<p>Curious: Why would he be taking the SAT’s this far into senior year?</p>
<p>bopper,
Some schools continue to accept scores for admissions consideration from January, and even February, test dates. Schools have 1/15 and 2/1 application deadlines, with supporting documents that come in a couple of weeks behind with no problem. Some schools that offer automatic merit will award merit based on what your scores/GPA are when you apply but if you improve your score before you deposit/specified date (whichever their policy) they will adjust the merit. They usually will not adjust the merit before you deposit so their offer can not be used as a competing bid for another school, putting them at a disadvantage. This seems to be the policy at the school the OPs son is working with presently. The operative word is some. Some schools will increase merit, not all. Just deciding that it is logical, or that’s the way it works at X school, or they may use a higher score for reporting purposes, does not change a schools policy. They either do or they don’t. Luckily, it looks like the OPs son is going to be able to get the higher award at his first choice school so here it seems like a win-win, and I’m happy for them!</p>
<p>Good call on the e-mail, mom2. Sounds good Nightingale. Hopefully it will work out for the best, and your son can attend his 1st choice with the higher scholarship. I think the fact that you included the coach in the e-mail is also good because, if he wants your son, he’ll probably do what he can to help. Best of luck, and let us know how it turns out.</p>
<p>He took the SATs again to garner the higher merit award.</p>
<p>“They usually will not adjust the merit before you deposit so their offer can not be used as a competing bid for another school, putting them at a disadvantage.”</p>
<p>Not sure I understand what you mean. If you’re leveraging thier award you were probably not going to go there anyway. My thinking would be to offer all you can to lure in the kids that help your stats and thus prestige. Refusing to accept a higher SAT from a kid who WANTS to attend your school hurts you… Unless of course your primary concern is limiting merit aid to the smallest amount possible to save the cash. I don’t know, maybe this school is applicant rich and merit poor so they are not concerned about college rankings.</p>
<p>If you are using their school as a safety, which many kids do with schools that have rolling admissions with guaranteed automatic merit, it doesn’t help that school one bit to up their official merit offer after the initial offer at admissions and before you officially commit. It can hurt them if a student turns and uses the official merit offer to get another school to up their offer. The first school has the upper hand. They have given admission, and will offer the higher award to anyone who commits. The way around is to commit, get the official offer, and possibly lose the deposit if you don’t get another school to better their offer. Most people won’t do this so the cost to the school is small. Many, many kids decide to follow the money as opposed to a ‘better name’, prestige, etc. It is often a hard decision, when the offer is just too good, besting offers from merit/FA at other publics and privates. It’s not always a slam-dunk. Also, the sheer administrative cost to formally adjust offers for admitted, but uncommitted students is prohibitive.</p>
<p>Agree, college just don’t want to get into “bidding” wars. I highly doubt they “care” about ranking etc., one student isn’t going to change much of anything. If you have in writing what the merit discount will be when you deposit you can pretty safely assume that the number won’t change. If these are published discounts as it seems they are, any other college “could” figure out what discount you are receiving if they know where else the student is being recruited because presumably they have the identical test scores and transcript anyway so I still don’t see an issue here. Deposit now if it’s a first choice or wait until May…it doesn’t sound like the outcome will be any different. Two of my kids deposited in February and one waited until the end of April…it’s just a matter of when the student is emotionally ready to pull the trigger.</p>
<p>Indiana U - back in 2009 did this. DD was admitted rolling, rather early, I think in Nov and was given a merit scholarship. Then a few weeks later received new SAT scores which (based on their own website’s chart - back then) qualified her for a larger merit award. We talked to IU and were told they would not update the award.</p>