<p>It's accepted as a given that FA packages with ED are always lower than what you would get if you applied RD. But is it still the case in this economy? For example the NYTimes article of 6/10/2009 describes how in March Reed College ran out of money and rejected a hundred students that it had planned to admit who needed financial aid and replaced them with admits that could pay full freight. Any sense out there that applying ED is always financially compromising? Perhaps you can at least get a package before the money runs out? Reed was honest enough to be open about their decision, but are the same decisions being made at other schools too?</p>
<p>“It’s accepted as a given that FA packages with ED are always lower than what you would get if you applied RD.”</p>
<p>Always? Nonsense. If you have info about a specific school that does this, please post it.</p>
<p>This claim has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened at Reed; it wasn’t the size of packages that changed, but the number of packages.</p>
<p>Let me backtrack a bit. At schools that meet full need, it will be calculated the same way (FAFSA and usually Profile) for ED and RD. At schools that gap, it may be more unpredictable regarding what they do at ED and RD times.</p>
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<p>Simply untrue. While some school’s enrollment management techniques may lead them to offer less to an ED applicant, the 100% meet need schools treat ED applicants the same as RD and many other schools do not treat ED applicants differently.</p>