This was in the beta forums, which are gone, and my memory is hazy. But I seem to recall that initially, the scholarships didn't have credit, but that was tweaked at some point. It does seem that they move the bar on other actions (visits, promises) more than AP alone - someone currently in a recruiting world would have to verify, I honestly haven't thought at all about whether the scholarship has recruiting credit on its own since beta, I've assumed it did.
There is no considering credit, so there's no benefit to offering early *except* if we assume it does advance the bar on promises; for recruits who want playing time, there is a benefit to offering them minutes as early as possible, as that improves your preference profile with them and increases the weight of early APs.