I think the thing with ED is it becomes a dream school for many students. Once accepted the package may be a struggle and you are denied the opportunity to make a potentially sounder financial decision. For parents who can pay full freight without affect it is irrelevant but for most others its not truly that way. College admissions pits prestige against common sense and it becomes an emotional decision rather than a financial decision.
This is the crux of it - a large portion of the slots are reserved for the wealthy by design, and they may even be less qualified than those who are applying RD.
It would be fair(er) if:
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They disclosed the typical percentage of sports recruits or hooked students was in the ED %age so you could calculate the “true” boost.
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Merit aid wasn’t used to woo students but was instead based on a criteria you either have or don’t
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Need based FA was all the same so no one needed to have multiple packages to compare
tl:dr No.
ED does not prevent people from comparing financial aid offers. It prevents people from comparing non-need based “merit” offers. You can readily compare FA from multiple schools by running the net price calculators. If you have unique situations, which make the NPC inapplicable, you can contact the FA office and work with them in advance.
For families where the school’s definition of “need” is vastly different from their actual ability to pay, ED does not work, because those families are hunting for non-need based aid. For example, the NPC may think, based on salary and savings that a family can pay 55K per year, but that is unrealistic for that family in reality. Those families will have to look to schools that give merit aid and where you can actually be admitted EA or RD. There are tons of them.
@elodyCOH from what I’ve read of the quality of ED applicant pools T20 schools it seems that they are filled with very qualified candidates and clearly many more than the school can admit. Any who may be borderline are deferred and get another bite at the apple in RD. ED maybe for the wealthy primarily (although many elite schools do participate in low ses programs such as questbridge and posse scholars which give quite the leg up to those students) colleges are a business and no matter how need blind they claim to be those full pay kids are helping pay for everyone else.
@vpa2019 I was looking at various threads and noticed a pattern that showed the stats of the ED students were somewhat lower than those in the EA/RD rounds. All of the students were qualified to be there - but clearly there was a noticeable boost given to those in the ED round. I’d love to see the stats broken down by round to see exactly how much the ED boost was worth. If average ACT was 31-33 in the ED round, but 34-36 in RD for example. I saw some of this for sure in the Tulane results threads.
From personal experience the NPC’s were nothing like the financial aid, so I find the calculators to be a useless tool. Admittedly we were not interested in the Ivy’s but nonetheless it was eye opening.
@elodyCOH Depends on how the college defines “qualified”. They’re very likely to have lower average SATs and GPAs, but that would be true in any situation in which a college gives weight to demonstrated interest. Having a smaller pool, and accepting a higher proportion of students also means that they are selecting from the top 35%, rather than the top 10%, or whatever the differences are.
So, if by “qualified”, one means “have high SATs and lower GPAs”, that’s likely correct. However, if you compare the likelihood that these students will succeed, i.e., graduate, there is likely very little difference, though it’s difficult to know with recruited athletes (though not all of these colleges have recruited athletes), and other measures of success are more difficult to track, like academic and social action awards, entry to grad school, etc.
PS. that may be why Questbridge and Posse kids are accepted ED, since they typically have stats that are on the higher end of the accepted students of their matched colleges
You can figure out your approximate cost for schools utilizing their NPC. If you get a price that works for you, apply ED. If the school comes back with an acceptance but a cost that is too high you can talk with their financial aid office and try to figure it out. If they don’t give you a number that you can afford, then you back out of the ED agreement. That’s how it works. They are not forcing you to go there.
You can apply to other schools under the ED agreement too, but there are some restrictions. You can also apply ED II someplace else or RD if you turn down the ED offer. So it’s not like you don’t have other options.
I don’t really see how this system is deemed “unfair” really.
@elodycoh For many schools, this is acknowledged up front. When we visited BU a few years ago, the admissions officer stated straight out that students with stats that put them in the middle of the schools averages had a much better chance if they applied ED.
Yes to everything in post #23 by @gallentjill
I’ll also add that for families chasing merit money, the best offers come from schools that are less competitive. Generally not the schools that people on CC are looking to use an ED app.
@elodyCOH why would students applying ED miss out on other merit deadlines? Applying ED doesn’t mean you can’t apply to other schools EA and RD and no schools are allowed to offer merit only in the ED round. My son applied ED and he also applied to 7 other schools in time to meet their merit deadlines. BTW my son was accepted and we received every penny of our need. We ran the NPC everywhere he applied and printed out and saved copies.
And as I’ve read all over this forum and in particular the last 3 weeks stats aren’t everything. Plenty of incredibly high stat kids were disappointed in their quest for acceptance by either being deferred ED and than rejected RD or just straight rejected from schools where their stats were clearly competitive.
People use ED on schools that aren’t as competitive. It depends on your stats and what you are looking for.
I guess I’ll edit to say this: Fair? Debatable. Transparent? No.
@collegemom9 My son was accepted in the EA round, but the numbers we got back were a lot different than the NPC had predicted. Tulane recently reduced their merit awards - we’d never expected much in need, but the actual numbers were about 20% off from the NPC. This didn’t really impact my son all that much, as we had pretty much thought a public school was going to be the best option anyway. Tulane would have been an option had the numbers worked out - they didn’t, so even though he got in, he is not going. It’s no tragedy - he’s got a school that he’s excited to attend. This isn’t true for many people on CC - so many disappointed kids.
It’s really about how many of the slots are reserved for ED, and the fact that you really need to be rock solid comfortable accepting that number before you can commit to it. I think that many families won’t do ED because of that, therefore their odds of acceptance are going to be lower. As schools move more and more in that direction, I think we’re going to see the acceptance rates to school continue to plummet.
This is great news for the wealthy. Once again, their kids get the advantage.
I’m also happy for the Questbridge kids and those that get full need - I don’t grudge them one single bit.
@elodyCOH But if you had applied to Tulane ED you could’ve backed out of the need was off from the NPC. As far as merit goes, yes Tulane reduced it this year although not by too much (their top merit went from 35 to 32) but regardless no one requiring merit should ever apply ED because it’s not guaranteed and is not an acceptable reason to back out of ED. Applying ED as a low income applicant to a needs met school can be an excellent option. If you don’t get what you need you walk away and you still have your other applications on for EA and RD.
Some schools use ED in part to insure they have a group of kids who are really excited to be there and are enthusiastic about the school right off the bat. It’s good for school morale and vibe. When Northwestern went to ED, they cited this as a reason.
I agree the ED process is unfair. I think it benefits schools and those who can easily be full pay the most. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to discussing what is unfair about this process.
@wisteria100 We heard the same reasoning at two schools below the top 30. They want a critical mass of kids who love the school and are thrilled to be there. They didn’t say this part, but it must also be nice to have kids wearing their swag and creating a buzz.
I think ED is mostly an advantage for the schools, but it can also be great for certain kids:
Kids with anxiety who don’t want to go through the wringer until March.
Kids who aren’t interested in applying to “dream” schools or high reaches.
Kids who have done a lot of visiting so they know what’s out there, or who just have the personality where they don’t second guess and are flexible.
That’s not true. You can’t compare a tentative financial aid offer received in December with awards that won’t be made from other schools until March. Colleges have different individual formulas for assessing need, and the deadline for committing to or turning down an ED offer is the same whether the student qualifies for financial aid or not.