED kids to attract high achieving students.
From my general understanding, the top schools dont give generous merit aid and the schools that do give generous merit typically aren’t highly selective so ED may not be necessary.
It seems there are a lot of schools with artificially high MSRP that students dont pay. Maybe it’s a marketing strategy that makes parents feel good that instead of $60k, they received a scholarship for $25k so $35k tuition is a good deal when most people wouldnt pay $60k to attend that particular school.
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CFP, thanks for explaining. It totally makes sense.