<p>Look at the board around March and April when the offers are on the table. Everyone wants to know how to ask for more. Having better offers from like schools helps, Talk To Cornell and CMU specifically, and those directly involved will tell you thr policies are just formalizing the way it works.</p>
<p>I do not doubt for an instant that there are schools that may award merit awards blind as to whether the applicant has committed or not. But when info is out there, it’s difficult to say what effect it has. Colleges do not give out the stats on this which would give some clarity to this. None of us know for certain what the inner workings of this process is.</p>