I am a student and I roll my eyes when colleges say they care for the mental well-being of us students. If they really do, they will set a firm date for decision announcement, be transparent about it, and not play games announcing them slowly making the process feel like hunger games.
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Check out the humorous article in this post. It wittily captures the crazy, stressful, seemingly arbitrary process of T50 college admissions 
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My older kid absolutely withdrew all of her other applications when she was accepted to her ED school. Sheās a sophomore there now.
My younger kid is the one applying now, and she did not apply anywhere ED. She had some EA schools, some rolling schools, and some RD schools. She did not have a clear favorite, so the process is longer.
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I did, thanks.
My daughter has got admitted in one of her top choice college. She has a few other colleges where the decisions are not out yet.
The college she has been accepted has not announced any Financial Awards as of yet (neither merit based nor need based)
She will be happy to put her acceptance in for this college, but is worried that once she accepts, the college may not give her any financial award as they know she is anyway joining them and thus no further incentive is needed to be offered.
Is the above thinking true OR rather does the college offer more aid once they know a student has accepted and is joining.
I am super confused. If the college had already announced the financial awards then it would be an easy decision, but since they are not announcing yet, itās putting us in a odd position.
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According to Jeff Selingoās book Who Gets In and Why, it depends on the school.
Colleges donāt like to admit that they add extra merit aid to attract an admitted student who hasnāt confirmed they will attend ā but some do.
Other schools might want to reserve their biggest awards for students they feel confident will accept and be great ambassadors and cheerleaders for the school.
I think it depends on how badly the school wants the student, how much money they have available to offer, and their calculation of how much money would make the difference in the studentās decision-making. And not every school takes the same approach.
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Thanks CMA22 for the answer. It does not answer my question but does confirm my conundrum 
It it helps, the school I am looking at is UT Austin. Any idea on how UT treats their students in such situations?
I donāt really know, but my impression from Zelingoās book was that it was primarily private schools who used merit money late in the game.
I think public schools have less discretionary money, are less concerned about their relative selectivity, and tend to be more focused on first meeting as much need as possible for lower-income in-state applicants. So my guess is that UT Austin would not enhance an aid package to get a student who has not yet committed.
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Just wait til mid March.
To those waiting on RD late March/early April decisions, Iām curious if you will go to admitted students events next month? Have you booked hotels? Will you pull your kids out of school?
For us, Purdueās April 13th date is looming large, and the travel planning matrix is driving me up a wall! There are only so many weekends between acceptances and decisions daysā¦ and 
we donāt talk about Michigan no no
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Weāre considering taking D22 to see Allegheny this month. At present, it is her top choice among her acceptances and the most affordable. But she has not been able to visit because we live in Alaska.
There are other schools that could potentially knock it out of the running, but they are reaches, and she has not heard from them yet.
I love Alaska, but living off the road system has its challenges.
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Our son is busy with school stuff and is not showing much interest in visiting schools. Maybe the pandemic and all this time on Zoom has reset expectations of a in-person visit. He says attending virtual events should be enough.
Anybody else in this situation?
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Wow! Talk about a journey! If you visit Allegheny, could you tack on any other visits?
Thatās my kid too. To be honest, it is overwhelming to even think about more than a couple of visits in a month if you have fly, book a hotel. My son has agreed to pick one out of his top choices so far, which are all out of state btw and weāll visit in the first week of April. By that time weāll have the decisions from our in state colleges so it should be enough for him to decide.
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I have been debating what to do. I am in TX and the colleges my dd applied are in the northeast. We would fly to a city and drive around but I am not too keen about driving around during winter/spring. I have no experience driving in winter so would not be comfortable doing so.
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If there are options, the thought of travel does make one prioritize.
We have two trips in mind at this point, but Iām worried about the late March decisions. This kid really needs to engage in on-site visits before signing on the dotted line. Last spring, college visits were all about food 
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We have a few admitted day trips coming up and Iād book more or change depending on future information. School is pretty low teach/learn these days with just a couple assignments left. So I have no issue pulling him out.
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All my S22 decisions are in. We live in NJ. Did Penn State admitted students visit early last month - drove & spent 1 night. We flew to Columbus over Presidents weekend & did admitted visits to Ohio State, rented car and drove to Purdue for Purdueās For Me - flew home from Indy. That trip was 4 nights. We are visiting UMD next Monday, spending one night at UMD hotel. Itās a lot but giving him a feel for each campus prior to making a big decision!
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My son does not want to travel or visit any schools. (All but one school is a plane ride away.) He wants to enjoy his senior year and is doing T&F and working hard on his music. Iām trying to respect his wishes, but committing to a school without seeing it seems a little crazy to me! He insists it will be fine and he can be happy anywhere.
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S22 received his last acceptance today. Now comes the decision time. The college that was his #1 after a summer visit is still one of his top choices. He visited again last month and would be happy to go there. Then there is a college that has been slowly moving up the ranks. Yesterday he found out that he won their top (full ride) scholarship. We hope to visit within the next few weeks.
He may be ready to decline acceptances to a couple of colleges, as they will be too expensive (not enough merit, not a surprising result). I donāt think he is seriously considering the additional 3 acceptances, but he is probably not ready to say no yet either.
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