<p>@Keilaxandra:
Ok…So my heart goes out to you. I have to admit, I felt a bit bad that you would turn down ED, as I know a lot of kids that got defferred ED that would have loved your spot. (That said, my D was not one of them…So, I am not too involved).</p>
<p>Since your “Deadline” is Tuesday, that means by the end of the day you and your parents need to have a hard conversation that should begin with “Dad, how much CAN we afford for College? How much Debt are YOU willing to take on? How much Debt are you willing to help ME sign up for? (how much debt can we get?)” </p>
<p>Swarthmore is $50,000 for a year, give or take. If the Gap between what the family will pay, what debt they are willing to take on, and what debt you are willing to take on vs. the $50,000 is not all that large, maybe you can convince Dad to up his end a bit.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if there is a significant difference, it is time to tell Swarthmore you will not attend. You should also consider that if the difference is significant at Swarthmore, it will be significant at the other colleges you listed as well. That being the case, I hope you have a fall back option for a state school or a school known for giving lots of Merit.</p>
<p>dadwonders,
Keilexandra is an ED2 admit who is committing to attend Swat. Your comments are for the OP, pmurray, I presume. Keil was posting what she researched for the benefit of other applicants.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your excellent advice and your willingness to help someone in need of a little guidance…I ended up figuring out my financial aid problems and have committed to Swarthmore. My dad sent in the deposit today! Looking forward to seeing you, Keilexandra!</p>
<p>That’s great news PMURRAY. I know it’s got to feel like a ton of bricks lifted off your shoulders. Congratuations. Enjoy every minute of your four years.</p>
<p>interesteddad: people have strong opinions on this board and i express mine the way i have always expressed them, so if you’re appalled by what i have to say and the way i say it, then that’s just too bad. the original op had it coming. he knew that his chances were appreciably enhanced by applying ed and he took advantage of it. not only did he take advantage of it, he failed to withdraw his apps from other schools presumably to keep his options open. so you can “yipee” all you want, but op is not deserving of any sympathy. i wouldn’t be at all surprised that the op worked out his financial aid issues with the help of a friendly little missive from the admissions office that they will notify other institutions that op was backing out of ed. </p>
<p>kiel: i commend you for taking the extra step in using the fa calculator prior to applying, however, i’m fairly certain that your fa calculator is nowhere near as accurate as an hp or ti calculator. imagine this, what if the fa calculator was wrong where swat was concerned, and swats interpretation of your need wasn’t the same as yours, that would put you in the same boat as the op. then what? the heck with ed, let’s go shopping for the best package, which is what you do in rd. you start with the notion that if you take advantage of ed, you are bound to ed, which means that you have to go into ed with the expectation that you will get nothing and be happy that you get something, otherwise ed becomes a travesty. this particular case is even more egregious simply because the op self describes his situation as upper middle class which means the old man is just cheap. look, there has to come a time when one has to live by the terms of a contract, why shouldn’t the op start now? all the apologists on this thread that condone the op slithering out of his contract are only perpetuating the decline of our society’s individual integrity by tacitly stating that one’s word is only as good as the loophole that exists. </p>
<p>lastly, in the light of day, i realize that my particular brand of venom directed toward the op may have been slighly misplaced as the op really does want to attend swat (heaven help you) and that it was his miscreant father that has no use for the binding constructs of a contract and for that, i apologize to the op.</p>
<p>Your passion on this topic makes me laugh. Not at you, just how passionate you are about your opinions.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that ED is simply unfair to the middle class. High-Achievement students at the lower end of the financial spectrum can go ED knowing they can (easily) get financial aid. High-Achievement students at the high end of the spectrum have parents that can foot the bill. It is the middle that gets screwed in this deal.</p>
<p>My Kid will have to wait until all her acceptances and rejections are in along with Financial Aid offers before she will make a decision. I wish it would be as simple a task as choosing which school is best, regardless of financial assistance, but that is not the case. She did not do ED to any school because of exactly the situation the OP stated.</p>
<p>The ease of doing applications, thanks in large part to the common app, and the (relative) low expense of submitting multiple applications has created “record breaking numbers of applicants” at almost every single college, despite an over decrease in this country of graduating HS seniors and difficult financial times. Meanwhile, thanks to USNews, the pressure for colleges in increase the ratio of attending to accepted, and attended to returning is unrelenting. ED, beneficial to the school for all the reasons above (and more), serves all of thier goals well, except the goal of the middle class high-school senior.</p>
<p>About 8 more weeks and all this crap will be over.</p>
Then I would talk to my parents to see if we could possibly swing the increased amount. Swat is my first choice, and I knew going in that ED eliminated my ability to “shop around”–if I decline an ED acceptance and wait for RD results but don’t receive any better packages, I can’t go crying to Swarthmore about it. THAT is the flexibility trade-off of ED. It is NOT a binding no-matter-what contract, legally or ethically.</p>
<p>
False. Many top schools encourage financial aid applicants to apply ED. With regard to Swarthmore specifically, I’m astounded by the number of DiscoSwat participants (non-white domestic students) accepted ED–and that demographic is traditionally 1) non-legacy, 2) requesting financial aid.</p>
<p>dadwonders - I would correct your description of ED pros/cons to say that the UPPER middle class gets screwed over. I consider myself middle-class and received significant need-based aid from Swat. We have been lower-class in the past, and I know the difference firsthand.</p>
<p>This is where I’m confused, Keil. What RD results would you (or, anyone) be waiting for once you decline Swat’s ED offer? You seem to be leaving the impression that you can still entertain a more generous offer from let’s say, a NESCAC college (Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Williams, etc.) simply by telling Swarthmore, “Your offer’s not good enough.” I’m pretty sure that would not be possible.</p>
<p>^In EDI, there is time to submit RD applications after the fact. In EDII, RD applications have already been submitted.</p>
<p>It is absolutely possible to tell Swarthmore, “Your offer’s not good enough and I can’t afford it.” They may or may not notify “peer” schools (and those schools may or may not do anything different with the information); they may or may not penalize your school in future admissions years. Swarthmore has no way of knowing the “truth” of my italicized addition, since affordability is defined SOLELY on the applicant’s side (as evidenced from my Common App contract quote upthread). But frankly, if you don’t qualify for need-based aid at Elite LAC A, the situation is unlikely to change significantly at Elite LAC B or C or D. (Merit aid is a totally different discussion.) If you want to “entertain a [possibly] more generous offer” from other schools, you give up any chance of attending Swarthmore even if those more generous offers never materialize. And I presume that most people applying ED to a school WANT to attend that school over similar peers. Swarthmore financial aid is also quite generous for those who qualify. All this adds up to only a few students every year who decline ED acceptances.</p>
<p>Except, that for an upper-middle class family, like the OP’s, who is right at the margin where a small grant makes the difference between being on FA or not being on FA at all, that grant can be significant. It would be interesting to see who gets a majority of the FA at a place like Swarthmore: the middle and “upper-middle” class students, in small increments, or, to to families making less than $70,000 who obviously require more?</p>
<p>^If you’re on the margin, does a 3k grant really make that much difference? (And at schools like Wesleyan and next year Williams, that 3k won’t even be in grants.) When I was discussing the possibility of ED with my parents, my mother gave her consent by saying that she liked Swarthmore enough to pay a few extra thousand a year more than a hypothetical “best” package from competing LACs.</p>
<p>thank you for nicely rephrasing the question. and, if it doesn’t make that much difference, how much of the typical FA budget is actually “wasted” in this way?</p>
<p>Exactly. In other words, at the vast majority of prestigious colleges and universities, some form of marginal FA is practiced whether in the form of small loans or small touchbacks on the sticker price; the question is how often?</p>
<p>^IMHO, a small marginal grant would make a difference in choosing between schools of roughly equal desirability–which often but not always equates to prestige. Presumably if one applies ED to School A, then A is non-trivially more desirable than School B.</p>
<p>I think it is not “wasted” from the school perspective, as they can include this student in their “%of students receiving fin aid”…
But I agree with K that for someone who applies ED +/- $3,000 is not something that makes a 50K school unaffordable…</p>
<p>^^^So, when calculating how many people would not be able to attend a place like Swarthmore, but for FA, we should probably divide the official number by half?</p>
<p>^^I think there is a general conceit that people on FA (financial aid) would not otherwise be able to afford to attend a school – except (but, for) the aid they receive. Both you and nngmm concede the opposite to be true in some specific cases. My guess is that official numbers exaggerate the general case by about half. But, without knowing how many people fall into the category of the marginally “upper-middle class”, it’s merely my guess.</p>
<p>Oh, I see what you mean. Schools tout themselves as having 50% FA students, but you believe that a high number of those are marginal cases. I haven’t seen remotely enough data to draw any conclusions, but it’s a plausible hypothesis.</p>
