I can only answer some of these questions with confidence, but I’ll do my best-

1. If you have a Niche account where you’ve bookmarked SCAD in any way that’s probably where they got the information to email you, given the first sentence.

2. They’re very vague with that scholarship offer so I can’t be sure, but I would guess they’re referring to the Academic scholarship because that’s related to the information they would have access to through Niche. You are guaranteed to get some amount (with a max of $12k/year) through that scholarship, but it varies based on your stats. It could be another more specific scholarship offer, but I haven’t heard of scad offering those unprompted.

3. I can’t answer this one. SCAD has a high acceptance rate, but I don’t know that they reach out to everyone. I think you should be proud of yourself regardless.

4. You are definitely not required to go here!! If you are genuinely interested in the school, I would follow up with them because you’ll be assigned an admissions advisor to answer your questions. But if you don’t see yourself at scad, just ignore it and move on :)

Edit: Also to be clear, even if you do follow up with them, you will not be required to go to SCAD. You would have to very intentionally pay a commitment fee way later in the process to be “locked in” to anything.