My rising senior daughter will hopefully be competing for some full-ride scholarships. With the Common Application opening up August 1st but most application deadlines occurring months later, what are the pros and cons of applying either early or late in that window?
Just meet the deadline for the scholarship applications. Some FA goes to early responders but the school will look at all the apps turned in by the deadline for merit.
My suggestion is to submit it a week or two before the deadline. It happened in the past that CommonApp got overwhelmed on the last day or 2 of each popular deadline. You really don’t want to regret later on. Also, by submitting your application a couple weeks before deadline, you may have a chance to track your application for missing item before it is too late.
Submit as early as you can once the best scores have been obtained…making sure everything is submitted well-before the deadlines.
Merit sometimes runs out.
Agree with @mom2collegekids. Son missed out on getting merit from one for which he had the qualifications by not meeting the “recommended” deadline, as they ran out by the time he applied (well within the final deadline) and was accepted.
@albclemom may I ask what school that was?
University of Pittsburgh reportedly gives aid to the early birds!
Yes, UPitt is known to favor early birds. Purdue has (I think) very early deadlines.
I don’t recall which school it is, but someone posted last year that they applied early, but retested before the deadline, got a higher score, but the school had some odd policy that they wouldn’t increase the merit. Instead they only based merit on the best score at the time the app was submitted.
@“Erin’s Dad” - Ohio State. DS had the stated scores and GPA for a merit scholarship from OSU, but merit had been doled out in the first round and there was none left when he applied at the end of December.
Purdue merit scholarship has no separate application and you have to apply EA to be eligible. Same for UMich.
Howard says up front that the otherwise-automatic-for-stats merit “scholarships are awarded until all funds have been exhausted”: http://www.howard.edu/financialaid/grants_scholarships.htm#Freshman
In some cases state flagship full ride scholarships explicitly limit consideration to students who apply by their early action or decision deadline which is normally nov 1st or 15th. Earlier than their deadline doesn’t improve your odds. I think your chances will be improved if your daughter reaches out to these colleges and makes her interest known. I think colleges like to offer full rides to students who will likely come
A long as you meet the deadline, you are good. The earlier the better though.
All of the public schools that my daughter applied to required EA for merit scholarship consideration. UCONN did not have an EA option but their website does state that applications submitted by December 1 get priority consideration for merit scholarships and honors college.