Two questions come up in the same September conversation and are almost never connected. Should I apply Early Decision? And will I get merit money? Put the schools' own filings side by side and the two turn out to be, for practical purposes, the same question asked from opposite ends.
Schools that fill their class through binding applications give almost no merit aid. Schools that give a lot of merit aid barely run a binding round. There is a reason, and it should shape where you spend the application.
Two ways to fill a class
A college has to enroll a certain number of students every fall, and every offer it makes is a guess about whether the student will come. There are two ways to make that guess safer. One is to have the student promise in advance — Early Decision. The other is to pay: offer a discount, not because the family needs it, but because the discount makes the student more likely to say yes over a competing offer. That second thing is what non-need-based scholarship aid, usually called merit, is.
They are substitutes, and expensive ones in different currencies. A binding round costs the school nothing in dollars but limits whom it can reach, since only students willing to commit blind will enter it. Merit aid reaches everyone but comes straight out of tuition revenue. Each school picks the tool its market position allows. A school that can get a third of its class to commit blind in November does not need to buy those students in April. A school whose applicants routinely hold four other offers cannot ask them to commit blind, so it competes on price instead.
What the filings show
The Common Data Set reports both. Section C21 gives early decision applications and admits; section H2A gives the number of first-year students who had no financial need and still received an institutional scholarship, with the average award.
At schools where the early round is the machinery:
Dartmouth, 2025–26 filing: early decision admits were 45.2% of all admits. The merit line is blank — the college awards aid on need alone.
Northwestern, 2024–25 filing: 31.2% of admits came through the early round. Merit awards to first-years with no need: 15, averaging $29,000.
Washington University in St. Louis, 2025–26: 33.6% of admits early. Merit awards: 44.
Johns Hopkins, 2025–26: 27.2% early. Merit awards: 57, averaging $32,669.
Now the other end:
Baylor, 2025–26 filing: 1,374 first-year students with no financial need received institutional scholarships averaging $22,041. Early decision applicants were 1.3% of the pool.
Rochester Institute of Technology, 2025–26: 756 merit awards averaging $41,222. Early applicants: 4.5% of the pool.
Case Western Reserve, 2025–26: 662 merit awards averaging $32,560. Early applicants: 2.7% of the pool — and, unusually, the early round admitted at a lower rate than the rest.
University of Vermont, 2025–26: 1,359 merit awards. Early applicants: 1.6% of the pool.
The middle exists. Villanova's 2025–26 filing reports 119 merit awards averaging $38,439, with 6.5% of applicants applying early and taking 13.8% of admits. Vanderbilt reported 134 merit awards while taking a third of its admits early, though it is an outlier among its peers. But the ends of the distribution are stark, and the schools people most want to apply to early are almost all at the no-merit end.
What this means for your one binding application
If merit aid is part of how your family plans to pay, the schools that give it in volume are mostly not the schools where an early application does much. And at the schools where the early application does a great deal, there is no merit conversation to have — aid is need-based, the published net price for your income band is the number, and the binding commitment means you will not be comparing it to anything.
That gives you a clean test. Look up your ED candidate's merit line. If it reports a few dozen awards or is blank, then applying early there costs you nothing on the merit side, because there was nothing to be had — the only price question is the need-based figure for your band. If it reports hundreds of awards, you are about to sign a binding agreement with a school that normally competes for students on price, and you are surrendering the one lever that makes it compete. Schools do not usually reduce merit for early applicants, but they do not have to compete against an offer you are no longer allowed to hold.
Where the numbers come from
Early decision applications and admits are from each school's Common Data Set, section C21; total admits from section C1; merit counts and averages from section H2A of the same filing, which counts first-year students with no financial need who received institutional non-need-based aid. The cycle is named beside each school. A blank H2A line is reported as blank, not as zero. Nothing above is estimated.
PrepToDone reads these filings against a real list, so the early round, the merit line, and the price for your income band sit next to each school you're considering. Free, without an account. Naming the school to spend the binding application on, and why, is $49, once. See your list.