<p>You can out and out ask the financial aid office of given schools how they count qualified accounts. Also if NPCs ask about them, you can sometimes see that. However, at many schools, they are looked upon in sort of a holistic way or with odd formulas that make a staightforward answer difficult. In other words, they use them as assets if they are maybe over a certain amount but they also take current income and assets and age and other factors into account. You can understand that–someone with $20 million in qualified accounts should not be getting financial aid, for example and that money danged well should be taken into account. Someone with $200K and they have a modest income, should not. In between, is where it starts getting tricky and each school has their own way of handling this, just as they do with primary home equity values. </p>
<p>So you can play around with NPCS changing qualified plan money if they ask, and see what it does to your expected contribution and also ask fin aid, but YMMV. Some schools are more open about these things than others, but it seems to me getting this info is like pulling teeth. The answer on these thing is ofen, that it varies on the situation.</p>
<p>This is one of a number of reasons why ED is difficult when you have money constraints If the school your student applies to takes all of these thing into account in ways that other schools on the lists might not, you have to make that decision without knowing all of this. ED can work if you can stick to a dollar amount you can and are willing to pay and are not going for better deals. College A may take your 401 K accounts heavily into the equation while similar College B might not With ED, you have to ignore that and focus on whether you take or leave College A’s package, whether it 's doable and you are willing to make the sacrifices doing it without knowing what like colleges may offer. If you know what you are willing to pay and are not going to get pushed into going more that can be a problem for you fine. Often doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>I’ve known a number of situations where parents are grim faced about ED when they see what their kid’s peers and class mates got in merit packages knowing that their kid was very much in the running and would have likely gotten a piece of that had the not gone ED and stuck with a full pay or high pay school in November of the season. Buyer’s remorse is a real thing and there often is valid reason for it Or the kid changes his mind and say, he wished he stuck with State U because he would have gotten into the honors program with his friend, and you are sitting there bug eyed with the prospect of paying double that or more, that yes, you can do it, but barely and it’s going to hurt and now your kid is flippantly telling you he’d have been just fine or prefers some other less pricey choice. That elusive bird on the bush often looks a lot better than when you got him in your hands and get a closer look, and better birds may come into the area. </p>
<p>So an ED school can work out beautifully when all are on board as to what is being given up, and the issues around it. With schools that are highly selective and truly Holy Grail schools to student and family, this is not usually an issue, but a lot of kids and parents want to go the ED route for reasons that are not so good, especially when truly not a first choice school, there are financial issues and you don’t know exactly what you are doing and just getting on that ED bandwagon through momentum.</p>