<p>Can't believe the price and wonder how someone like me can afford this. I plugged in my numbers on the financial calculator and it came to 32k for my contribution. Although I've saved up 50k for both my daughters, 120+k is out of my league. No wonder there were so many Beemers/mercedes running around Duke.</p>
<p>"Be careful about the notion of applying early decision, as ED is binding. If finances are a question mark, the general advice is to not apply for binding early decision."</p>
<p>Schools hate it when students don't apply ED because they're afraid the FA offer might not be enough and then feel trapped.</p>
<p>THERE IS NO DANGER IN APPLYING TO YOUR FAVORITE SCHOOL ED IF YOU NEED FA.</p>
<p>Please tell your friends.</p>
<p>It says right on the ED agreement: </p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>A good reason not to apply ED is if you want to compare FA offers from various schools, but then you're probably not obsessed with one school!</p>
Well Duke really doesn’t validate the custodial parent’s FAFSA FOR validity. Her mother is a statistician and skewed the number correctly., I know my step daughter also lied on her entrance paperwork and told them she never had support from her father even though at that time she was receiving around 3k a month. Her mother just asked them to waive his income and they did. We told Duke several times and they didn’t care. The student has these privacy rights so they can do that and get away with it. We didn’t find out until the end because she was scamming us for more money too. She is now living with her fiance’ / boyfriend working for UNC and working on her PhD at UNC and must be doing it again, because she goes on vacations all over the world. She touts while at Duke she went to 10 different countries. Three of them were overseas learning experiences, but the rest for fun. She even had around 20k in personal savings from my husband’s bonuses he gave her and they put the money in her grandfather’s name. I wonder if it will ever catch up to her, but it hasn’t so far.