@calmom I am not trying to be condescending, but I sincerely don’t understand part of your argument. Assuming that you can get an FA estimate from the FA office and the amount is affordable what prevents a family from choosing the ED option? It seems like you are saying that for some families, no FA offers are truly affordable. I understand that. Those are families like ours that will need to hunt merit and find it very difficult to use ED. Which seems to indicate that ED works for the wealthy and for the truly low SES, but not well for families in the middle. Am I understanding you correctly?
[Private University]
I’m with blossom on this.
calmom’s post #94 is spot-on.
While perhaps true, to me ED is just a few steps in the larger college admission marathon – the whole race favors the upper income, whether RD or ED.
Or, to use another analogy, ED is just a symptom of the larger disease. Eliminating ED will not eliminate the underlying built-in advantage. Tippy top schools select for ‘cool’ impactful EC’s, and those by definition, advantage the advantaged.
If our high schools can’t turn out college ready students it’s not the fault of the colleges. I hope you’re advocating for a higher quality public school education for the students at your state’s primary and secondary schools.
What prevent parents from choosing ED if the offer comes back unaffordable is that you have a third party in the mix: a person you barely know who works at the high school who is involved. I don’t want to have to make an appointment with this individual and plead my case. I am at the mercy of in reality a stranger. Pulling ED acceptances based on finances is not a simple no thank you to the admissions office at xyz school. And isn’t true that decling an ED offer reflects negatively on the HS involved so whose side are they on. Seems way too risky. Now I have to agree ED is just one piece of the whole college rat race that favors wealth.
@scubadive If the FA doesn’t come back as you need it to be you don’t go to your high schools to decline or plead your case. You let the college know. Colleges don’t want to force someone to attend who can’t afford to. The ED agreement is very clear that you can back out for FA reasons.
Yes but it isn’t true the guidance counsleor has to sign it when you decline?
No. The GC doesn’t get to the make financial decisions for your family. Everyone signs the agreement which clearly states that you can back out for financial reasons. Your GC doesnt need to sign off on a decline. That’s between you and the school.
Learn something new each day.
For my family who is full pay, the problem for us in using ED is some private colleges we would only consider with some merit. For example, a high stat kid could get 100k+ from Tulane which would make it more attractive but we won’t take that chance in ED where one might get $0 of merit then be locked in to a 300k COA.
For those who need substantial scholarships in order to be able to swing the schools they want, ED is NOT. The way to go. There are many kids who do not qualify for enough financial aid to go away to school, go to a private school, or options where merit money comes into play. Some families simply cannot pay their EFC or even what generous schools will expect from them
@blossom I totally agree. It’s as if we are arguing about whether we need one more band aid curing someone’s leukemia.
@calmom I was referring to schools that actually meet need, not schools which claim to do so but do not.
That’s a big assumption. I’ve heard anecdotal reports of a preread but no indication that it would be standard practice.
I can’t find any references to colleges offering that except to recruited athletes. Can you provide me some sort of link to show that is standard practice?
And what about all the financial issues that couldn’t possibly be known by the custodial parent in the fall? I gave examples in earlier posts.
Yes, that’s the point. The parents aren’t sitting on a pile of cash deciding what to spend it on. Every option will require the parent to take affirmative steps to raise more money – which parents are willing to do in order to support their kid’s education-- but it’s a luxury to forego the opportunity to compare offers.
Why do you think the designation of merit vs. need-based makes a difference? You don’t qualify for need-based aid, so you have to shop around … but a parent who has less money than you and does qualify for need-based aid doesn’t have the same concerns?
Perhaps you don’t really understand how need-based aid works? They don’t match the FAFSA – each college makes their own determination, following different rules There is considerable variation in what colleges might offer. And not much transparency at all as to internal standards.
Yes, that’s exactly true. Families who have straightforward financial situations without any factors that aren’t reflected on a FAFSA can probably rely on the NPC – and then they would be able to compare one school’s policy against another before opting for ED.
That’s pretty much ALL private colleges The schools meet their definition of “need” – not what the family thinks their need is and not the FAFSA EFC. The schools require submission of financial information well beyond what is included in a FAFSA, either via CSS Profile or their own forms and requirements, and they each follow their own internal standards as to how they consider that additional information.
And again – from the point of view of someone who has had the opportunity to compare awards – those numbers can be all over the map.
Looks like Williams spends $72,199 in student expenditures per FTE* (more than its $50,070 tuition and fees), while UMass Amherst spends $16,739 (more than its $14,171 in-state tuition and fees, but less than its $30,504 out-of-state tuition and fees).
- "including instructional, student services, and academic support expenditures" -- apparently does not include room and board related expenditures.
While public primary and secondary schools in some areas do have trouble with getting students ready for whatever post-secondary education they pursue, note that the admission standards at colleges like Princeton are far higher than “college ready”, or even “ready to succeed academically at Princeton” (if we accept that Princeton may be somewhat more academically rigorous than most colleges), since it has something like 97% graduation rate.
It is at colleges which are much less selective where low graduation rates can be an indicator that lower admission standards allow in some students who are not really “college ready” – although there is also the confounding factor of students not graduating for money reasons, a concern much less common at colleges like Princeton, where students tend to either come from wealthy families or get Princeton’s good financial aid.
Yes …
Except, as I learned on this thread, Princeton and a fee ivies.
I’m not sure what your point is. I used a poor example in Princeton, but I’m trying to say that ED is not discrimination directly at an individual but part of systemic unequal access to the building blocks of a future precisely because it provides an opportunity that requires wealth to take advantage of.
Unfortunately my bad example derailed that argument.
Well, the phrases “meet need”, “meed full need” or “meet 100% need” is used to cover a long list of colleges – so I’m not trying to argue with you— just keeping the terminology straight. The vast majority of schools that promise to meet full need fit in that less generous category — where awards are far less predictable and far more likely to deviate substantially from FAFSA EFC.
There are only a handful of extremely generous colleges that actually go beyond FAFSA EFC. (A family with a $65K income and 1 child would have FAFSA EFC of around $7K – so the full ride they could get from Princeton would beyond what they could expect based on “need” analysis at most colleges). Most of the schools which offer that level of aid do not use binding ED.
@calmom Emory does.
But financial issues changing suddenly can happen even after May and cause a student issues. That kind of random and fluke circumstance doesn’t effect huge numbers of families enough to derail ED for the majority who use it.
Yes, some schools are more or less financially generous and define need much more generously than others. Some who offer ED don’t define need. While some are more generous in their definition of meeting need and do meet that need. They shouldn’t be all lumped together as if they are all the same since there is such a variation.
And for those who have difficult financial circumstances not covered by the NPCs, why wouldn’t they contact FA offices at various colleges they are contemplating ED (or others for comparison) and ask about what they could expect for awards? It doesn’t have to be something on a website officially offering a “Pre-read”. The websites do list ways to contact FA offices with questions. You can call, email or go in person if you are on campus for some reason. But people need to be pro-active.