It appears that student didn’t turn down the ED offer from the private until s/he received the offer from the competitive public, which was likely received past the ED committment date.
1 Like
Applying is allowed, but “ethically” a student should withdraw other applications once he/she is admitted ED. In this instance, my gut tells me, the family decided they preferred the state school for a reason and tried to use $$ as an excuse. Again, not in the room, but that is somewhat common from my experience. Truly, the state school part could have also been a private school. The real answer was that they did not withdraw, preferred the other school and tried to back away using a $$ excuse. My point is that using “the money” as a reason is not always smooth - and does get questioned in many instances. If you apply ED, you should plan to go to that school or deal with a lot of stress - much more than the responses in this thread imply…
1 Like
Doesn’t seem we know enough here.
And “financial reasons” is allowed. Call it a loophole, if you will.
We can’t predict every time will go as this anecdote.
2 Likes
Only one binding ED application at a time is allowed.
Binding ED to one school and non-binding EA or early rolling to another school is allowed (some (“restrictive” or “single choice”) EA schools do not want EA applicants to apply ED elsewhere, however).
Binding ED resulting in non-admission is no longer binding, so binding ED2 is allowed after non-admission.
1 Like
Thank you. I did not know to appreciate the significance and importance of these dates in the context of relative to those of other schools.
Perhaps ED schools should do the following:
For ED applicants applying for FA, have the FA office issue a contingent-on-admission FA offer quickly (well before ED decisions are issued). Give the applicant an option, based on the contingent-on-admission FA offer, to continue binding ED (no option to back out for financial reasons) or convert to a non-binding RD application well before ED decisions are issued.
Basically, the school says “if you are admitted ED, here is what it will cost you: $______; do you want to stay with binding ED or switch to non-binding RD?”.
For ED applicants not applying for FA, same thing, except that $______ is the college’s list price.
7 Likes
As mentioned, I know two examples - same situations. Why don’t you share an example of an “easy out?” Generalities perpetuate the same idea - you can get out for financial reasons. I am giving you real examples of when that has not been the case.
Obviously, I can only share so much.
3 Likes
My daughter has done ED2 at a Top 20 school. I have run the NPC and made sure all my info is accurate. I would hope the school (if she is lucky enough to get in) would be some what close to the calculator. If they come back two times what the calculator showed, I would hope you could have a conversation with the school to figure it out, one way or another.
1 Like
Works for me. Maybe you could even agree to the money prior to applying.
This isn’t what colleges that offer ED want. They want near-certain commitments from ED applicants. From their perspective, what’s the point of reviewing and admitting an ED applicant and then s/he turns out to be just a “maybe”? They could have offered EA instead and they choose not to.
The idea is that they deliver the contingent FA offer (which takes much less work in most cases) early and require the ED applicant to confirm staying ED (and not being able to back out for financial reasons) or switch to non-binding RD before they do much work on the admission side.
The delivery of the contingent FA offer does not imply that the applicant was admitted.
How about ED applicants are required to run the NPC, and as long as the final cost equals or is less than the NPC number the student attends?
Our high school guidance counselor requires parents to sign a statement saying they have run the NPC and strongly recommends we print out the results.
1 Like
I still see two problems with this approach:
-
The timing. The college runs the FA process to give all ED applicants their FA offers and wait for their confirmmations. That takes time. In the meantime, AOs can’t start evaluating ED applicants because they don’t know who will accept their FA packages and who won’t.
-
The lost of early application advantage. If ED applicants don’t like their FA offers, it would be too late for them to file another early application to a different college.
2 Likes
This also doesn’t take into account true financial hardships that can and do occur between the time a student ran the NPC and applied ED and is offered admission. Things such as job loss for a parent (common now with Covid), major medical issue that incurs a lot of bills, etc. can and do happen within that window of time.
1 Like