It still saves them money overall to go with ED, because they can get away with offering less financial aid overall. First of all, only a relatively small percentage of ED applicants need aid – they know that the ED pool has fewer needy applicants overall. Secondly, the ED applicants are pretty much stuck with what they have been awarded. During the RD round, if Swarthmore’s aid packages aren’t as strong as competing schools, if Swarthmore is unwilling to negotiate, then the applicants will go to other schools. Since 3 out of 4 RD admits to Swarthmore choose to go elsewhere, it’s quite possible this is a motivating factor for many students.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Swarthmore probably does “reconsider” or “review” its financial aid in light of offers from competing schools in the RD round. They may say that they won’t negotiate or change their policy – but the truth is that most schools will look at offers from competing schools, and they can use professional judgment to make adjustments to the formula. </p>
<p>If Swarthmore didn’t have ED, then they would probably be looking at increasing their financial aid budget so as to increase yield.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not saying that Swarthmore gives its ED students worse packages than its RD students; I’m saying that Swarthmore is able to give weaker packages overall to its students, because the ED policies let it function even though there is only a 25% yield on RD. It reduces the collective need to compete with other schools with aid dollars.</p>
<p>Re post #233, as to the short deadline and emotional pressure, I mean the ED student is confronted with a single “take it or leave it” offer. The RD student is generally confronted with an array of choices and cost information, and several weeks to made the decision. They know what their choices are,so there is no fear that if they let a so-so offer go that they will be left without a place to go down the line – if they have equivalent or better options, they can see them. </p>
<p>Let’s say hypothetically there is a student who has been cross-admitted to Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, but Bryn Mawr offers a substantially stronger aid package, perhaps because of preferential packaging or the availability of merit money to sweeten the pot. The student thought that Swarthmore was her preferred school because it is ranked higher, is co-ed, etc. – but when she re-visits the schools and tallies up costs, she realizes that Bryn Mawr is a much better choice for her financially. Her parents could manage to pay for Swarthmore, but it would be a stretch and they probably would end up borrowing – so she changes her mind and goes to the school that has offered her more generous aid.</p>
<p>So the bottom line is that RD students who are admitted to colleges that offer ED probably end up paying less overall for college than their ED counterparts, either because they succeed in having their aid package reviewed and improved, or they end up going elsewhere for better aid.</p>
<p>This must be reworded: “So the bottom line is that RD students who are admitted to colleges that offer ED might possibly end up paying less overall for college than their ED counterparts …”</p>
<p>No, I mean collectively I think they DO pay less. If you assume that they are given the same offers as the ED students, then they have 3 options:
Accept the offer.
Appeal the award in a successful effort to improve the offer.
Turn down the offer in favor of a better offer from another school.</p>
<p>If they all opted for #1, then they would pay the same. </p>
<p>If even a single student in that category opts for #2 or #3, then collectively the RD students are paying less. Since we know, for example, that 3 out of 4 students admitted to Swarthmore RD opt to go elsewhere, I think its reasonable to assume that the number of students opting for #2 or #3 is at least a significant fraction of admitted students, especially given Swarthmore’s yield rate.</p>
<p>That’s simply not true. Many, many students change their minds about their first choice school after the acceptances and financial aid awards are arrayed. My son did. My daughter did. We see it all the time on CC. There’s nothing like a financial aid reality check to erase the charms of a “dream” school.</p>
<p>(1) fast forward 5 years from now and try to project what will happen when she graduates from said expensive Dream School. I can say from our HS class of 2005, many of them who went to colleges like that and majored in things like History spent at least a year waiting on tables at a local restaurant after they graduated from college.</p>
<p>(2) if this is really that important to her, then ask her how far she is willing to go to support this financially. For example, would she be willing to commit to the National Guard for their tuition benefit or join ROTC?</p>
<p>There are many suggestions here for less expensive but quality state schools. Seems like the right thing to me.</p>
<p>Without ED, more likely that they would change admissions policy from need-blind to need-aware. That frees those searching for FA from the issues with ED, but it wouldn’t necessarily lead to a “better” package from Swarthmore. </p>
<p>FA might be one big factor in yield, but we can’t neglect all of the full-pay students who are applying during RD. Some of them have several top choices, and don’t end up making a final decision until May 1. Others are looking for the biggest bragging rights. If the big kahuna in Cambridge (which has no ED or EA program, because it doesn’t need it with an 80% yield and a still-impressive endowment) gives them a thumbs up, they’ll take Harvard. FA packages don’t impact yield from this group; you sell to them based on fit, prestige, merit aid, and/or ED/EA.</p>
<p>It still saves them money overall to go with ED, because they can get away with offering less financial aid overall</p>
<p>only a relatively small percentage of ED applicants need aid</p>
<p>HUH? What are these statements based on? What did I miss? Are there professional analyses out there to back this up? Or, is there a broad assumption that because one does not know how need is calculated, one will be misled? And, the icing on the cake is: it’s worse for minorities (oh, except for the URMs who are enticed) because they are more often from single parent families? (Let’s not even argue the predjudice this implies against high-performing minorities or their committed families.)</p>
<p>Swarthmore states: Our financial aid award will be based only on a family’s demonstrated need. Timing of admission is not a factor. Thus, any financial aid decision we make in the winter would be the same as a decision made in the spring.</p>
<p>Is calmom, who I believe is in CA, telling us Swarthmore is lying? If, so, it would benefit us- and CC- to have some details.</p>
<p>Is calmom saying, well it’s not transparent, so I must be right? Let’s truly approach this based on legal perspective. I would commit to reading any industry-based analyses you can provide. </p>
<p>If your child applies ED and is accepted and asked for aid, the college will review based on their protocols. After they determine a “need” figure, they will offer some amount, based on their policies. If it works for the family, the kid has already agreed to enroll. If it does not work, the kid has an out.</p>
<p>Further, if the family went in without informing themselves, they- of course- may be blindsided, leaving anger and disappointment. Further, if the kid changes his mind about committment to that ED school, if he decides it wasn’t really his number one choice, (other than the FA issues described,) then he is the one gaming.</p>
If you reject the offer for financial reasons, no–you have not broken the contract. Schools share information on accepted ED applicants so that committed ED students don’t try to also apply RD “just to see,” but if you turn down the offer for financial reasons, they should take you off the list. “Should” being the operative word–I heard once that the school made a mistake and forgot to take a name off the list, so follow-up to be safe.</p>
<p>
I’m not sure why you agreed with the part of my post that you quoted. I don’t think you need to be totally insensitive to financial considerations–I think you need to be insensitive to small price fluctuations that would make, for instance, choice #2 a few thousand cheaper per year than choice #1. Families who need FA, by definition, can’t afford to write out full-price checks; doing so would be financially unsound and unaffordable. To give an example from my personal experience: my mother was willing to pay 5k more for Swarthmore than for Carleton, although I would have been just as happy at the latter. Prestige played a role in that decision, perhaps, but also proximity (or lack thereof) to home. I wouldn’t call such a decision “totally insensitive to financial considerations,” because if Swarthmore’s FA package had been totally unaffordable, I would have turned down the ED offer with regret but understanding.</p>
<p>
I’ll answer your points as you put them, in numbered order:
Absolutely true. “Overall” is the important word here–Swarthmore pays less FA in the ED round overall. What I am saying is that savvy FA applicants can take advantage of this overall statistic, because individually their FA will be the same and they’ll receive a small admissions boost for making the ED commitment.
That’s a possibility–Swarthmore might look at competing RD offers and make a few thousand in adjustments, best case scenario. But worst-case scenario, Swarthmore doesn’t offer admission to the student at all in RD; after all, ED is an easier round to be accepted in, for a multitude of anecdotal reasons and correlated by admissions rates. For example, Swarthmore has EDI and EDII; almost all tipped athletes will apply EDI, so the EDII pool is more representative of “normal” applicants. Correspondingly, the acceptance rate for EDII is also significantly lower than for EDI–something like 25% vs. 45%. But the RD rate is something like 16%–also significantly lower than 25%.</p>
<p>
I agree. But this seems like a win-win situation to me, regardless of how competitive or anti-competitive it may be. Swarthmore likes its ED policies because it saves them money and locks in yield; students like its ED policies because it gives them an early response and a small admissions boost, which matters especially to the unhooked. If some students want to compare financial aid packages because a 2k difference between choice #1 and choice #2 is absolutely crucial–and this can be true–then ED is obviously the wrong choice. But if the family has a concrete maximum affordability number in mind and is willing to pay a small premium for choice #1, then ED carries only emotional risk.</p>
<p>
I assume that such a “so-so” FA offer would still be affordable without either party resorting to large private loans or other fiscally unsound practices. Thus, my perennial question–if choice #2 gave you a slightly better FA package than choice #1, which school would you pick? If the answer isn’t always choice #1, then you shouldn’t apply ED in the first place.</p>
<p>
This student should not apply ED because Swarthmore was not a sufficiently solid first choice. The ED school should also be the family’s first choice, because they are the ones who might be borrowing and making (FISCALLY SOUND, AFFORDABLE) sacrifices to pay for it.</p>
<p>For your specific example, I’m 90% sure that Bryn Mawr doesn’t offer merit aid above 20k. Even awarded to a high-need student with preferential packaging, that’s only about a 5k difference in summer and term-time workstudy (since Swarthmore is no-loans to begin with). Now, for those with EFCs above 30k, the merit aid would be much more attractive–but they should be pursuing merit aid, and RD is absolutely necessary for that track.</p>
<p>
I admit, being one of those students who did not change her mind–I first considered Swarthmore as a “top” choice around the beginning of junior year, and vacillated for months before coming back to the same original realization–I don’t understand why these students would consider applying ED where the first word is “early.” This has nothing to do with financial realities, but with decision-making. No decision will be perfect, so make one and stick to it; you’ll have to do the same thing in April, regardless. But I was mostly the same person in December as in April; I recognize that for many students, this simply isn’t true.</p>
<p>Before I even applied to a single school, I had rank-ordered my entire list of colleges and had multiple good reasons for every distinction in that ranking. (And the gigantic color-coded spreadsheet to prove it. ;)) Almost every school on the list met full need, because that was a priority for me and my family; I would have needed nearly full tuition for merit aid to make a significant difference, and while that avenue was thoroughly researched, ultimately we stuck with need-based. In the final decision-making, if I had waited until April, I would NOT necessarily just go down my list, because FA was a factor; but I WOULD have gone down the list and attended the first school(s)–there were a few ties to complicate matters, in the muddled match section–that my parents agreed was affordable.</p>
<p>lookingforward - I think adcoms somewhere have probably admitted that the ED pool, as a whole, has more full-pays than RD. It is a reasonably logical conclusion to draw, regardless. Though I doubt any of them would go so far as to say the FA-ED applicants are “a relatively small percentage.”</p>
Actually, yield is impacted by finances for that group as well, because of the existence of merit aid at competitor schools – for example, the top student who applies to Swarthmore but unexpectedly receives a merit offer from Univ of Chicago or WUSTL. Money talks, even to rich people. They are unlikely to opt for a big step down in perceived quality or prestige because of finances – but there are peer schools that do put merit aid into the mix. Additionally, because of its generous financial aid policies, Harvard is also likely to offer aid to some upper middle class students who would be seen as ineligible for aid at Swarthmore. You might think that anyone would accept Harvard over Swarthmore in any case – but I don’t think Harvard would have implemented it’s very generous aid policies unless they perceived that they were losing students in a certain demographic. I think even the elites started running into issues over the past decade when college costs continued to climb.</p>
<p>Agreed that full-pay students and families can be swayed by merit aid, but that money generally comes out of the need-based pot. Upper middle class families will undoubtedly get larger FA packages from Harvard than from WUStL and U of C and Swarthmore; I have no idea how much happier (or not) lower-income students who are accepted to the latter three schools feel when comparing packages. That’s an awfully small sample size.</p>
<p>WUStL, like Swarthmore, is an ED school that says they meet full need. Unlike Swarthmore, admissions is need-aware. Both use their own institutional methodology for determining aid. Should we say that one treats students seeking financial aid “better”?</p>
<p>Merit aid, by logical extension of its definition and purpose, requires the applicant to compare packages in the RD round (and perhaps non-binding EA). If merit would make a significant difference in whether a school remains #1 preference, then ED is also the wrong choice. Generally, at top full-need need-blind schools, the higher your need, the less likely merit aid will be a financial game-changer. Full tuition merit scholarships at schools of comparable quality to the need-based-only elites are extremely rare, full rides even rarer.</p>
<p>A school’s being need-aware should be irrelevant to applicants seeking FA (with the possible exception of some who can’t get an application fee waiver). What needs to be publicized is the difference between schools that meet full need (in the college FA context) and those that don’t; that’s the big issue. Notice the difference in posted ED results at, e.g., Barnard and Reed (meet full need) and NYU (doesn’t); mostly happiness vs. much sadness.</p>
<p>vossron, if there are two schools that say they meet full need and one is also need-blind in admissions, I’d expect that the need-blind school would make more FA applicants “happy” by both admitting them and giving them good packages. Or not, because each school has its own methodology. </p>
<p>I do know two students who are/will be at WUStL, both with full rides. The older student, who had no need to be met at any school, turned down Harvard for St Louis. The younger student, who did have some need, applied ED. In this small anecdotal sample the system appears to work as advertised…but caveat emptor is still the watchword.</p>
For many people, “a few thousand per year” is a LOT of money. We don’t consider that to be “small”. </p>
<p>The more we need aid, the less likely we are to think that “a few thousand” is insignificant.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m confused --as you applied ED II to Swarthmore, how would you have a financial aid award to look at from Carleton? Or did your mother have a firm figure in mind as to what she would be willing to pay for each school before you applied? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The bottom line is that ED succeeds because the college has managed to sell ED applicants on the idea that they aren’t good enough to compete with the vast majority of college applicants in the RD pool. It plays into fears and the idea that a “hook” is needed for college admissions. </p>
<p>I can see the attraction of an early response from a desired school – that’s why I fully support rolling admissions, EA, and other early-read programs. I just don’t think any student, ever, should be expected to commit themselves to attending a college at any time prior than the time the full COA has been disclosed to them. (That would include full pays who apply to a college in November, but end up paying whatever tuition increases are enacted the following March). </p>
<p>Again, that’s my legal training – in most contracts, the actual costs are considered an essential contract term, and contracts are generally not deemed binding where the actual costs and/or the manner of calculation aren’t disclosed with specificity. I don’t see why a 17 year old applying to college should be held to more onerous contract conditions than would be acceptable among experienced adults in a busiess setting.</p>
<p>Human psychology doesn’t work that way. People change their minds depending on how something is presented to them. There are all sorts of psychology experiments that demonstrate this- in fact, people can easily be led in an experimental setting not only to change their minds, but to deny (forget) that they ever held a different opinion in the first place. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>5K is a lot of money to a lot of people (including me) – and schools that offer merit aid often combine that with need aid. Also, a school’s “no-loan” policy does NOT mean that the student doesn’t have loans. It often means that the student is simply able to use their loans to meet their EFC – this would definitely be the case if the CSS Profile calculation of “need” exceeded FAFSA EFC, because the student would be eligible for subsidized loans to fill the gap between the FAFSA EFC and the college’s opinion on “need”. </p>
<p>
The students in April have more information, and more accurate information, in hand on which to base their decision. It goes beyond finances – students invariably learn more about schools as time goes on, especially after being admitted, through info sessions, mailings, contacts from faculty & students, etc. It is very typical for admitted students to receive mailings advising them of specific college programs or features that they didn’t know existed, because the post-admission mailings tend to be more targeted to the indiviual student’s interests. (As far as I can tell, the admissions office routinely pass along names of admitted students to relevant college departments, often even before the students receive notice of admission – they probably simply flag the files in some way at the time of admission.)</p>
<p>That’s one thing you missed out on as an ED applicant - you didn’t see the mail that typically arrives in March and April from various schools. It’s not the same marketing material that comes earlier – it can be far more specific and substantive.</p>
<p>
My experience has been that schools that do not meet full need for their students often offer better aid than schools that do – I think because they leverage their aid, they often have more flexibility with their budgets. They engage in preferential packaging and that can often result in significantly better offers. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Many schools with ED programs offer merit aid, and often they go to great lengths to reassure ED applicants that they will be fully considered for such aid. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not necessarily. The need-aware school has greater control over their financial aid budget, so they can also afford to be more generous for those who they do admit. They are less likely to admit a borderline applicant who has signficant financial need, but they can also afford to set a generous standard for financial aid overall, since it is targeting its aid to students it sees as more desireable.</p>
I agree. But also, the more aid is needed, the more likely that “maximum affordable amount” is inflexible–you either get enough money, or you don’t. Which can make ED a good fit, especially if the applicant is borderline stat-wise for the most generous need-blind full-need schools.</p>
<p>
The latter. My parents were willing to pay different amounts for different schools, although the range would depend on what other options were available, and did indeed have firm figures in mind. But my mother assessed the financial risk of an ED application to Swarthmore–which, among all the schools except Y and S of HYPS that I applied to, was her favorite–and decided that the worst-case scenario (enough money to attend, not enough to be easily affordable) was “worth” it.</p>
<p>
So, you don’t believe that ANY students are admitted ED and would not have been admitted RD? I do; there’s plenty of evidence that hooks–or rather, “institutional priorities”–exist, and all of the “unhooked” applicants still have to receive a decision. Someone has to be the last admit, the same someone(s) that Reed was forced to replace with full-pays in order to balance their budget a few years ago. And for the unhooked, ED commitment is an institutional priority.</p>
<p>
That’s fine; however, colleges and students don’t agree. And I don’t think the ED application numbers can be entirely attributed to marketing.</p>
<p>
It doesn’t matter what human psychology leads people to think–it matters what people actually think at the time of application. If the applicant believes that choice #1 would be their favorite even if it was the most expensive, then they will be happy attending choice #1 and it’s still win-win; it doesn’t matter what they would have thought in RD, because they were never presented with that choice and will never regret it for the same psychological reasons. And they made the free choice to eliminate those options, which they have a right to do.</p>
<p>
I know a high-need student who turned down about that much or more to attend Stanford over WUSTL (in RD). Yes, it’s a lot of money–but for many, it’s not the same change in affordability as 10k or 20k would be. </p>
<p>My point is that at Bryn Mawr, assuming best-case preferential packaging with merit aid (and similar EFC assessment), the difference would only be in work-study. The merit aid might eliminate all loans and work-study, but Swarthmore has already eliminated loans for everyone, so that effect is canceled out. But this comparison assumes that 1) Swarthmore’s need-based assessment is not more generous than Bryn Mawr’s–which it may be, since its endowment is larger, and 2) the applicant gets preferentially-packaged merit aid from Bryn Mawr. BMC doesn’t offer many merit scholarships, and not all schools will package merit aid to eliminate loans/work; some just use it to replace grant.</p>
<p>
But unlike need-based aid, adcoms have direct control over merit aid and are aware of its limited quantity. Put it this way: if you were sitting on a scholarship committee and could award one scholarship, choosing between two similarly amazing applicants–but one was already committed in ED–wouldn’t your choice be easier because you want to attract the RD applicant, thus netting you both students?</p>
<p>At need-blind schools, adcoms aren’t responsible for keeping the budget in line, only for fulfilling specific institutional priorities (which, magically, result in a balanced budget). I believe that many need-blind schools do keep an overflow account in case FA demands are greater than usual.</p>
<p>
This is true for only one type of need-aware school, e.g. WUSTL, the kind that takes full advantage of not being need-blind. Schools like Carleton, Smith, and Reed WISH that they were need-blind, and if they’re telling the truth, strive to emulate such a state by admitting need-blind until they run out of money, and then filling the rest with full-pays.</p>
<p>However, I am curious whether FA packages not containing merit from WUSTL are generally better than from need-blind schools (use Swarthmore as an example again, if you like). I have not seen any data, even anecdotal, regarding such a comparison. The no-merit specification is important because ED is most helpful to borderline students, who would not receive merit aid at a comparable school.</p>
I think that number is quite small when applied to unhooked applicants; and that at a highly selective college like Swarthmore, the primary beneficiaries of ED are more likely to be strong candidates than weak. </p>
<p>Here’s why: I think that ED pools tend to be self-selecting, and it is not in the institutional interest of a school to tie up spots with borderline applicants. So they are going to choose from the top of the pool, not from the bottom. </p>
<p>Let’s say hypothetically we assign some sort of admissions index score to the student, for purposes of illustration. All applicants are ranked 1-9 based on a combination of factors, with 10 being highest. </p>
<p>Let’s just also say hypothetically that in the RD pool the median score is 5, but in the ED pool, the median is 6. Finally, let’s say that this school only accepts students with index scores in the 6-9 range, with a preference for students who rank 7 or above. (They accept less than 1/3 of applicants overall, so assuming an even distribution of scores, they don’t have to accept anyone in the bottom 2/3 of their applicant pool).</p>
<p>So based on this hypothetical, students with scores in the range of 7-9 are likely to be admitted whenever they apply. A student with a 6 is iffy – but that student would only make the cut ED if half or more of ED applicants were accepted, given that 6 is the median for the ED pool. So one would expect that, in ED, the college would admit all the 8-9’s, some of the 7’s, possibly defer some of the 6-7’s, and reject the 5’s and unders. The problem with admitting lower scoring students ED is one of information – in a borderline case, the ad com is going to want to see midyear grades, unless the applicant is borderline for some reason other than academic performance (such as high GPA, low test scores). </p>
<p>However, in the RD round, the college has to focus on yield – and that’s where 6’s might benefit, and 9’s might suffer. Why? Because the 9’s look like students who are likely to be cross-admitted to other school, and less likely to attend. So in that RD pool, the 6’s & 7’s are probably the most likely to attend. So the admission focus at that time might shift downward a little in the pool – or at least look for very overt signs of interest from the high end students. </p>
<p>Now, of course, if you assume that the ED pool is weaker than the RD pool – a median score level of, say, 4 – then the balance shifts somewhat.</p>
<p>
Actually, for the most selective colleges, I think that it’s reasonable to assume that ALL of the admitted students fill some sort of institutional priority, ED or otherwise.</p>
<p>I don’t see how ED itself becomes an institutional priority unless the college is having difficulty filling spots. That is - if the size or quality of the applicant pool goes down, then ED is important – but as long as there is a rising trend, then it seems that the ad com has no particular reason to value the commitment of a weaker, unhooked applicant. (They KNOW they will be able to fill the class with stronger applicants). </p>
<p>I mean… do you believe the ED pool to be substantially weaker at Swarthmore than the RD pool? If so, why?</p>