<p>So I really, really want to apply to my #1 school, Mount Holyoke College, ED. The only issue is that I know I'm going to need a lot of financial aid (like ~$30,000.00 a year). </p>
<p>HOWEVER I recently took a closer look at the Early Decision contract and was surprised to find a sentence stating that "Should a student who applies for financial aid not be offered an award that makes attendance possible, the student may decline the offer of admission and
be released from the Early Decision commitment". This makes me question why so many people insist that you must be able to pay for a college to apply ED.</p>
<p>But while the above may be true, I know that ED applicants have less a chance of receiving financial aid, because the college knows that they've really already got them hooked.</p>
<p>SO my question is if I should apply ED to Mount Holyoke, and if I do will I likely receive less financial aid than if I took a risk and applied Regular Decision?</p>
<p>Yes, you do have a ‘back-door out’ if you don’t get what you feel is enough aid. Where you run into problems with ED is because you are not in a position to compare packages. You don’t have offers and FA packages from any other schools so you have no idea what schools B, C, & D are going to offer. If they offer $30k are they going to be comprised mostly of loans and not grants? You don’t know this. The reason why people concerned with finical aid are cautioned against ED is because during the RD cycle they have the opportunity to compare offers side by side, apples to apples, and decide what the most affordable one is. It would be pretty bad if you got an offer from Mt. H at ED of $25k grants, you turn them down…because you have an out, y’know…only to find in RD your best offer is $30k that consists of $15k loans, $15k grants. In the long run the offer from Mt. H, which you turned down in ED, was the better offer. Since you weren’t able to compare you didn’t know that.</p>
<p>It also means you have no leverage if you need to ask your top school to “re-evaluate” your financial aid. This often accompanied by letting them know that another comparable school has made cost of attendance more affordable. Some colleges will ask to see the offer from the other school, ask a few more questions about your finances, and sometimes they will improve your FA package. At least for freshman year… </p>
<p>Also, if you do decide to apply ED, still keep working on your applications for all your other colleges. There was a young man who posted out here last fall who was accepted ED to a top college. He did not see his FA package until after some college application deadlines were past and others were right on top of him. The FA was not even close to sufficient, and he really had to scramble to get applications in to other colleges. Until you have reviewed the FA package and confirmed it is workable, keep working on other applications and applying to other colleges. Of course, once the FA is confirmed, you would need to withdraw all other applications.</p>
<p>@blueiguana Oh, wow, this post was very helpful. This clears a lot up, and now I feel more comfortable applying ED if all people are complaining about is the inability to compare financial aid offers.</p>
<p>@siliconvalleymom I haven’t done that yet. My dad refuses to even look at the Net Price Calculator until he talks to my grandmother and sees if she’s willing to contribute some money for my college. Also, having gone through the college process with two other kids, he doesn’t really trust those calculators to be accurate.</p>
<p>disco1976, the difference in offers can be quite large. My daughter got a $10,000 improvement in her FA offer this spring through a request for re-evaluation and showing them the offer from a comparable school.</p>
<p>Also, the calculators are fairly new (have only been available for a couple of years), and are improving as time goes on. Although if your parents are divorced or have a small business the results can be somewhat unreliable (I ended up putting the assets of my small business in just as a personal asset to see what would happen, figured that would be “worst case scenario” for how a college would treat it). </p>
<p>Regarding having your grandmother give some money, you might want to post something on the financial aid forum asking the best way to do this to minimize the impact on your FA. There are some experts out there who can help you and your dad with this.</p>
<p>@intparent That is a good point, but I think it would be worth the risk if ED gives me a better chance of getting accepted. But I can always get a different (better) package sophomore year, right?</p>
<p>I will make sure to continue with my other applications, even if I apply ED to Mount Holyoke. That sounds so awful what happened to that boy!</p>
<p>EDIT: I didn’t see your newest post before I posted this. Wow, a $10,000 difference… And now I’m starting to feel doubt…</p>
<p>What if I applied to a different school Early Action, a school I know would give me a lot of FA, and Mount Holyoke EDII? Would that solve this problem? Then I would be able bargain a bit with my FA package.</p>
<p>I don’t think I explained anything well at all if your take away was comparing aid offers is no big deal.</p>
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<p>ED is for people who don’t need to compare/bargain FA. That’s the entire point being made here. It favors people who are full pay, can be viewed as discriminatory, and is why several high profile universities dropped ED several years ago in favor of EA or SCEA. Trying to find a way to play ED off of EDII is not a good idea, really. You’re taking advantage of fine print that allows a student to get out of a binding contract if the FA isn’t enough. The intent of ED is a binding contract should you be accepted. You get the benefit of a greater chance of admission because the university gets a higher yield…you are committed.</p>
<p>Your father is telling you that you are going to need a lot of financial aid but is unwilling to look at these net price calculators before you even finalize a application list? This sounds like you are going to be in a big trouble. It is heartbreaking to read of kids each year who pour their hearts into competitive school applications, obtain acceptance, and then cannot attend because they did not get as much aid as the family felt was necessary. If your parents earn too much to get the kind of aid they feel they need to send you to school, then you should not be applying to schools that only give out need based aid.</p>
<p>The problem with your plan, as stated above, is if you only get $20K in FA and turn down Mt Holyoke’s ED acceptance and all your comparable RD acceptances offer the same, then you lost your chance to go to your first choice school for the same price as your other options. If one of those schools offers significantly more money, you at least have the option of asking Mt. Holyoke to match that offer which might happen and save you thousands of dollars. You can’t possibly begin to assess these possibilities without plugging numbers into a net price calculator. Although ED will increase your admissions odds, an admission without a means to pay your family’s share is really no more useful than a rejection.</p>
<p>Also, if you contact ED 2 and try to negotiate based on an ED offer, ED 2 is going to realize you have held the ED offer long enough to compare with them. Now you want ED2 to sweeten the pot? You don’t think they may be suspicious you’re going to do the same thing to them? Perhaps a RD that released decisions early? The entire point of ED is apply, get the decision and attend. The out is a noncompete FA offer. Now you want to find a way around that? I highly doubt ED2 presented with a better offer from your ED will play ball. You may risk ED2 contacting ED and one or both offers being rescinded.</p>
<p>@blueiguana Yeah, after seeing intparent’s post saying the difference was $10,000 I think I’m starting to see how important having other offers is. I also see your point on the whole ED2 plan, and you’re right, it won’t work.</p>
<p>Alright, so you guys have convinced me that ED is probably not for me. Still, I think in a couple of months after my dad talks to my grandmother, and he fills out the Net Price Calculator, I’ll revisit this forum with that info and ask if ED would fit me better at that point.</p>
<p>If there is uncertainty with your family potentially being unable to afford the EFC listed by college financial aid, then consider adding some of the following to your application list:</p>
<p>Unlikely unless your financial situation changes. Why would they give you a better package sophomore year? </p>
<p>Regarding “negotiating” for better FA, you want to be careful about using that term. It is better to say that you are “Asking for a review of your FA award”, and saying that you really want to attend but that school X has made the COA quite a bit lower. A nuance, but I think an important one. Yes, they know you are “negotiating”. But you don’t want to be heavyhanded. And some schools won’t budge – one of my D’s final 3 choices did not move at all. So there is no guarantee that will work, either.</p>
<p>Also… while we had a $10,000 difference, I am working under the assumption it is for one year, and likey we will bounce back up the lesser FA amount in sophomore year. So even if you do get a better FA offer from a comparable school and Mt. Holyoke does agree to improve your FA for freshman year, you still have 3 more years where the aid may not be as good.</p>
<p>Regarding the net price calculator – if your dad fills it out now, he will have a better idea what the gap is between possible aid and what needs to be paid (by your grandma or him). Ask him if you can run it just to see what that gap is, it might help him prepare for talking with your grandma.</p>
<p>Schools actually have very different recommendation about applying ED if you have financial need. Some schools encourage it, some schools discourage it. </p>
<p>There was a very long thread a number of years ago (if you sort by side of thread, you’d probably find it pretty quickly). Penn encouraged students to apply ED if Penn was their first choice regardless of need. Some other school, I think Brown, was the opposite. </p>
<p>It pays to check with the school. You can certainly get out of your commitment, if you can’t afford it, but you might be better off applying regular and comparing aid packages.</p>
<p>So I was able to convince my dad to fill out Mount Holyoke’s Net Price Calculator, and our EFC is only $12,000. My parents are able to pay a little over $15,000 per year, so this is pretty amazing.</p>
<p>Please don’t mistake your EFC with the idea that this is the amount you will be required to pay. Even schools that guarantee to meet 100% of demonstrated need don’t go strictly by EFC. Each school calculates need differently. FA packages can consist of grants, loans, student contribution (ie summer earnings), and work study. Your FA offers can vary to a large degree in how much is offered and what they consist of.</p>
<p>“But while the above may be true, I know that ED applicants have less a chance of receiving financial aid, because the college knows that they’ve really already got them hooked.”</p>
<p>The ED school knows you can’t attend if you can’t afford it. If you’re admitted ED with FA, the school really, really wants you, so much so that they’re willing to take a financial “loss” so to speak. They have no incentive to skimp on their offer to you; it would also lower their “yield” percentage (if they care about that issue) if you can’t afford their offer.</p>
<p>“ED is for people who don’t need to compare/bargain FA.”</p>
<p>Or are so enamored of a school that they don’t care what it costs, as long as they can afford it.</p>
<p>@blueiguana Oh, no, I know that it’s not a perfect estimate, and that I won’t see what a college will ACTUALLY give me in grants/scholarships/loans until I get admitted and receive the package they’ve chosen. Still, it’s nice to know that I’m not one of those people stuck in the middle with an EFC of $30,000, but an actual family contribution of $15,000, even if EFC isn’t the only thing determining my FA package.</p>
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<p>This is also something I’m worried about. I’m not sure if I’m a strong enough applicant for Mount Holyoke to want to give me a lot of FA. I mean, I wanted to apply ED because I feel like I’m kind of borderline for admission, and with ED you have a higher chance of acceptance. I’m not someone that Mount Holyoke will really be pining after IMO.</p>
<p>EDIT: Should I just call Mount Holyoke’s financial aid office in September and ask them about applying ED there with substantial FA need? Since some schools encourage applying ED even with financial need and some don’t, would this be a good idea?</p>
<p>A question would be, if you were admitted to Mount Holyoke with the financial aid given by its net price calculator, would it be your first choice no matter what (i.e. even if your other schools offered you full rides)?</p>
<p>Also, the important number to consider is the net price after deducting grants and scholarships (not loans or work) from the cost of attendance at the school. Your limit of affordability is your actual family contribution (AFC, which appears to be $15,000 per year from what your wrote above) plus your actual student contribution (ASC, which is what you are willing to take out in Stafford loans and contribute through work; a realistic maximum is probably about $9,000 per year, but many students prefer a smaller amount to avoid being stretched to the financial limit initially).</p>