Do ED applicants get worse financial aid? Cuz if accepted, they must attend, so it seems that colleges can give them less aid… Is that true? Help!
No I don’t think they purposefully get worse need-based financial aid. I’m not sure if ED students have a chance at merit aid, but I don’t know that for sure and it will depend on the school.
Students are expected to use the NPC calculator on a school’s website to get an estimate of their aid. If they still decide to apply and are accepted, they can break the ED agreement only if the school’s real financial aid package is wildly different from the estimated one.
This is something that can be hotly debated. The general thought is schools that meet need have good endowments and base their aid on your financials so they shouldn’t play games. The disadvantage to using ED is you don’t get to compare offers from peer institutions. Some schools have been known to sweeten their deals if they see a better offer from a peer institution.
I suspect that if the school meets need then it does so regardless of ED or RD, but may not be generous with merit aid for ED. For a school that doesn’t meet need I suspect they might not be as generous with any time as aid for ED. But that’s just my guess. I don’t see why they would be motivated to be generous with someone who has already expressed a commitment to the school.
ED does not mean “must attend if accepted.” ED allows students to decline if they/their families do not think they got enough aid to be affordable.
Therefore, an ED school shouldn’t give less aid to an ED student because the student does NOT have to attend if the family thinks it didn’t get enough aid to be affordable.
I’ve never read a post on CC by anyone who applied ED and felt the school withheld the best FA awards because the students were committed. There have been a few where the ED acceptance/FA award wasn’t enough and the student had to turn down the offer, but no one wins in those situations. I really don’t think schools are withholding FA from those who apply ED, those who really want to go to that school. The award may not be what the student expected, but I really do think the award will be the same ED or RD.
I’ve… seen MANY threads like that. But I wouldn’t say they were kids who experienced schools withholding their best aid for regular admits: those threads were mostly kids whose parents were upper middle class --> upper class and their families ended up balking when the financial aid package came back and their contribution was larger than what they “felt” they should pay.
Oh, there are plenty of people unhappy with the FA package, but there is no way of knowing if the package would have been acceptable if only the student had applied RD instead of ED.
I was just reading an article by one of the college financial advisers (NYT? Wash Post?) and he said the ED financial aid is probably better than the RD since the school still has the full budget when the ED awards are made but may have a less available in late April. That is my opinion too, that ED will be no worse, but probably better, than RD financial aid.
A lot depends on the college. If a school has deep pockets and meets full need…like HYPSM…applying early or regular won’t make a difference in your need based aid amount.
For schools that don’t meet full need…and don’t have deep pockets…an ED application might get a better aid award.
And now with the FAFSA/Profile being available in October, and using prior prior tax year…that ED award will be the award…and not an estimate…at all.
“For schools that don’t meet full need…and don’t have deep pockets…an ED application might get a better aid award.”
Or, for those schools, worse. The student has already shown a huge amount of interest by applying ED. Imo schools without the deep pockets are less likely to give lots of money in this case. This happened to a friend recently with one of the Claremont colleges.
If you fall in the category of having to pay in full (no expected aid based on calculators), no harm to apply to your reach school ED, where you are not likely to get merit, IF you are willing to pay full cost. If not, you have no business even applying to such as school, RD either. Do your homework and apply to schools you can afford, or think your financials justify aid. If they don’t give what is justified, you can get out of ED, but do your homework first.
How does she know her aid is worse because she applied ED?
@Roch2287 - please see this thread:
I don’t think this OP is posting on CC anymore. @skieurope am I correct about that?
OP is still logging in, but has not posted in a while. Others should keep that in mind if they wish to respond.
In some cases like CMU, their ED aid is actually better as they meet need in the ED round, but not in the RD round. However, I went to a Carnegie Mellon information session and they said not to apply ED if you need FA. Even though CMU meets need in the ED round, they said you should wait for RD so you can compare awards from different colleges. If a college that meets need suggests you wait for RD, I would listen to them.
In digging further, OP is no longer a member. As a result, I am closing this thread.