<p>I can't find too much info about ED at Vandy on their website, so I just have a few questions if anyone here has applied ED at Vandy or knows anything about it!</p>
<p>I love Vandy. A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. I had my mind made up that I was applying RD because I want to be able to compare financial aid packages and scholarship offers from other schools so I can go to the most affordable option for my family. However, as I've been working on college apps, it has become clear to me that no other school can compare to Vandy. It's my first choice, and I feel like I need to go ED to make that clear. Unfortunately, Vandy is quite expensive, and if I'm not given money by the school, I won't be able to afford to attend.</p>
<p>Say I apply ED to Vandy and get accepted, but my financial package just isn't enough. My question is, is it possible to be released from the ED agreement? Many others school with ED allow students to back out if they can't afford it once financial aid offers are released, but I can't find info on whether Vandy is one of them... I've also heard that ED applicants get the first shot at FA, so they tend to get better packages. Is this true for Vandy at all?</p>
<p>Additionally, am I stressing over nothing? Does ED at Vandy really put applicants at that much of an advantage over Vandy? Should I be fine applying regular decision, as long as I put as much passion into the app as I can?</p>
<p>Any feedback would be GREATLY appreciated!!</p>
<p>There is a definite advantage to applying ED. The ED admission rate for the Class of 2016 was 24.1 % vs 12.02% RD. The 25-75% for SATs was 1380-1520 for ED students and 1470-1590 for those admitted RD. (Of course, the RD numbers will be a little lower if you look at students who actually matriculate at Vandy.) The Admission Blog is very helpful and has all this info from past years.</p>
<p>The information about ED1 and ED2 is located here:</p>
<p>Vandyalum: remove the recruited athletes from your equation. They go through the application process ED. Removing the athletes will significantly alter your conclusion.</p>
<p>be cautious of your plans to apply ed if you are relying on aid. should you get in ed, but realize you have to back out of the ed agreement, a lot of people will be mad at you - both thousands of students who were denied and admission officers at vandy who convinced others to accept you. if vanderbilt really is your number one school, you could always transfer there after a year at another college/university, provided that you dont insult them with rejecting their offer of admission in the ed process. basically, dont take applying ed lightly. you should fully commit to going there if you are accepted</p>
<p>I don’t have to rely completely on aid, but my chances of getting merit money are pretty much nonexistent. There’s no way my middle class family can pay full tuition plus room and board, so I just need something to help us out. I’ve also heard Vandy’s FA offers are usually quite generous, would you guys say this is true? My biggest worry with ED (other than being denied, of course) is that if I get in, I wouldn’t get any money at all. Does that ever happen, or am I too paranoid?</p>
<p>@vandyalum- thank you for those links! Those are very helpful, actually. Interesting reads.</p>
<p>@stemit- would that make it significantly harder to get in ED as a regular applicant, not a recruited athlete? Would I stand a better shot RD in that case?</p>
<p>@pinkwhale- I don’t want to ever have to transfer. If Vandy doesn’t work out, I know that I can be happy at any of the other schools I’m applying to. Of course, I don’t consider any of them my “dream school” but I’ll be able to make the best of whatever situation presents itself to me. After speaking to my parents, I feel more comfortable about the financial contribution and going ED. I just really want to do everything I can do make Vandy happen.</p>
<p>Also… would you say there’s any difference in applying ED 1 vs ED 2? Are acceptance rates similar for both rounds? I feel like everyone applies ED1, not ED2… I’m unsure if that would make a difference at all…</p>
<p>Sorry for the lengthy posts, and thanks so much to all of you for the responses! I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Vandy has a very detailed net price calculator on their website. If you put your family’s finances in there and it’s not showing an estimated aid package you can afford, you probably shouldn’t apply ED. If you wait for RD you can compare other offers to Vandy at the same time. If you back out of ED in December, they are not going to let you come back when you’ve seen your other offers and say “I’ve changed my mind”.</p>
<p>If you look on their website (search “Early Decision on the Mind”) it says that athletes are NOT admitted during the Early Decision cycle.</p>
<p>be prepared to pay your Estimated Cost of Attending no matter if you are looking at Vandy or other fine colleges…think Financial Safety and stay in reality on how your need aid will turn out.</p>
<p>For the last two years, Vandy published their ED statistics after the ED2 decisions were made. On the admissions blog, they have reported a single ED admission rate and haven’t differentiated between ED1 vs ED2. I don’t know if the separate stats are available somewhere else.</p>
<p>“be prepared to pay your Estimated Cost of Attending no matter if you are looking at Vandy or other fine colleges”</p>
<p>Faline2 - this isn’t true. When we did the Vandy net price calculator, it came in substantially lower than our EFC. I filled out the stupid calculators for probably 40 schools. Although the <em>average</em> result was our EFC, I saw quite a bit of variation. The cheapest school was Yale! For school that give merit aid it is a different story, you can’t get as clear an answer on how much you will get. My understanding is Vanderbilt does not give merit aid except for a few full scholarships to the very top students.</p>
<p>teddad…I meant your estimated cost of attending at each college you select for your final applications…not your FAFSA EFC. The threshold for need aid varies widely, with some of the Ivies having more generous cut-offs than many other colleges and with few colleges offering Need Blind Admissions and No Loan packages. We have a son on merit at Vanderbilt and he is a good student/good guy who contributes to life at Vanderbilt but in all honesty…most of his classmates are just as gifted as he is or more so, so merit scholarships are not all stats based. They really are looking for a variety of students who have something to offer to the community that is Vanderbilt.
Our Vandy son had a couple other merit opportunities but he also was admitted to two almost identical little Ivies who granted him surprisingly different need aid offers–neither of which was affordable, but the discounts on full price were quite different from each other. The school with the biggest endowment offered him the lesser discount…the little ivies do no merit aid… So I have to admit he spent energy gaining admission to colleges we should have more carefully considered re our actual ability to pay --what would be our estimated cost of attendance. </p>
<p>These determinations on what you can actually afford vs what the stats will predict you will be charged and accountable become personal matters in each family when April comes around. The problem you need to keep in mind with all need aid packages is that changes plus or minus in your income will be re-evaluated annually and your package will be particular to your income year to year. </p>
<p>Financial safety planning is something that really does matter in this economy with graduate schools in many genres being notoriously without discounts or merit offerings. There are certainly graduate paths that are more likely to provide your son or daughter with ways to ameliorate the costs and the loan burdens.<br>
We failed to really look at the costs of graduate schools realistically when our sons were 17.</p>
<p>Thank you all again for your responses! They are greatly appreciated. I think I’ve decided to go ED1- I’ve had the “money talk” with my parents and they were much more comfortable with it and encouraging about applying ED than I had expected. Since that had been my only worry about ED, I’m pretty set on going that route because I feel like it gives me the best shot of acceptance and I KNOW that Vandy is where I want to be.</p>
<p>Would any of you care to give your opinions on what my chances would be? I could PM you a basic description, but I don’t really want to post it directly on here! Once again, thank you all so much. This thread actually did help to solidify my decision to go ED, so I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>just for your info, students who receive merit aid get free tuition. They are responsible for room and board, but that is “sliding scale” and adjusted for those students whose EFCs are lower than room and board…they get discounts to the point of Vandy’s calculations on the families Cost of Attendance at Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>Some colleges (Duke for example) offer deferrals on the admission decisions to some ED students. Best to make sure that Vandy offers deferrals to some, not all, ED students. Because if you get a deferral you are still in the running but you will be applying to several other colleges in the RD round. </p>
<p>I won’t guess at your admission odds, but I will suggest that you go backwards to the dates ED and ED2 were announced here to see the stats of some of the students and their outcomes. </p>
<p>Of course, I wish you happy outcomes. But do not hyperfocus. Neither of my sons attended their original first choice or first major crush college. Dealing with this ambiguity with as much positive energy as possible is the name of the game, also realizing that Vandy is a great university but many many peer colleges and LACs have very much to offer. In my experience, an education at a fine LAC will have a great deal of benefits for different reasons than an education at a larger mid sized university like Vandy so keep your heart and mind open and flexible. </p>