This is the official thread for those applying ED to Colgate University.
List your unweighted GPA, any SAT /ACT scores, and ECs. What majors are you going into?
Ask your questions, the CC community is here to help!
Hello—Our family is in a bit of a quandary. Our son has Colgate at the top of his college list, would like to apply ED, but we have questions about our financial commitment if he is accepted. Since there is a mention of providing your stats in the thread intro, he has a 3.9 UW with either honors or AP classes all 4 years, has a long and well rounded list of extracurriculars, including a few selective college Book Awards his Jr year (like every other high achieving kid these days!), and great teacher/head of school recommendations. He is not a D1 athlete (but is being courted by several selective D3 schools).
We’ve done the online financial aid calculators as instructed by our regional admissions rep and the outcomes are not looking possible for our finances; the challenge is my husband owns a small business that he operates without a bank line of credit, so company profits are the line of credit, which your tax return does not (and wasn’t meant to) demonstrate. Our sense is that the online tools aren’t equipped to take take these types of personal nuances fully into account.
Attempting to get more info from the financial aid or admissions office directs us back to online calculators or gives us a boilerplate response (‘we are unable to meet with students individually at this time’) or give us assurances that we’ll be able to decline an ED offer due to our financial situation. This is our oldest so we’ve not been through the FASFA or CSS process previously.
Any insights or advice are appreciated! Thanks so much in advance.
The ED agreement is not a legal contract. While it should be honored, if you believe you can afford it and made a good faith effort to verify that, IMO you can walk away if the offer is not sufficient.
Question about early decision similar to the one above: My son submitted his app early, in October, but did not designate it as ED. He was very worried about the “binding” aspect and our ability to pay. I am curious if colleges might look at that as a lack of interest, or signal to them that he views it as a “safety school.” Like, if we were his first choice and he submitted in October he would have checked the box for ED1?
If he submitted his app in early October for the RD round, then it may just be put on the back burner until they get through the ED1 and ED2 rounds. We did some of those with S22 and it was a long wait until March! If he thinks its a real first choice and he wants to go there, then he can likely call and convert it to an ED.
Thanks. It’s really among his top choices, but again he’s worried about the financial side. We will have a good bit of need (we have a lot of kids) and he might actually decide to go to a “lesser” school if they gave him a TON of aid that a better school doesn’t match. Part of that is the freedom less cost gives him in choosing a major. At the same time, there’s a great chance that Colgate’s more generous financial aid might make it more affordable than other schools. At the end of the day it was just too much for him to think about so he just went RD, and was wondering if that–combined with his early application date–would signal to them that he’s not that interested.
Hard to game the system on RD timing. Hopefully because he put in early effort and got his application in early (basically with all the EA deadlines) it shows he’s a serious candidate with real interest in the school (especially if he had personal reasons he shared about the school that were in his application and supplementals). If he got lots of his applications in early then you will start hearing from some of the schools in the next couple of months and you have another decision point on whether you want to use the ED2 option on 1/15. My son did ED1 and it likely helped his admission a little but many of his friends did RD and had choices they were deciding between. You may also be able to reach out to the school and discuss the financial aid concerns in general w an ED application - their office is pretty responsive. What they likely won’t do w ED candidates is work with you if have an FA offer at another school and you are hoping to have Colgate get closer or match. For that you will need to go through the EA/RD process I think.
Colgate does not track demonstrated interest so no worries there.