There is the forest and then there are the trees. Many here are lost in the trees. Be well.
But the trees are the rules.
Obviously ED is/was intended for the colleges to allow wealthy families to jump the line and ensure that their Johnny or Jane gets to go where their little hearts desire. If you are one who needs some help paying for college then ED is NOT for you. Sorry life sucks for the poor. Kings and Queens have always been treated differently.
As far as the binding contract goes, it is not quite that solid. The contract has an out for the applicant if the school does not provide an adequate FinAid package. What is adequate is in the eye of the beholder. I doubt any college wants to drag a kid kicking and screaming onto campus. If the numbers do not work, they do not work.
The whole problem with the system is that they do not tell you what you need to get X aid. I love, love what University of Alabama does. If you meet X and X, then you get Y. Awesome to apply ED. You know you qualify for a full scholarship and if you can pay the rest your good to go. Most colleges are not this transparent. They know your hot and heavy for the school since you are applying for ED. You think they will give you the best package? Try that with the car dealership. “I really really like this car, I have to have this car”. You think your best price is the first deal? I doubt it. Colleges play this same game. ED is for the wealthy who need no money. The rest of us have to deal with EA and RD.
If being lost in the trees means honoring your commitments, then many of us are eager for a long, rewarding, beautiful, ethical hike.
OK that was a bit of metaphor salad, I apologize.
@s3, you are entitled to bail if you are so inclined, but I would respect it more if you would admit “I don’t like the rules of the game so I feel justified in cheating”. Then we would have a simple disagreement on principle, and none of this metaphorical tennis would be necessary, and we could all move on.
@s3 sounds like the principal (yes the principal) of a HS who told parents at a college meeting that “they can’t make you go so apply ED for the advantage”. Good thing I didn’t have anything in my mouth or I’d have spit it out. I was a guest attending this meeting so chose not to scream “thats the most unethical piece of advice you can possibly give”.
OP, few people have saved the full $200K. But many families also take some money from current income, expect their student to take their federal loans (total of $27K over 4 years), and expect the student to work part time during the school year and for pay in the summer.
If you want to get an idea about merit aid. Google the common data set for each college. There is a section on non-need based aid. If your kid’s stats fall in the top percentage of students getting that aid, then your kid has a shot at that average aid amount. Carefully review their website page on merit, too.
Also, glad to see that you are an honest person, and are ignoring the unethical advice being pushed on this thread regarding treating an ED commitment as optional.
@Empireapple, I understand your disappointment (post #32). We were in a similar situation and just couldn’t stomach that 250K pill. Now 2+ years down the road, I feel different.
I think many feel that private education is this far superior and special thing and that public education is inferior in every way. In some ways, I did too. Both my wife and I went to private schools. Not the elite but up there. When I compare our education to my daughter’s education at our flagship (which admittedly one of the best flagships), I feel that in many ways she got the better deal. Her academic and research opportunities are far better. Her professors are better. Her interactions with her professors are better and more personable. The class sizes are a mixed bag but overall similar and often smaller. It helps she is in honors.Greater variety of classes. More flexibility in class schedules due to more sections being offered. More professor choices for the same reason. Easier to avoid the few duds. The facilities seem fine. More going on the campus outside of class. There are some negatives. Seems harder to make friends. More competition for classes. Can be hard to get into some courses. More competition for job interviews.
Like my state, NY has some fine state schools. If you go that route and research carefully, you might find that your son will have a similar experience.
Bottom line, the college experience is what the student makes of it. Your student will likely have the same opportunity for the “college experience” that you had. Might be different in some ways but it would be anyway. As I mentioned above, the academic side of the equation will likely be similar if he choices wisely.
@Empireapple I’ll second what @noname87 has said and add a few comments.
Be thankful you are having this very very common realization/disappointment now instead of a year from now. You have plenty of time to grieve what you can’t do regarding college, and move on to the many great things you can! 
We were also in a similar situation. Smart hard working kid who, in our eyes, deserved everything; but our idea of what we could pay didn’t match up with the realities of how college costs and funding work in our situation. So we did a lot of research here on CC and elsewhere. Both our kids are now at private universities in other states halfway across the country with large merit scholarships. We are paying the same as if they had gone to our local state universities with the merit scholarships they were offered there.
As far as opportunities:
Kid 1 is at a research university ranked around 100 USNews. She will graduate in four years with a bachelors and a masters. She has had three great internships so far (is a junior now), and it’s looking like she will graduate with great opportunities in her field. She knows her professors, lives in a big city, has friends from all over the world (literally), enjoys small classes, has opportunities galore–more than she can take advantage of, even a beautiful view from her dorm room window. And no loans!
Kid 2 is a freshman at an LAC ranked around 100 USNews. She has had great (I mean I’ve been really impressed) advising so far, great challenging classes, knows her professors, didn’t have trouble getting the classes she wants at registration for second semester, has realized she can graduate with a major and minor in three years, and/or study abroad a semester or even two, or double major, no problem. She has friends, clubs, a cute college town. No loans!
And no second mortgages for us. Yay!
We can’t pay full price for a big name school, but we certainly have found we can afford a great college experience. We know many kids who have had great experiences at our local state universities as well. You can still give your kid options, and great ones.
ED schools game the system by identifying prospective students who are willing to accept limiting their financial aid offers in return for a better chance of acceptance at one school. Schools would not do ED if it did not benefit them, and the schools that don’t do ED have decided that they don’t have to draw to pull in significant full pay students.
At schools that meet full need, the “poor” can take advantage of ED because they will get need based aid. It’s the middle to upper middle class students who don’t qualify for need based aid and cannot afford to be full pays who are screwed by ED policies.
@Empireapple May I ask, what schools were you hoping your child would apply to (sorry if I missed it upthread)? If you live in NY, you have great options. Binghamton, Geneseo, U Buffalo, and Stony Brook are all great state schools. Also, Cornell contract schools (ILR, HUman Ecology, and CAS) cost less than typical private colleges. There is also a lot of merit aid to be had. My D was offered amazing merit packages at Tulane and University of Miami. I also know that University of Vermont offers great merit aid.
@brantly U of Vermont is not much different than other state schools. They only give out an average of $15K a year. It is still going to cost about $40K a year to attend if your out of state. I suspect most kids can attend instate for less than that. http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-vermont/paying-for-college/ My son has looked around the area. U Maine seems to offer the best plan. They will allow my son to attend for the UMASS price. Just Awesome. I wish more schools offered such things.
Now all they have to do is jump the small hurdle of getting in.
Also, for low income people, even a small difference in aid packages can make a big difference to the family. So that makes ED a challenge.
I was a lower income student (Pell eligible). I applied to schools that met full need. My parents could have afforded any of them but I opted for the cheapest without much hesitation. This was many years ago and I don’t remember the exact amount of the difference (I do remember how much my loans were and they were less at the school I chose). I’m sure to full pay families, or even those who could afford half the cost, the amount wouldn’t have been that big a deal. But to my family even a few hundred dollars was something to consider carefully.
@Empireapple your kid will have many more options because of his fine GPA than he would have with a lesser one. They might not be $65,000 a year colleges…but there are options.
It sounds like you were hoping for an ED acceptance with merit aid. Is that correct?
Have you looked at schools where your son will get automatic guaranteed merit aid. I think university of Alabama would be one of those places. He could apply, and hear within a couple of weeks. Easy application, and easy scholarship application as well. Worth doing if money is a huge factor.
Not being able to use ED changes the chances of getting into one school. ONE. Yes, your chances of getting into a school might be (might be) better if you apply ED, but it is still ONE school. ED has higher acceptance rates and even seems like they accept students with lower stats in the ED round (the advantage), but remember that those ED numbers include legacies, athletes, special programs (Questbridge? Posse?) and other students who, if they applied RD would probably not be admitted on stats alone. ED has a lot of hooks in the pool and if you don’t have a hook, you aren’t competing against those applicants, but against the other plain old applicants with no hook. Are your chances really better in ED?
If you still want to go ED because you think the chances are that much better, you can do some work up front to see what your financial aid might be. You can ask for a pre-read for financial aid, you can research what the awards usually are. As much as we like to think our finances are complicated or special, schools aren’t reinventing the wheel for every single applicant. The awards are pretty standard. You most likely will get the same NEED BASED award in the ED round as in the RD round.
My kids applied to only one school each, not ED, but we knew what the awards would be. The first year, they did not receive any need based aid. The merit awards were as stated in the NPC or websites. Only ‘surprise’ was that a couple of the awards went up $500-$1000, but so did the tuition to match the increases.
ED has pros and cons, and one of the cons is that you don’t get to compare financial aid awards. You have to decide if the pros outweigh that con.
Forgive me for the ignorance here - but I have struggled to understand this ED process…and my S is in the process of applying for admission to the Fall 2017 semester.
What are the consequences of applying for ED, getting admitted and not accepting because the merit/financial aid was insufficient and the balance due/per year was completely out of reach for the parents?
Also what are the advantages of ED?
The OP says the family will not qualify for need based aid. Prereads are done for need based aid. I’ve never heard of a preread for merit aid.
You should start with the net price calculator. If it shows the school is unaffordable, don’t apply ED. It isn’t likely to get better with your full aid package. And colleges are businesses. One reason they are cagey about their exact criteria for merit aid is because they want to use it to tempt students who might not attend otherwise. By applying ED, you are already committing. Most schools won’t grant the limited merit aid they have to ED students – it doesn’t make business sense for them.
It is pretty stressful to go through getting accepted, appealing your aid, and then giving up your acceptance. All the while keeping your apps going for other schools.
Treat ED as what it is. A binding agreement that you will attend if accepted, and an application based on the info available ahead of time of what your aid is likely to be.
You may be a bit more likely to get in at some schools with an ED application. But if you can’t afford it, what is the point?
@mathewjn , please forgive me for recycling an old post:
I often recommend a book called “The Early Admissions Game” for this question. Written by two Harvard profs and a Wesleyan AD, it is a detailed, statistical analysis of ED, it’s advantages and disadvantages. A summary from an article by Louis Menand in The New Yorker says:
The chief finding reached by the authors of “The Early Admissions Game” is that applying early significantly increases the chances of acceptance. Their conclusions are based on data from the admissions offices at fourteen élite colleges and on a survey of three thousand high-school seniors.The average student in their sample who applied Early Action increased his or her chances of admission by 18.9 percentage points; an Early Decision application increased the chances of the average applicant in the sample by 34.8 points. The authors calculate that the advantage is the equivalent of a hundred additional points on the combined S.A.T. scores. An Early Decision application doubled the average applicant’s chances at Brown and nearly tripled them at Princeton. An Early Action application nearly tripled the chances at Harvard. Half of all current Harvard students were early applicants; only ten per cent of the regular applicants to Harvard were accepted.
They do cover athletes and legacies in the book and still show a clear statistical advantage for the unhooked, although not equal to the overall difference between ED and RD. (Note the use of the term “average applicant”.)
Yes, the analysis was a few years ago and application numbers have increased, but to date no one who points out that fact has any data to show the percentages have changed.
@mathewjn You can’t just decide not to go if the aid is not good enough. You have to be released from your ED contract by the university.