<p>Does applying early decision reduce the likelihood of receiving merit scholarships at Rice? Does anyone have any experience with this? The admissions officers with whom I have spoken claim that all applicants are evaluated for scholarships regardless of which decision plan they apply under. I am a little skeptical.</p>
<p>Hi Momjen,</p>
<p>I had the same question and recieved the same answer when I was applying to Rice in Fall 2003 (ahh, I'm getting so old!).</p>
<p>Anyway, I too was completely skeptical, figuring that there was no way Rice would give merit aid to a student who had already committed to attending. However, Rice was my first choice, and I eventually decided to apply ED because I believed that there was an admissions boost for doing so (quite debatable, but that's another issue).</p>
<p>To make a long story short, I was shocked to learn several months later that I had in fact been awarded quite significant merit aid (nearly $10,000/year for 4 years). Last spring, I was talking to an admissions counselor and mentioned how surprised I was to recieve merit aid. She said that Rice feels that it is unfair to penalize students who apply ED by denying them merit aid.</p>
<p>One note is that merit aid amounts have gone up quite a lot since I was accepted into Rice. The awards I recieved were worth a total of $38,000 over four years, but those same awards now would be worth something like $69,000! Which is excellent for kids applying now, but a little disheartening to me!</p>
<p>Anyway, I do not know how well my situation generalizes across all rice applicants, but that is my experience with ED and merit aid, FWIW.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply! I wonder if there are other students with an experience similar to yours.</p>
<p>Momjen, you are really a skeptic! ;)</p>
<p>Do merit scholarships take away the amount you receive in aid? For example, if you were going to receive 20k in aid, but then get a 10k scholarship, do you still pay 20k per year, the difference being that 10k of your aid, is replaced? If that aid came in the form of something which you dont have to repay, like rice's many aid scholarships, then there is no advantage to getting the merit.</p>
<p>Now if it takes away what you would pay in loans, that is saving you money, but I don't think that is always the case. I think they try to get to your EFC in any way they can. Does anyone know exactly?</p>
<p>yes.. if you get 20k in grants and 10k in scholarship, then u still get 20k totally.. they reuce the grant</p>
<p>And yes, as jenskate1 said,, amounts have skyrocketed... Rice recieved a 32 million donation last year from some nice people :)</p>
<p>And Rice is generous with aid... they will meet your EFC... but yeah, need aid = COST - Scholarships -EFC</p>
<p>Well, it's true that they reduce the amount of grants first. </p>
<p>But, say that the student budget is 38,914 (which it is). And say your EFC is 25,000 (for many people it's less and for many people it's more). This means that Rice has guaranteed to give you $13,914 in need based aid. So, the first thing Rice does is give you loans. The maximum they give you in loans is like $2700/year. Then they give you some money in work study, which means that you have to work to earn it. So maybe that's $2000/year. This means that you will get a grant of $9214. </p>
<p>Now assume that you are awarded the trustee's distinguished scholarship at 13,500/year and the century scholarship at 7,500/year, for a total of 21,000/year (at least for the first 2 years).</p>
<p>So, all of your need based aid goes out the window. Meaning, you don't take out loans or have to work for the money (well, you have to do some research for century scholars, but yeah). In addition, you would still have $7086 per year in merit aid applied to your EFC. </p>
<p>So yeah, if you think that your need based aid will be worth more than about $26,000/year (or that your EFC will be less than about $12,000), then the help from merit aid is probably negligible. Unless of course, you are a foreign national and recieve the full tuition award, or recieve one of the half tuition awards AND century scholars. Which COULD happen.</p>
<p>Even if your family income is less than 30,000, because then you were going to get essentially a full scholarship (no loans) merit aid is still nice, because you won't have the work study requirement.</p>