I’ve read everything I can find in the Richmond forum and can’t seem to find much on this subject. Did anyone who applied ED get merit in the form of the presidential scholarship or one of the music/dance scholarships? It might be the only school that D21 applies to that gives merit and I don’t want to eliminate her chances by her applying ED.
She doesn’t have test scores in yet but has a lot of rigor and strong GPA and ECs. We are visiting in the spring and I just want to have a grip on the merit piece (understanding that it’s definitely not a gimme in EA or RD either).
Merit at Richmond is quite competitive. It sounds generous on their site (like 10% or something) but that’s of a competitve pool.
Anecdotal, however, I was thinking S would have been in the running for merit a few yrs ago. High Stat kid, class president, sports captain, mentor, etc. He didn’t get a sniff. They have the typical multi round approach where they bring candidates to campus for interviews, etc. Thought he would have been selected for that but nope. Just letting you know it’s more competitive than most people think. That was the case at most of the highly selective schools in our experience. He was admitted (attends elsewhere) but you’ll find that bio pretty common at these strong schools.
@rickle1 The interviews are just for Richmond Scholars. I know the other scholarships are competitive as well but the presidential and the dance scholarships have no interviews. The presidential scholarship info seems to come with acceptance according to the threads I read from last year.
^ gotcha. Good to know. S wasn’t awarded any merit (neither here nor there). I just point it out as he was admitted to several hihgly selective schools wihtout merit. Next rung down (if you will) he received plenty of merit. It’s just very competitive and made me think they’re reserving merit to pick off kids who likely would go to the Duke’s of the world in the south.
@rickle1 and looking at some stats from last EA cycle, kids got the presidential without having tippy top stats so I guess Richmond had other reasons for sweetening the pot. Maybe diversity either geographic or otherwise.
There are schools that do not give or have not given Merit money to ED applicants. You should ask Richmond Admissions whether they consider ED accepted students for the merit awards and if any ED accepted got any in last few years.
I personally believe applying ED at many if not most schools compromises chances for merit money. A lot of times the purpose of those awards is to entice students TJ commit to the school. ED is a dive deal. Bad use of such funds.
EA is a whole other story. The school still needs to get that commitment to attend from the student.
@cptofthehouse right. I know all of that. Just wanted to see if I could find anyone who actually got merit in ED! I will ask Richmond at some point but I don’t expect that their answer to help. I think they will say, yes, we’ve given some merit in ED in the past and then they won’t say how many students got it and I’ll still be left with no answer.
We haven’t even visited yet but, if it’s D21’s favorite, I hope that EA will show enough interest. We don’t even have any scores for her yet so I don’t know where she will fall for Richmond in admissions. According to Naviance, our high school seems to have a good number of kids waitlisted and I’d like to avoid that. I’m going to see if I can shake down our GC and find out if those kids applied EA, ED or RD. Our Naviance doesn’t show that distinction.
Does anyone know if Richmond posts ED decisions on the Spider Portal, or do they mail a letter? I called AO today, and a kid working in the office said he thought it was only by regular mail, but he wasn’t sure.
In the past, they’ve sent decisions via snail mail but according to the admissions rep who visited my daughter’s HS this fall, they’ll be releasing them via email for the first time this year.