<p>MissouriGal, could the person you know pay for the college without financial aid? If so, then in these times I’d imagine it sure couldn’t <em>hurt</em> to not need any aid.</p>
<p>It the person does need aid, then to say they don’t would be just moronic even in RD. In ED it’s beyond moronic.</p>
<p>Thank you for your response, 'rent. I guess my question relates more to whether there is any actual evidence (I don’t think so) that indicates a measurable admittance advantage of full-pay ED applicants over ED applicants requesting aid. Or whether we suspect it but can’t prove it.</p>
<p>I think it would depend entirely on the school. For need-blind schools that really are need-blind, it shouldn’t make any difference. For schools that are “need aware” or “need sensitive” or whatever they want to call it, it may be an advantage to not have need.</p>
<p>I still don’t really understand though. If the person you know does not have need then it wouldn’t be an issue since they wouldn’t be applying for aid anyway. If they do have need, even if claiming they don’t helped them in admissions, how would they afford to go without any aid?</p>
<p>Maybe they are someone who thinks they might get some aid, but could still attend whether they did or not. In that case, it’s probably a decision the person’s parents should make.</p>
<p>A couple of newbie questions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>How do you figure that EA does not give better chance of getting in? From a few schools I looked at, the EA acceptance rate is higher than the overall acceptance rate plus the applicant is usually get deferred for another round of decision.</p></li>
<li><p>How do you find out whether a school is need-blind?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>To reply to ttparent’s first question:</p>
<p>The Early Decision applicant pool is actually slightly less competitive than the Early Action pool. Think of the people who are applying early: mostly those who know they need that advantage because in the RD pool, they would be weaker applicants.</p>
<p>Now, consider Early Action applicants. These students are much stronger, and don’t feel the need to apply early to boost their chances because they know they’ll likely be accepted anyway. </p>
<p>The moral of the story: if you are a very strong student who could compete in the EA pool, and your first choice school is one that is need blind and offers 100% demonstrated need, applying ED will maximize your chance of acceptance, and you will have competitive financial aid on top.</p>
<p>That’s all my opinion, and of course there are better resources for this subject than strangers on the internet.</p>
<p>The reason ED can confer an advantage --albeit slight-- is that the applicant is committing to attend the college if accepted. That’s good for yield (the percentage of admitted students who end up matriculating) and it’s good when the college is trying to anchor a core of its incoming freshman class. Ideally they’d like a core of students they know are going to come who fill certain objectives; academic standing, ethnic and socio-economic diversity, athletics, arts and music, etc.</p>
<p>Since EA is not binding, there’s really nothing the college gets out of the deal in exchange for accepting students early. The students can still apply elsewhere and choose to go elsewhere. So why should the college bend even a little to accept someone “on the bubble” so to speak?</p>
<p>EA acceptances might be higher at some colleges, but from what I’ve seen incidentally not at the most competitive schools. That’s just my impression. It could be wrong. I’ll leave it up to others to track down the numbers, if they’re interested enough to do so. ;)</p>
<p>It seems that we are mixing up the EA and ED a little bit here. Generally, they are apples and oranges since schools that have ED do not have EA and vice versa. You don’t have to decide whether to do ED or EA at a particular school, you can only do one. All I am thinking here is that for schools that have EA, what is the harm of doing EA? It shouldn’t lessen your chance of getting in, in fact, it should give you more chance if not for being looked at twice in the process. If you want to do ED, obviously you can only do one and you are hand tied in many ways once you do that.</p>
<p>Even if the acceptance rate of RD is higher than EA at a particular school, unless your stat is way out of line, you are deferred to RD after EA. How could your chance of getting accepted be less?</p>
<p>ED is scary for those who need financial aid UNLESS the school is one that clearly published guidelines that let you see what you’re likely to pay (Stanford, for example), and meets 100% of need without packaging in student loans (or significantly limits loans) AND you clearly know how the school determines need. </p>
<p>I think that this ED FA system works worst for students from upper middle income families with substantial home equity. Their FAFSA EFC may be one number, but by the time the school adds in home equity, even an offer that meets “full need” as the school calculates it can still require substantial debt on the part of the family to meet their obligation above and beyond the already significant amounts in their FAFSA EFC.</p>
<p>Arabrab, a number of those few schools with the most generous aid cap home equity values at a percentage of income. I agree, though, that ED is most dicey from a financial aid perspective for upper middle class students.</p>
<p>D applied to six very selective but not most selective LACs, and only one of them explicitly caps home equity. I queried each school’s financial aid officer, and every single time I got back an answer that essentially said, “it depends”.</p>
<p>Egads, how frustrating that is. The one big issue I have with ED and financial aid is that colleges can be cagey about it. And people talk about how it disadvantages kids with financial need, but the main reason it does is that schools can often be very mysterious about their aid policies. If they’d just be open about them, provide online calculators that apply THEIR particular methodology to your figures; income, assets, home equity, etc. – then students would know what kind of financial aid they’re likely to get, removing that obstacle to an ED application. It would make ED more fair to students with need.</p>
<p>Some schools do this, and fortunately the one to which my S was interested in applying ED was one of them. Our FA package from them was almost to the dollar what their online calculator predicted.</p>
<p>Wow, lots of confusing stuff in this thread.</p>
<p>FACT: the fact that ED/EA admissions rates look so much higher at very selective colleges is because it the the round when the vast majority of candidates with hooks are accepted. These are recruited athletes (about 17% of the class at ivies), legacies (10-15%) of class, development admits and top URMs in many cases. 40% of every ivy class is hooked.</p>
<p>Other then Penn, every ivy and most top schools are honest in saying ED/EA confers no advantage except knowing where you’re going early.</p>
<p>And there is no doubt that not applying for aid helps at the vast majority of colleges in either round. Many colleges that have been need blind will change that policy for next year and until endowments recover. And many colleges that remain need blind will take many off waitlists for which they are not need blind.</p>
<p>
From <a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/ED_Agreement.pdf:[/url][quote]Should”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/ED_Agreement.pdf:
In what way is it unpleasant? Or rather, which schools have made it unpleasant? At DD1’s school, you just say “thanks, but no thanks” and that’s it. It’s clearly unpleasant in that it’s a great disappointment to be accepted but not be able to afford it, but it’s the same at RD time.</p>