<p>HELLO!</p>
<p>I was wondering what kind of financial aid packages Northwestern gives to early decision applicants. Northwestern is definitely my top choice school, but I'm still hesitant to apply early decision because of financial aid. Now, I know all about Northwestern's policies about 100% need-based aid being met, but I would like to know how generous NU is to early decision applicants. So if any of you guys currently attend NU or are NU parents, I'd really appreciate if you could like give me a rough estimate of the financial package you received. THANKS!</p>
<p>I’d suggest using the NU financial aid estimator. </p>
<p>We got nada aid ED, whereas D had several full-ride offers elsewhere, but that’s based on NU’s definition of EFC and theoretically would have been no different had she applied RD. I remember on the ED thread several people said they had received very generous need-based aid from NU.</p>
<p>Schools all claim that applying ED will not hurt your need-based financial aid. This is most certainly the case, if for no other reason the repercussions a school would face if it ever came to be known that they were penalizing ED students in this way. It just can’t be worth the risk.</p>
<p>I guess the key question is, has anyone succeeded in going to NU’s financial aid office with merit offers from other schools in hand and and negotiated a better merit offer from NU, either RD or ED?</p>
<p>If the answer to this question is “yes”, then applying ED could be a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Has anyone had this experience in the past several years?</p>
<p>My s is a sophomore now, but I did ask about this (in terms of the possibility of other merit scholarships he could possibly apply for from the school) after he was admitted in the spring before his freshman year, as he had 5 full rides at one other private, and from four other state’s flagship publics. I was pretty much told in a nice way that the vast majority of students being admitted to NU had many scholarships to other schools as well, which after I thought about it did make sense. My s brought over 12,000 per year of outside scholarship with him freshman year and that eliminated his work study award and the loan, and the remainder of the scholarship $$$ offset the NU need based aid he was initially awarded. Just thought you might want to know - however, the NU need based aid was very accurate to the institutional aid estimators I had done. We feel like choosing NU and even the extra cost to attend there was the right decision for our son. It is truly an amazing institution and s is really, really happy there.</p>