As at all the selective colleges that receive many more qualified applicants than they can take, the single best way to demonstrate interest is to apply Early Decision. Although there is no precise statistic on this, my interpretation of the statistics suggests that Oberlin accepts a very large majority of the qualified applicants who apply in either round of Early Decision.
I agree with @oberlin_dad on this. My D is class of '21 and she ended up applying ED even though she had the stats that showed she could be competitive for RD. The main reason she did was because she knew that Oberlin was her top choice and the other reason was to stop the madness of waiting and wondering. It worked out great for her and she knew going into the process what her merit award would be - which is a great feature at Oberlin. I’m sure she may have gotten more money if we waited and did RD but we were pleased and she was excited to be admitted.
One thing I high recommend is to connect with your regional rep. She went out of her way to do that at local college fairs, when they came to her school and when she was on campus. Once she submitted her ED app she emailed her local rep too and was surprised to get multiple replies while waiting for admissions news - it was clear they had a nice connection. For her it wasn’t about gaming the system, she really did love the rep and the school.
Good luck to your daughter in this process! Happy to answer questions if you have any.
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she knew going into the process what her merit award would be
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I didn’t know about that feature. Can you explain this one? Are you saying Oberlin was able to tell her what her merit award would be even before she completed her ED application? At what stage exactly did she find out, and how? I assumed that an ED application had to be finalized and the commitment made before they could tell you things like merit awards.
I know that they will give you a need-based financial aid estimate ahead of time and that they commit to it’s being accurate as long as the financial statistics you tell them are accurate, but I didn’t know about early merit award decisions.
Yes there is a link on the admissions portal that allows you to submit scores and grades etc for a merit preread. I will try to find it and add here but your child could likely ask their local rep for info too. It’s very helpful!