<p>When do schools offer students merit-based scholarships? Is it upon acceptance, at some other point prior to the date when students must give commitments to schools....?</p>
<p>What is typically done?</p>
<p>It depends on the school. Some schools include merit offers with the acceptance packet. Some schools send it under separate cover after acceptances are sent. Assuming your finaid application is completed on time (remember that some schools require finaid applications even for merit aid), you should have your award in time to make a college decision by May 1.</p>
<p>The reason I am wondering is because it could be silly for colleges to offer ED/EA applicants scholarships before they saw the pool of Regular applicants.</p>
<p>Actually ED/EA applicants are given their finaid awards prior to the RD applicants in most cases.</p>
<p>which can be one of the advantages to applying early…</p>
<p>From my experience, private schools tend to give their scholarship offers right away and public seem to accept first and give scholarships only once the initial deadline for application has passed.</p>
<p>If there is a limited number of a scholarship, then it would usually be at a later date as well.</p>
<p>Thumper1 - </p>
<p>I’d like to clarify that this question pertains to merit-based scholarships…is that what you mean by financial aid?</p>
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<p>Yes…merit aid awards and need based awards are typically given to ED/EA applicants prior to the awarding of the same to RD applicants. Is that your question to me?</p>
<p>E.g. DD was accepted early rolling admissions to a school. She received her merit award at the beginning of February. She was accepted EA to two schools. She received an estimated finaid package (including merit and need based aid) from both schools very shortly after her letter of acceptance was received. DS applied early to two schools and received his acceptance and merit awards to both schools before the 10th of December that year (back in 2002).</p>
<p>Thumper -</p>
<p>Thanks for that info. Assuming that schools give merit scholarships to the top X% of the class, why would they start dealing scholarships before they have viewed the entire applicant pool?</p>
<p>My son’s experience differed from that described by Thumper. In the case of public OOS schools, he was offered merit scholarships shortly after rolling decision acceptances. However, none of the major merit awards at top schools were awarded before RD applications had been received. As examples, in the case of both UChicago and Vanderbilt, the faculty committees that choose scholarship winners do not even meet until after RD apps are in.</p>
<p>So, the answer is: it depends on the school. Call and ask them. That is what we did, especially when one large award came in in early March and son was still waiting to hear about another one.</p>
<p>Perhaps one determining factor about the timing is how “formula based” the merit awards are. For most publics, the awards are based on test scores and rank/gpa, etc and are therefore automatic. In the case of some of the very large scholarships at privates, the selection method is not as formula-driven, and the number of awards is limited.</p>