<p>My son applied ED to a selective, small LAC. The school said up front that they do not offer merit aid. He also applied EA to a small state university (not in state), which was intended as his safety school. He received a letter on December 18 that he had been admitted to the state university. He received a letter on December 20 from the LAC admitting him and reminding him to withdraw any other open applications. He did; he withdrew the state university one. Exactly one week later, he received another letter from the state university saying he had been accepted for one of their merit scholarships (it wasn't any special application process....all students were considered for it), and it was for $12,000 for each of the four years he would attend, provided he kept his grades up. We were blown away, and confused. If they had sent the scholarship offer with the original letter, we might have thought twice, but, technically, wouldn't we have been held accountable by the LAC since he applied ED there? I was under the impression that merit scholarships were for much smaller amounts of money. Son definitely wants to go to ED college since it was clearly his first choice, but it is difficult to walk away from almost $50,000....almost a year's tuition at LAC. Any comments on this? Is this fairly normal? Do money offers always come later, as in a week later?</p>
<p>They can come at any time. Some state schools have standard merit aid, especially for OOS students, to attract them. Sometimes there is a list of requirements or a chart to show that if you have XYZ in scores and grades, you’ll get $$$. Both of my kids knew about what they could expect from their respective schools in merit money. One is also applying for a scholarship she has to audition for, and the other has athletic money she signed a NLI so is ‘guaranteed’ for at least a year, with a verbal that she’ll get at least that if she meets the conditions for all 4 years.</p>
<p>You might be able to use the merit offer at the ED school to show them how much you’d get somewhere else, and that school might be able to make it up in aid, reduced tuition, work study. Can’t hurt, especially since you did follow the rules and withdraw the application.</p>
<p>Usually when you apply ED you don’t get to compare offers, this was just a coincidence of timing. You know what ED means and you allowed it, so you must be okay with paying the LAC price. It doesn’t matter when the aid offer came or if it came at all, does it? When you apply ED you give up the advantage of picking and choosing among offers for the admissions boost advantage.</p>
<p>You signed off on your son’s ED application knowing the LAC’s financial policy. It doesn’t matter what the other school offered - a contract is a contract. </p>
<p>Kinda like that old TV commercial “I could’ve had a V8” headslap.</p>
<p>If you truly cannot afford the LAC then you can turn down the admission offer. As Brownparent said, this is just chance on the timing of the two aid offers.</p>
<p>You can’t negotiate on ED. It’s binding and if there’s no merit, there’s no merit. It’d be very poor form to try and negotiate based on the state school’s offer.</p>
<p>This is why you’re not supposed to do that.</p>
<p>“Son definitely wants to go to ED college since it was clearly his first choice …”</p>
<p>Maybe he just feels bad about the $50k, and needs some reassurance that it’s okay.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses. Of couse we know the ED is binding, but we definitely were not expecting this much of a merit aid offer from the other university. Vonlost, I think your answer is spot on, and we are trying to tell him it is okay.</p>