You get one chance for the ED, and if you don’t get the financial aid, you’ve wasted that shot. You also don’t get a chance to compare the FA of several schools. Say you apply to MIT and 90% of what you need, but you have no way of knowing if you’ll get 95% of what you need at Cornell, or 100% of what you need at Stanford. You don’t even know if you’ll get into Cornell or Stanford before you need to turn down MIT.
If you can’t afford MIT unless you get 100%, then you’ve lost nothing as you’ll have to turn it down anyway.
Some of the schools will consider matching other offers. If you really want to go to Brown but the offer is 90% of what you need, you have no other offers to present for them to match. If you apply RD to Brown and get that 90% offer, but Princeton gives you 100%, Brown might be willing to up its offer.
@twoinanddone Is this the award match? I emailed Cornell financial aid department about it, and they said that IF I get accepted to both my early schools (ED Cornell and EA MIT), each with a financial aid package, they could do the award match as if it was an RD award match (but nothing is guaranteed, which apparently is also the case for RD award match).
It’s a mistake to assume ED is a boost. They accept athletes and the very most desirable in that round. You need to be super informed to know what might make you a highly qualified applicant and make your best presentation on the app and supp.
We don’t know how you’re asking, so can’t judge the accuracy of the college answers.
You will likely have a student contribution. In many cases, we discuss that being more than 3k. Maybe you give yourself time to do all this wisely.
If college finances are this tight, I’m curious how you just visited Cornell.
“Early decision applicants may apply to other non-binding early admissions programs, but if they are admitted to Cornell, they must withdraw any applications they have filed at other colleges or universities.” This seems to make negotiating not possible. How would you expect C to match another offer if they expect you to take the other college out of the picture?
You might not have an answer from MIT or a financial aid award by the time you have to answer Cornell.
If you absolutely need 100% FA, and you don’t get it in ED, you just have to turn down any offer you get that is less than 100%. You may be okay with that, willing to cross the ED school off your list and move to the next school. Nothing wrong with that except that the ED school is supposed to be your #1 choice.
Just know that if you go ED you may not be able to compare financial offers. You asked what you give up in ED and that’s it - the ability to compare FA offers.
It’s a mistake to assume you will get accepted to Cornell…or MIT. Both are highly competitive for admissions for international students especially. MIT admission rate is VERY VERY low. Cornell admission rate is VERY low.
Both colleges reject far more applicants than they accept. And that includes students with VERY tippy top stats…
The other thing you give up in ED is the ability to change your mind. Maybe that’s not an issue…but for some students…their points of view change between October and May.
Since you are also applying to MIT, it’s not clear to me that Cornell is really your top choice…maybe it is…but maybe it isn’t.
Or maybe you want to use the ED application because it might give you an admissions edge at Cornell. Many applicants will have 34 or higher on the ACT? 1500 or higher on the SAT? 4.0 GPA? Are you from an underrepresented country?
Your stats are great. Did you also take the TOEFL? Or is English your native language. With that 28R score…I wonder.
Some students do apply ED to a college that they would like…but most that do so are not international students with limited financial resources…in my opinion.
@thumper1 Those are my last year’s scores. My new SAT is 1540 (740EBRW + 800M), with 36 reading subscore which is above the minimum required reading subscore (I think it’s around 33) so I don’t need to take TOEFL. I also went to an English based high school.
You have the same odds of getting accepted as many of the other applicants who are strong.
Is there some reason you feel you need to apply ED? If so, please explain. Your stats are strong enough to make you a possible accepted student in either round of admissions…it’s not like you need an ED application edge…well…except for being an international student…
That’s the reason why. Just looking at their official stats (especially how many people apply in ED vs RD), I felt that applying early, whether ED, EA, or SCEA, to any school would increase the odds lowkey in some way simply because of the fact that there are less applications to read. And with the need-aware admissions policy, I thought it would be especially important to apply ED to have a better chance. If Cornell was need-blind I think I’d most likely apply RD, but since they’re need-aware I’m just gonna take my shot at the ED.
I’m fairly sure that since all the schools use similar quantitative method for calculating FA amount, they won’t be drastically different from one another, and the release from the binding agreement in the case of insufficient FA amount makes everything quite “safe” I guess…
I don’t know about Cornell and their fin aid practices, but some schools will do financial aid “pre-reads” for students, including internationals. OP, that may be something for you to check into to help guide your application strategy.
@sybbie719 could you please comment about the hugely varying net costs from one meets full need school to another.
@geekgurl awards from schools that meet full need for all can vary by 10s of thousands of dollars…and I’m not making that up. Some families have gotten almost $20,000 LESS from one college that meets full need than another.
Thumper is right. Some MFN colleges assess assets differently. Some try to package loans for domestic kids and just gap intls. Please understand this is something all US parents face and discuss endlessly on CC.
As an FYI, if you are an Asian student, you will be competing for admissions with a lot of other extremely well qualified Asian students. Some of those kids will be full pay students as well.
You seem to have your mind all made up…so good luck.
Get your regular decision applications either ready to submit…or submit them.
During my D’s admission cycle; she was accepted to every school that she applied to including Ivies and Top Lac’s. Every school that she was accepted to had s policy of meeting 100% demonstrated need. There was more than a 10,000 gap between the best and the worse package. We had 7 different EFCs. Some schools offered no loansin is heir financial aid plan, there were 7 different student contributions from summer earnings. Some schools offered work study in their financial aid package while others offered none.
In addition in my work life I have literally seen over thousand of financial aid packages over the years. Outside of students who split for and receive a financial review I can not tell you about any two schools that gave the same exact packages. I have had students with the same 0 EFC who have received different packages from the same school
Keep in mind that almost half if the ED pool consists of hooked applicants; athletic recruits, legacies, developmental admits (children of extremely generous donors), children of celebrities, politicians, faculty Qiestbridge students and NYS HEOP students. Your chances as an unhooked international student who needs a lot of the school’s resources centering admitted during the ED round is very very small.
I think the fact that you are an international student will put you at a disadvantage at ac school that is need aware to international students and gives limited aid. It would be in cirnell’s Interest to accept 5 interns students who need $14,000 than to admit one international student who needs $70,000. Whole Cornell is still spending that sane $70,000 it is to their advantage to be able to admit more students who needs less of the school’s resources.
Apply EA and RD and let the process shake itself out.
@sybbie719 But if they admit me, they’ll cover my full COA, and if they don’t want to do that because they want to admit more students with less need as you mentioned, they just won’t admit me. They’ll admit me only if they’re willing to give me that FA anyway, right?