<p>I'm getting ready to send my Tulane application! I'm struggling between whether to apply Single Choice Early Action or just regular Early action. The main thing I'm concerned with is whether applying SCEA will decrease my chances of recieving the automatic-consideration merit aid. I know merit aid is often given out to sway applicants who may want to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>By applying SCEA, I'm basically saying Tulane is my first choice (which it definitely is!) Can doing this make it less likely for me to get merit aid?</p>
<p>People have been wondering this for a long time, and not just at Tulane. I get the line of thinking that if you tell them you will go if accepted no matter what, they might offer you less. But SCEA is not ED, you are not making a firm commitment. I could make just as strong an argument that applying SCEA increases your chances, because then Tulane knows you really want to go, but they know you still have other choices after you see whatever packages other schools may offer.</p>
<p>However, I think the actual answer, based on seeing hundreds of merit awards and knowing the stats of many of them, as well as whether they applied SCEA, EA or RD, is that it is based on the strength of your application, especially your GPA, strength of schedule, and SAT/ACT score. They really have no incentive (or time!) to try and figure out which students would come only if they got a $25,000 merit grant or would come anyway if they “only” got $20,000. Besides, they know students might compare stats and offers and there is no sense in having someone feel like they got a bad deal before they hardly even got started at Tulane. I am really very confident it is extremely stats based.</p>
<p>So go ahead and apply SCEA, you should be fine.</p>
<p>Technically Tulane only promises a decision by Dec. 15. But in practice it is more like a rolling admissions school, often providing decisions as early as mid-October and continuing until the deadline. People that hear the earliest are those that get their apps in earliest and are relatively straightforward decisions.</p>