Are you talking about my post, or yours? If it’s mine, I hope that my edits make it clearer.
No sorry, mine. I typed out a long response, decided it had too much personal info in it, deleted the info & then it no longer made sense. Too tired to redo it so I just deleted. Sorry about that!
“However, since applying ED does not really work for kids who need to compare financial aid packages, it is mostly kids from wealthy families who benefit from these advantages of ED.”
The point, though, is that if the NPC shows that it is affordable for you, you CAN apply ED with a high level of assurance that your FA package will be what you need it to be. At the school DS attended, lots of kids who need FA rely on this strategy. What I suspect, though, is that many families do not have the resources that tell them about this option.
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Students who apply ED and need FA should, at the minimum, run the school’s NPC and save all the inputs and outputs. Make sure their families’ finances are straightforward (e.g. no business ownership). If they’re low income but with significant home equity, they should run multiple scenarios of estimated home price, as colleges aren’t going to use applicants’ own inputs but rely on their own different methodologies. Equally importantly, run NPCs of other colleges which the students may have applied to if they didn’t apply ED. They may be surprised by significant differences between them sometimes. Finally, be extra careful with a few schools that are known to have inaccurate NPCs or offer inferior FA packages.
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Exactly. This was our strategy (my D had a clear favorite which was meet needs, we need significant aid). It worked well for her. But despite our financial need we are educated and savvy enough to understand the strategy. Many aren’t.
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Right, so you went into the process knowing that you would come up with a college to apply ED, not that you’d find the best fit and then figure out what their early admissions policy was. That’s the difference today. I think it’s ok to do this today actually because of the ED advantage, which I also think is significant.
Did this just work for just federal aid/loans or were you able to anticipate merit, as well? I have seen on other threads that people think they might get less merit aid if they “show their hand” by applying ED. If that is the case, the people who need merit but don’t qualify for much need-based aid may not have a good option for ED?
INCORRECT…Please do not put words into my mouth or read intentions not specifically stated into my post.
We began the process early to leave enough time to determine IF my D would have a clear top choice college to apply ED. If my D did not have a clear top choice she would have applied everywhere EA, rolling, and RD. She did take advantage of the ED round only because she did have a clear cut top choice.
FWIW she got into one college she liked in Nov. through a rolling admission process, another in Dec. through EA, and we felt fairly confident (through Naviance, discussions with her guidance counselor, our own research) that she likely would have got into at least one or two other colleges she felt she would be happy at through the RD process. We felt no need to push ED unless my D determined that was the path she wanted to take. And as things (happily) turned out, her college choice was an absolutely fantastic fit in every way!
Now that I’ve clarified my statement, let’s drop this as debate is not allowed on CC.
No, she applied ED to a meet need school that doesn’t give merit. Our need is pretty high, probably higher than most merit aid she would be eligible for, so for us, applying ED at a meet needs school made sense (for reference our EFC is significantly below the COA of our state flagship, though it’s not anywhere close to 0 or anything). Our situation is not especially complicated & the NPC was right on (actually we did a little better with the actual package) but I saved everything and would have fought it if not. For reference she also applied EA to four schools, though three of those she pulled before a decision was made when she got into the ED school. The one she had already been already accepted to gave her their highest merit ($36,000 per year) but we had not yet seen the need aid part of the package. So I’m unclear if they would have gotten us to the same number ultimately that the meet need school did (the NPC suggested it would, and the overall COA was lower than the school she ended up at, but the NPC severely underestimated the merit she would get & therefore may have overestimated the need aid? Unclear). Anyway, bottom line I could not have let her apply ED to a school that didn’t guarantee to meet all need & whose NPC did not show we could make it work. There were meet need schools that fortunately fell off her list for other reasons where she could not have applied ED due to the NPC number being too high (looking at you Barnard & Mt Holyoke!). Had she kept them on her list they would have been RD only so we could see the final package. Importantly, we were not looking for the “best deal” - we were looking for a school that was my D’s first choice where we could make the finances work. I have no doubt had she “chased merit” we could have done better financially. But she is attending a first-class school, that she desperately wants to attend, where she will get an amazing education & that we can swing financially, albeit with a bit of belt-tightening & sacrifice. If you really want the “best deal” financially ED is not for you. If you want the best chance of attending a selective school and can make the NPC number work then ED is a great option.
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And agreeing with @happy1 we only went with ED because my D had a clear-cut favorite. Her other top choices were all targets & likely schools, and she would have been fine with any of them had it gone that way. Had she been torn about which was her top choice she would have stuck to EA and RD.
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Sadly, the ramifications of “I need to apply ED somewhere” continue on Reddit.
Can you get out of early decision for a change in your major?
I changed my intended major and I got accepted via early decision into a school that is not really known for my intended major.
I’ve written D20’s story before but she had 2 schools that were both her top choices, both met full need and NPC showed something manageable, both always took 1-4 students per year from her HS but no one ever enrolled. One Dean of Admissions referred to her high school as the “South Dakota of our state” and when they announced a new no-loan policy, she used her ED card and was accepted. None of the other applicants that year (6) were accepted. She didn’t “need” to apply ED but she knew what she wanted and saw how that strategy could work in her favor. FWIW, her GC didn’t recommend it but her private advisor was 100% on board.
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