True, but the offer is either doable or not. If it is not doable in December, then it’s not going to get more doable when other offers come in in the spring.
This attitude (“doable or not”) always irks me.
Some people – like me - can’t afford anywhere near our EFC’s and have to borrow to send our kids to college no matter what. And while we are borrowing and paying down loans, we aren’t able to fund other things that are very important, like contributing to retirement funds. Borrowing $10K more or less isn’t going to make a big difference as to current out of pocket, because loans are amortized over a long period so the extra long-term debt translates into a much smaller monthly payment. But it makes a pretty big difference over the relative financial health of the parent(s) – and that in turn may impact the options the college kid also has for the future.
There really is no such thing in my world as a totally discretionary pool of cash from which to draw. There are limited dollars overall, and choices to be made and priorities to set as to how they can be allocated-- money that goes to one thing is always money unavailable for something else.
So no it is not “doable or not”. It is a question of relative degree of hardship – and very hard for a family with limited resources to make that determination in the absence of full information. Especially because life is full of so many other unknowns and unknowables — that decision to go ahead, bite the bullet, and take on the offer that requires borrowing more than anticipated may have seemed “doable” at the time, but then a primary wage earner gets injured or laid off, or kid #2 doesn’t get accepted into any colleges that meet full need and is facing higher than anticipated costs… or the family car breaks down and needs to be replaced or the roof of the family house starts leaking and needs to be replaced – or whatever. And then in hindsight the $10-$15K difference between one school’s offer and another’s might have made a huge difference … though of course the ED parent who went ahead with “doable” will never know what those options might have been.
That “doable” mindset is in itself a luxury. It assumes the existence of some sort of reserve or backstop that simply doesn’t exist for many families.
@collegemom9 We knew we couldn’t ED to Tulane, because we knew we could not afford it without the full merit that was estimated on the NPC. We were fully aware that we needed to shop colleges, so signing that binding agreement would be inherently dishonest. We would not ask our high school’s guidance counselor to go out on a limb (especially as my son is the first student to be accepted to Tulane from his school). If we were one of the families who could afford to pay whatever Tulane asked, that would be different. He got admitted EA, but he did get a few e-mails along the way asking him if he wanted to switch to ED - which he always declined.
@calmom For most schools the NPC is accurate if you are looking at need based aid only. If you have special situations, you can always talk to the FA office in person. Several schools we looked at made this offer. Of course, you can’t be completely certain that the FA packages will be exactly what is calculated, but you can be sure it will be quite close. If the ED school comes in with an offer that is not realistic based on what was previously discussed, you can back out and wait for other offers from schools that you previously applied to. You can apply ED, EA and RD simultaneously.
@elodyCOH Sounds like it worked out fine. Not applying ED didn’t affect him. He was still accepted. I’m not sure what the issue is.
@MusakParent ED can also be very beneficial for those that rely heavily on FA who apply to a needs met school. My son most likely never would have gotten in to his top choice RD and it was the school that was likely to give him the most. He’s receiving the opportunity of a lifetime through ED.
@collegemom9 As I said earlier, it is not an issue for us, personally. I see it as a problem for kids applying to these schools in general based on what I have seen in threads here and from what I see happening to my son’s friends. The admission frenzy certainly seems real, is getting worse, and so many schools looking for ED commitments in my view has made it much worse. This is not so much about affordability, but more reserving those slots for what is most likely the more affluent sector.
Tell that to @scubadive (post 26). I’m sure they will be happy to learn from you that they imagined the disparity encountered.
Accurate for you doesn’t mean accurate for everyone else.
It is not even possible for most NPC’s to be accurate because they don’t ask about all sorts of information that may apply in particular cases.
Me: self-employed single parent, homeowner, self-employed NCP. How would I have even known what figures to enter in for the NCP’s income? And my daughter’s more generous award from her alma mater was due in large part because they assigned a significantly lower valuation to our home than the most recent appraisal, because they rely on federal housing index rather than market value. No way I could have known that. Oh, also I had another kid, who was not in college but thinking of maybe returning to college depending on outcome of transfer applications… 1 in college? or 2 in college? How to know in October?
The NPC’s are designed to provide a rough estimate, assuming relatively simple financial situations and stable family circumstances. That’s simply not the world that many people inhabit. And people with more unstable, and less predictable family or financial situations are also quite likely to need financial aid – so be exactly the type of people who can’t apply ED because they need to compare awards.
Looking at NPC’s for the sake of college planning – choosing where to apply, what to pass up – makes sense.
Looking at NPC’s as a substitute for comparing actual, real-world options does not.
It is possible that some families opt to do that and end up feeling happy with their awards— but that doesn’t mean that they had an opportunity to compare. They didn’t – they just determined for themselves, for whatever reasons, that they didn’t need to.
It wouldn’t have mattered what the NPC said; the actual ED FA offer is all that counts. There’s no risk in applying ED needing FA (other than not knowing what other schools might have offered).
From the ED agreement (https://professionals.collegeboard.org/guidance/applications/ethics): “Should a student who applies for financial aid not be offered an award that makes attendance possible, the student may decline the offer of admission and be released from the Early Decision commitment.”
But it’s great that he got his school of choice.
I promise you it was need based aid. As I said it was very enlightening. I am not dillusional. I guess you could say they meet full need if you count the enormous loans in relation to income which no bank in their right mind would approve.
Congratulations if the ED process worked for you. Further congratulations if the NPC’s were accurate and popped out a number that was reasonable and comfortable for your financial situation.
The question was is ED “fair”. It’s not something that can work for many families for many reasons. If it were an easy choice for anyone in any situation to take advantage of, it would be fair. My own elite stat senior who is likely to end up at a public flagship would not be less enthusiastic, academic, or engaged member of a campus community because his parents weren’t financially comfortable with the ED process. It’s cute that schools have used that as a reason to use ED but it’s not meaningful. Many students have to make the school they end up at their dream school. Many kids have no choice but to endure a stressful admissions season. Colleges are business that are concerned with their bottom line. Which is fine and understandable. This process serves their bottom line best.
There are MANY reasons the current method of calculation does not work for many families. From parental age, number of kids, income fluctuation, health care, high cost of living/high tax areas, aging parents, complex assets, etc etc etc. Those of us who can’t afford our EFC aren’t kicking back living in the lap of luxury holding back from our kids. We’re doing the best we can with the actual resources we have available to get them a college education. Not the one colleges imagine we have.
One huge advantage of successful ED is being done with the college process before January.
The misnomer is college books, college websites and the schools toot affordability when in many cases its made up with huge loans. Being caught in the middle means you have to be strategic where the affordability is paramount in your application process. You must have a known affordable option before you recieve an award as college admissions/ merit / financial aid is not much different than playing the lottery. The top schools where it is made up of grants for financial aid is so competitive for high achievers as people chase prestige and real aid it is unrealistic to expect an offer. I have no complaints as I fortunately knew this in advance so I was prepared but many parents and students alike are not. You see it all the time on CC. For those in the position to do ED surely it is a great option but for many it is not. College admissions favors those with the most resources and that is just the way it is and why state schools are growing and climbing the ranks with smart kids financially locked out otherwise along with plenty of high income parents who say no to $200k+ out of principal.
@calmom I am not going to presume to understand everyone’s personal situation. However, in your case, were you not able to get a pre-read from the schools where you were interested?
Many (most?) colleges offer relatively small Federal student loans as part of their packages. Some parents use additional large loans to pay their EFC.
@elodyCOH – ED very definitely favors the wealthy, but characterizing it as “unfair” ignores the agenda it serves.
One thing ED does is give the college that use it a guaranteed core enrollment of full pay students, and a solid early financial aid number for the non-full-pay admits, that’s big enough to enable them to project out their costs based on the RD round. There are 3 types of need-awarding schools:
A. Schools that meet full need (as they define it) to all students and are need-blind for admissions
B. Schools that meet full need (as they define it) to all students and are need-aware for admissions
C. Schools that do not meet full need for all students (which may or may not be need-aware for admissions, but it doesn’t matter because they can always simply short out the financial aid offers for weaker candidates).
I think that without ED, some schools that are now in the A group would find themselves needing to go to the B or C group to make the finances work out.
When my son was applying to colleges, his top choice had a policy of guaranteeing to meet need to ED students, but not for the RD round. So in the A group for ED, but then C. We still couldn’t do ED – given the need to compare awards – and it ended up that the school admitted my son RD, but gave him no aid, although they offered to put him on a waitlist for aid. We passed. But that illustrates the role that ED plays — in those days, that particular school was unable to get enough payers during ED to guarantee aid for the RD group.
So here is where the fair vs. unfair equation works out: My daughter couldn’t apply to her first choice (NYU), a C-group college, because they didn’t even promise to meet full need. My daughter couldn’t apply to her 2nd choice (her alma mater)- an A group college – because even with the promise to meet full need, it was important to compare awards. Too many unknowns.
But my daughter was able to apply to many colleges. And in the RD round, she had the benefit of need-blind admissions for her alma mater, an excellent school known to have an extremely small endowment in relation to comparable schools. So yes, there were a bunch of rich kids who had better paper odds of admission, but they allowed her access to a need-blind system. And even though the percentage of kids accepted ED was and continues to be much higher in relation to the size of the applicant pool – in terms of raw numbers, the school admits many more students RD. That’s because the RD pool is much larger, and when my daughter was admitted the yield factors probably meant they would admit 3 RD students for every 1 RD spot (to compensate for the anticipated 2 out of 3 who would turn them down) (That’s assuming a 33% yield, of course – if the school had a 50% yield, then it would be 2:1).
So my point is – you have to look at what the system would be overall without ED. Given that my daughter’s test scores were bottom quartile for the more selective schools that admitted her during the RD round – I’m assuming she benefited from the school’s accepting enough high scorers during ED to enable them to be comfortable with their score distribution. Without ED, the school might have been more wary of accepting low-end scorers — because I think that while they welcome students like my daughter, they don’t want too many of them – as they probably want to at least preserve their reported score range. Bottom line, if they can lock in almost half of their class with above-median scores, that gives them more leeway to accept students with below median scores. (Obviously, the true math is more complicated than that).
So you really have to look at the bigger picture. ED is one piece of the admissions system – if removed, it necessarily impacts the way that the colleges administer the other pieces.
I don’t think the ED process is about the ‘bottom line’ of the college. I think it is more about the schools building a class based on their priorities. And yes for some colleges, legacies, athletes, URMs, pell grant recipients are part (not all) of those. Applicants may not like those buckets, but if it is a private school it is their prerogative to set them as they wish. I actually think that here on CC, some schools don’t get enough credit for the millions they spend on financial aid and the outreach they do to try to diversify their student body.
Rolling admission is another way to be done before January, or at least have an acceptance or two.
FWIW, my dd never ED’d anywhere either. Her top school was EA only, but she did apply to a rolling admission school, and had an acceptance in October. She also applied EA where ever else she could. Psychologically worth its weight in gold.
No, that would not have been possible. How was I supposed to know in advance what my ex-husband’s schedule C would look like?
But it’s not just my situation, it’s all sorts of different financial situations. Some other family has unusually high medical expenses, or a one-time large capital gain or loss, or a significant life event impacting income since the year the FAFSA is based on - will their school exercise professional judgment to adjust their FAFSA figures? Another family has twins, applying to different schools — the amount of aid one school gives may depend on the as-yet unknown COA for the other twin. There really are a multitude of different factors that play in.
And schools that don’t offer ED aren’t going to give a “pre-read” – but those schools may be very important down the line in comparing awards. It’s not just one ED-contender vs. another – it is the whole slate of schools that admit the student in the spring.
I think it’s bost. The institutional priorities are paramount, but the bottom line is what funds them. No money = something has to give. Both on the macro level for the college — and on the micro level for the applicant.