<p>I was looking at a school that offers a $30,000 per year merit award that is competitive. The school's website says that the award decision is made in the spring, and that ED applicants can be considered, but they won't know whether they got the award until the spring.</p>
<p>How does that work? Let's say you apply, and they figure you get $20,000 in grants, loans, and work study. So, you commit to the school. Are they really going to award you the scholarship, or will they say "we've already got him, let's use that to lure someone else"? </p>
<p>If you do get it, do you then have $50,000 in aid? Or does the $30,000 replace the original offer, so all the other aid is retracted? Or somewhere in between? What if your original offer was $40,000, do they replace the grants first or the loans etc . . . ? Is it possible you could get a $30,000 award and end up in the same exact place as far as amount and type of aid?</p>
<p>Finally, what if you get in ED, and decide your initial aid award is too low and you ask to be released from your obligation so you can apply elsewhere. Is it possible you could still get the big scholarship, or has that ship sailed? </p>
<p>This is all totally hypothetical. I'm researching the process so I can help some of my students through the college application process, and because eventually my son will be applying, but we're far away from that day.</p>
<p>I think I can answer this pretty well since my situation was almost exactly like this one! Except the scholarship I received was given to me when I was accepted for ED in December.</p>
<p>I ran a NPC for my school and it said I would get about 40k in grants from the school in need-aid. Cool.</p>
<p>Then the finaid package comes which included the 30k merit-aid and the institutional grant was 10k. This was still the 40k I was expecting, except one of the awards was merit. It didn’t have the same effect on me that you think normal merit awards would (entice you to attend), but instead made me feel like the school wanted me as much as I wanted to attend (since i applied ED)!</p>
<p>So in my situation, and what mom2ck said, the institutional award was reduced by the same amount as the merit award.</p>
<p>Since the purpose of merit aid is to attract students wanted to a school, at some school, ED students are at a disadvantage in getting any of that money. You have to ask admissions if that is the case at a particular school. For some schools, it is not the case. If you get merit money, it simply replaces the financial aid you would have gotten. For ED, since you are dealing with estimates, you won’t get the actual award until spring anyways. Anything they send you are estimates based on estimates you gave the school Actual amounts are given after FAFSA and PROFILE are filed and verified with actual tax information for the previous year. So strictly speaking, nothing is “taken” away. THe school just replaces the financial aid award that it was planning to give you with the merit money. If the merit amount exceeds your financial aid amount, you get the excess since merit is not based on need, but you cannot double dip because the need is just that–need.</p>
<p>e. The school’s website says that the award decision is made in the spring, and that ED applicants can be considered, but they won’t know whether they got the award until the spring.</p>
<p>Do you know how many of these awards there are? Is there only one? 10? more?</p>
<p>Since the award isn’t until the Spring, long after ED students have accepted and have been awarded FA, a school isn’t really going to be motivated to award merit to a happily accepted student…especially one that already got a nice grant-filled aid pkg. However, maybe the concern could be that an ED student might still “jump ship” because it seems that ED agreements aren’t strictly honored anymore.</p>
<p>I can imagine a school might award the merit to someone who won’t get much aid, but the school really wants for some specific reason.</p>
<p>It might also depend on how affluent the school is. Does it need to award merit, in lieu of grants, in order to balance its budget? Or does it have enough money to award grants to the needy, and award merit to the desired kids with little aid? </p>
<p>So for the particular award that I read about and that sparked my curiosity, the school says they offer this particular award to about 50% of people who apply for it. I’m not sure if that’s 50% of admittted students, or 50% of applicants. The school only accepts 39% of applicants. It appears to me that if you meet the guidelines for applying for the award your chances are quite good. </p>
<p>I guess what I’m hearing, is that if a student wanted to apply to this school, in part because of this award, then ED doesn’t make sense and they should just wait for RD.</p>
<p>Does anyone know whether if you applied ED, and didn’t get enough aid, could you say no but asked to be reconsidered with the RD applicants if you got the award?</p>
<p>CuriousJane, I’d suggest asking the admissions folks directly. D1 did this a couple years ago during a visit and interview at a school that ended up being her #2 choice. The school used to offer NMFs a guaranteed $20k/year, but changed to say that NMFs would be strongly considered for the award. D1 asked what she needed to do to maximize her chances for the award. The head of admissions told her to apply RD, not ED. Ask!</p>
<p>For sure you’ll be unable to be reconsidered for RD if you turn down an ED offer.</p>
<p>I don’t know any schools that will let you stay in the RD pool after turning down ED. You can certainly ask, however. If anyone knows of any schools with that policy, please share the names. Merit money is usually distributed with the RD acceptances ED acceptances usually come with an estimate of what the financial package will be. It is possible some merit might be awarded to ED students at the time of acceptance, but I have not heard of that happening.</p>
<p>I guess I’m not asking if you can stay in the RD pool. I’m wondering, if your financial aid decision isn’t enough, and you’re still waiting to hear about the scholarship, can you defer deciding and not withdraw from your safeties, while you wait to hear?</p>
<p>What if you got into a school ED, turned them down because you couldn’t afford the aid package, and then won the lottery? Could you call them up and say “hey, circumstances changed, can I come?”</p>
<p>People usually choose ED because that gives them a better chance of admission if they’re not in the tippy-top of the applicant pool at that particular school.</p>
<p>Merit awards are usually given to applicants who are in the tippy-top of the pool.</p>
<p>For that reason, it seems to me that if you think you are a strong candidate for a merit award, you have no particular reason to apply ED anyway.</p>
<p>they offer this particular award to about 50% of people who apply for it.</p>
<p>Did someone tell you that over the phone or is that written somewhere? That is very high. Are you sure that they didn’t say 15%? What school gives a $30k per year award to 50% of the students who apply for it? That just doesn’t seem right.</p>
<p>Jane, you can try and do anything. Whether the school will give you admittance and/or money is the question. There are exception even to written policies, so it does not hurt to ask if you fall into a category and could use such a break. However, it is not something to count on working. The reason a school gives a student extra consideration and an early admissions notice for ED, is in exchange for the commitment to attend from the student including withdrawing all other applications. Once you start fooling around with this deal, anything goes, but the school holds the cards as to whether it will let you have more time and options. </p>
<p>So if someone gets accepted ED, Finds the aid not sufficient and asks for release from the contract after no meeting of minds over the awards, could that person then ask to be reconsidered for RD after this release? Yes, person can ask. Person can ask to go to the moon too. It would really take some unusual circumstances, IMO for the school to say “yes”, but it is possible. If a parent dies, for example and leaves the student enough
e money to go there and the parent was the reason the applicant turned down the ED package, that is a circumstance that MAYBE would be consdiered. EVen then it is no certainty.</p>
<p>I know a student who asked for release from an ED commitment when her parent was dxed with a condition that made bone marrow transplat part of his treatment. Student wanted to stay local while dad was undergoing the ordeal. Yes, she got the release. Had he died, could she then ask to be reconsidered for RD and get the request fulfilled? Maybe. But then maybe not, even under such dire circumstances. If the RD class is now filled, the student might just be asked to reapply next year.</p>
<p>As I said before, ASK. In general for ED you must respond by a certain date, after which you must accept or decline. If you accept, you must withdraw your other applications. But I’m just a semi-random person on the internet. You have to ask the people at the school you’re interested in.</p>
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<p>Unless you are calling them to offer an 8-figure gift, no. When you turn down ED, it’s final.</p>
<p>When trying to compare merit VS need based aid, one thing to consider that I see occasionally mentioned, but sometimes get overlooked is that most merit aid is conditional upon maintaining a certain GPA. That GPA varies of course, school to school. Many students who are used to being at the top of their class never consider the fact that at their university, they are often one of many other similarly qualified students and maintaining the required GPA may be more difficult than they had realized, especially with STEM majors or those with tough “weed out” intro classes. </p>
<p>I remember a posting once of a student who turned down need based FA to go to a school that had offered generous merit $$, then lost the scholarship after the first year because it required a 3.5 and he just could not do it. The family could not afford to keep the student at the school and were frantically looking into transfer options. While most (?all) need based aid requires SAP (satisfactory academic progress) the bar is usually much, much lower. When comparing packages it may behoove one to consider if FA (need based) may be less stressful than merit (scholarship) funds.</p>
<p>It’s on their website. To be clear, the award has very specific requirements, that most applicants probably don’t meet. So it’s selective in that sense, but apparently of the people who do meet the qualifications and write the essay to apply it’s around 50%.</p>
<p>Just looking around, it seems like there are a fair amount of scholarships like that – e.g. a school might offer a scholarship that’s only for NMF who put them as “first choice” (so it’s super selective to apply), but then give it to half the people who do apply. </p>
<p>Having said that, I’m not really asking about a specific scholarship, because I’m not at that point. I’m just trying to figure out how the entire process so that I can support my students/son/other kids who are important to me through the process.</p>