Hi, I’m looking forward to applying to Penn ED but I’m afraid that I will not get a good enough financial aid package. I’ve heard that sometimes students who cannot afford financial aid packages are sometimes allowed to back out of the binding ED agreement so they could apply to less expensive RD schools, while still maintaining the acceptance to the ED school. Is this true??? Does anyone have any personal experience with this???
Not true, If you back out of ED contract, you also give up the acceptance.
It is better not to do ED, if you have such concern.
Well, if that doesn’t work, how open is the financial aid office to negotiation?
If you are in a position where you want to compare financial offers and/or you are very concerned about finances then I’d recommend that you don’t apply anywhere ED.
In general you cannot negotiate with financial aid offices, at best you may get a couple thousand more. At the ivies if Harvard gives you significantly more than Penn you at have some negotiating power for example. and yes if you are released from an Ed offer you forfeit your acceptance. You cannot reapply there RD.
They are open to negotiation. But they often say no, and insist on original amount. Penn is too good to give up if you are in the position. If you want to negotiate FA, do not apply ED. You can apply EA, and RD, and compare FA and negotiate.
okay. Thanks for all the responses
i applied Penn ED and Uchicago EA and was accepted to both - uchicago gave me nearly double the aid that penn did. I tried to get Penn to match Uchicago’s but they only gave me a few thousand more (did not match). If you have a straightforward financial situation and make less than 100k, then you should get a generous financial aid package that should approximate the CSS/FAFSA EFC. In my case, my EFC for Penn was 20,000 more than the EFC i expected. I still ended up going to Penn.
If you have divorced parents, own a business, self-employed, own a lot of property/assets, then i wouldn’t recommend ED.
@Dartmouth_21 Did you receive merit aid from Chicago? that would explain why Penn didn’t match. But if not it seems weird that need based age at two similar universities was so different.
i received 4,000 in merit aid, but there was still a big discrepancy. each school considers different things when calculating the aid package. i agree that it is weird; i expected penn to have much better FA than chicago! oh well.
It depends.
We did ED and I am divorced and have a low EFC. My S got in with a generous package, similar to my older D’s package at Northwestern though she’d applied RD.
Before my S, I heeded the advice to apply RD if we needed financial aid. I realize now that was good and bad advice. It’s good advice if you are middle-need and/or more complex need, and want to apply for merit-need or merit scholarships; these can be negotiated. Merit-need is a looser concept, based on a more holistic assessment of the need and how much the college wants you; it can be open to negotiation and other offers.
But not applying ED if you need financial aid is bad advice if you are, like me, a straightforward financial aid candidate with straightforward Profile and FAFSA (no investments, complex situations etc). Ivy league financial aid for straightforward high need is done by formula. This formula is relatively the same ED as RD.
There are compelling reasons to go ED; you have a higher chance of getting in, you have peace of mind, etc.
In our case financial aid was strong; I know this by comparing my other kids’ offers at Northwestern and Williams.
As others point out, if you apply ED and the offer is not good enough, they are open to negotiation but this will typically not amount to more than a few thousand dollars unless there is some mistake or new data. However, you are allowed to back out. This would cancel your offer of admission-- but remember you could simply apply to other schools–there is still plenty of time to do that if you are already prepared. Then you’d be right where you’d have been if you hadn’t applied ED. So in cases like our own, I think ED is a win-win.