@oldfort I always believed that people don’t apply ED as much because of time and the binding part. I used to be scared of ED myself, but then I realized if it’s one of the schools I want to go to, there’s nothing wrong with a binding admission.
Others have commented on aspects of each engineering program.
An additional consideration may be a relatively large university (Cornell) vs. a relatively small university (Dartmouth), and a somewhat large Greek presence (Cornell) versus an even larger Greek presence (Dartmouth). Do you prefer the smaller classes as an underclassman at Dartmouth or more social niches at the larger Cornell?
Do you want to be able to live on campus all four years (Dartmouth) or be most likely as an upperclassman to get a private apartment (Cornell)?
Both colleges provide the beautiful rural environs that you also admired in Williams. You will not lack for scenic beauty at either!
Ithaca is a more substantial town than Hanover. When we visited, although my son rejected Cornell as too big, all three of us said we would love to live in Ithaca someday! Hanover is charming, but smaller.
ED is not binding if FA is not sufficient to make the school affordable. At the same time, if you let the school know it is your first choice then it may not need to give you most money possible. For students who need FA (many students do) they only do RD because they want to compare FA from different schools. Even top tier schools will match each other’s aids in order to get the students they want. By doing ED, you are giving up the option of getting the best FA possible. Many people have complained that ED is made for wealthy kids and it disadvantages lower income students.
The reason not as many students do ED is because they can’t afford to - they need to compare their FA packages.
BTW - most athletes, legacies (students with hooks) apply ED, and that’s why ED admission rate is higher than RD.
@oldfort I don’t understand. I thought there was a quantitative method for calculating estimated aid, which shouldn’t change from ED to RD, and there is an appeal process just in case the aid award isn’t sufficient. The schools know that the student is no longer in ED binding if the award isn’t enough so why do they lower it? They’re only losing students that way.
Cornell has 4-year ABET-accredited engineering degree programs, as well as a greater range of engineering course offerings than Dartmouth.
@geekgurl they don’t lower FA for ED applicants, and Cornell won’t give you and merit aid so the aid will be the same.
@geekgurl - You are correct. Each college has a system for determining need, and a need-based aid offer should be identical whether ED or RD.
(This may not be true for merit aid at all colleges, but the colleges to which you are applying do not offer merit scholarships, only need-based aid.)
I know students who were accepted ED who were very satisfied with their aid packages.
I also listened into a group phone call for alumni with a dean at Williams, who stated that fewer than 5 accepted ED students a year feel their aid package may be insufficient, and, of these, 80% eventually attend Williams. That implies that only about one student per year, if that, turns down an ED offer from Williams because the student and school cannot agree on how much the student needs. Those are pretty good odds!
The colleges at which you are looking pride themselves on meeting full demonstrated need.
What oldfort and others mean is that, sometimes, an RD applicant may call School A and say, “School B gave me $2000 more, and that $2000 makes all the difference to me. If School A looks at my finances again and finds that I do indeed qualify for $2000 more, I will definitely go to School A, because you are my top choice!” And sometimes School A adjusts the package, perhaps by adjusting the loan portion vs. the grant portion. Sometimes School A won’t budge, and the applicant chooses to attend School B for the better package.
It is a matter of a risk-analysis and cost-benefit analysis. Many applicants will determine that a bird in the hand is worth two on the wing, and apply ED to take advantage of the potential admissions advantage of an ED application. Other applicants will want to be savvy comparison-shoppers, and apply RD in order to have at least two offers to compare.
As long as the NPC shows an EFC your family can handle, you can choose whether to apply ED or RD. But if the EFC looks too high, don’t bet on a miracle; apply elsewhere.
@geekgurl, You should look at the financial aid statistics for internationals in the colleges’ common data sets. Cornell only provides financial aid for about 12% of its enrolled international students. As they warn on their website, “Please note that you will be in competition for very limited funds.” So you are not only competing for admission, you are also competing for $$$.
ED may give you the advantage of getting in with funding ahead of other needy applicants. Or you might have even more competition. I really don’t know. Statistics on international admissions are hard to come by.
I can’t give you specific data for engineering programs, but just for comparison Princeton and Dartmouth provide financial aid for about 69% of their enrolled international undergrads (in all displines). MIT about 73%.
Again, we don’t know how many internationals applied, how many were admitted with or without aid, but the percentage enrolled receiving aid is a good indicator of how much they spend on international aid.
Each school may have the same methodology for calculating EFC for ED and RD, but not every school uses the same methodology, therefore FA you get from schools may be different. Within Ivies, Harvard, Yale and Princeton are known to be more generous with FA, and Cornell may match Harvard’s FA if they want you bad enough.
Cornell is need aware for international students, and MIT only admit a handful of international students a year.
I’m not saying categorically that an ED application does not make sense in your case. The CDS does not break out enough data for international students to support confident judgements about admission chances or financial aid issues. However, I suspect the ED advantage won’t be as large in your case as you might think. As suggested above, much of the ED advantage seems to go to legacies and recruited athletes, who usually are US citizens. For all we know, there is little or no boost for high-need international students applying ED to Brown/Cornell/Dartmouth. If that is the case, then I don’t think it would make sense to (a) abandon the opportunity to compare FA offers, and (b) risk having to withdraw the application to your first-choice college (MIT).
Now, if I’m wrong and there really is a significant ED boost even to high-need internationals, then it might make sense to apply ED to a “full need” college that you like almost as much as MIT. Cornell might be a good choice, although that 12% figure cited in #27 seems to be much lower than the percentage at some peer colleges. For example, according to the Williams College 2017-18 CDS (section H), that year they awarded FA to 92 undergraduate degree-seeking nonresident aliens; that would be about 58% of them. Maybe Williams attracts a more affluent international applicant pool? Hard to say. Again, the available data isn’t detailed enough.
At any rate, as you must be aware, admission rates at all these schools (MIT, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Williams) are quite low. I’ve seen reports that MIT’s international admission rate is less than half its already very low overall rate. For a high-need international CS/engineering student, especially one from a high-volume country (like China or India), the chances at some of these schools might be down in the low single digits.
It’s fine to take a shot at a couple of super reach schools … but perhaps more of your attention should be on identifying schools where the chances are more realistic (unless you already have good back-ups in your home country). You mentioned Michigan, which is a bit less selective than the schools just mentioned; but, Michigan does not offer financial aid to international students. Nor does UNC-CH. UCLA does, but it only goes to a small percentage of international students. You might want to check out Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Vanderbilt, or Washington University in St. Louis (which may be a bit less selective for internationals than most of the Ivies). Or, consider less selective schools like the University of Alabama, which offers big automatic merit scholarships for qualifying stats.
https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.php
As for LACs (like Williams) you might want to consider Macalester College. For 2017-18, Macalester awarded FA to over 80% of enrolled degree-seeking internationals. They seem to have a good Math/CS program (but, like most LACs, no engineering degrees – https://www.macalester.edu/preengineering/ ).
"I’m planning on going to a grad school after undergrad, and I might attend a business school if I decide I want to do business. My main career goals are either research (engineering or physics) or entrepreneurship.
My other early plans are EA to MIT (top choice), U Michigan and UNC Chapel Hill."
So you really don’t want to apply ED to any college that’s not your top choice, and as others have posted, you may not see a big advantage for ED being you’re an international student. That being said, of your two ED options, Cornell would be better definitely for engineering and physics and for high tech entrepreneurship.