ED Discussion

Parents Forum
41

3puppies- NOBODY is suggesting that a family that needs to evaluate a bunch of offers and pick the most generous should be applying early. Nobody. That’s not how the system works.

Not sure what the problem is. You need to compare? Apply RD. You don’t need to compare? Apply early. I know a few families whose kids DID apply early-- and these were to the mega generous schools- and one of them told me that the financial aid offer was $5 off from what the net price calculator had told them it would be. They were nervous- who wouldn’t be- but they were assured by the financial aid officer that if the actual offer was materially different from what had come out of the calculator, they would have a “sit down” to review.

Not a divorce situation, two W2 wage earners with no weird write-offs, modest assets. So a kid whose family owns a farm, or has step parents in the equation, or whose income is derived from rent producing real estate is going to be SOL- the NPC’s are NOT accurate for these situations.

But again- so kids apply RD if they need to compare. What’s the problem here?

42

You described more than half the country’s families just with divorce. Maybe not half of college applicants’ families, but still. Add in the rest of the “NPC won’t be accurate” situations and I’m sure we’re over half.

ED is an admissions advantage. Being able to do it is an advantage afforded to those with high-enough family income (and family or counselor having sufficient knowledge of the process so all tests are taken and retaken in time, ECs and recs lined up early, etc). Colleges fill a lot of their classes ED, thereby making RD admission harder for those who must use it.

It is what it is, but IMO I wouldn’t call it even or fair.

43

@OHMomof2 I assure you we are not remotely high-income. We are solidly in the 3rd income quintile, so by objective measures middle income, not just in my head. ED still worked for us. It worked for me and my family 25 years ago too and I was a first generation college student from a working class family. I wouldn’t suggest it unless the kid was sure they know where they want to go, but not being full pay does mean ED is out of the question.

44

I am aware that there are exceptions @MadcityParent .

But it does favor those with the means to pay whatever the NPC says, who do not need to compare and whose situations are not complicated by divorce, business ownership, etc.

It also benefits those who not only know about ED (so have family or counseling in the know) but are also ready to take advantage of it by that early senior year deadline - a lot of lower income first gen kids take their first SAT senior year because no one is telling them there are early deadlines to get ready for.

HP/UVa dropped ED/SCEA for awhile for this reason (and HP do SCEA instead of ED for that reason too):

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/09/harvard-to-eliminate-early-admission/

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/01/12/discrimination-inherent-early-admissions-programs-essay

That’s how the system is set up, currently. I don’t hate the players - if ED works for your family go for it - just the game.

45

Not sure about kids taking their first SATs in their senior year, many States now give a free statewide SAT in the junior year. One might argue that those students aren’t prepped for those tests, but those students also take the PSAT…the PSAT and SAT are more similar than the PSAT and ACT. You see what your PSAT score is and you either persist to do better or not, student choice.

When signing up for the PSAT and SAT students have the option to get college marketing materials. In almost every college mailing we’ve received there’s information about both Financial Aid (“how you can afford us;” “go to our NPC;” etc.) and ED/EA/RD available options.

High schools seem to spend time telling parents about ED/EA/RD. I know ours did. And they did at surrounding high schools. (AND we go to a low income school with 50%+ on free/reduced lunch and a SAT total average of about 1005. The surrounding schools aren’t better either.)

And while HP/UVA stated that they were dropping ED for fairness reasons, I doubt it was truly for altruistic reasons. Pretty likely HP/UVA were loosing quality students they wanted to Stanford/Penn/JHU/Columbia/Yale/Vandy/Duke/etc …and they lost more during that period without ED or SCEA, so they switched back. Now they offer SCEA, and wow families with their Financial Aid packages.

Personally, I’d rather like it if all colleges used SCEA. Students pick their top college; get an early application boost, and then are able to shop around for other offers. (It’s not a take it or leave it option.) If your SCEA school offers a good deal and it truly is the student’s top pick the admissions playing field will be ‘more’ equal.

Saying that high school students don’t know about ED/ED2 and don’t know if they can afford a college which offers ED points out you’re not looking at your mail or going to parent/teacher conferences. College/high schools are blasting us with those messages.

46

It’s the nature of this process to think the odds are stacked against you and someone else has it better than you. MA think if only the were from SD they would have it easier, SD envious of VA in state options, North VA think it’s easier to get into UVA from Southern VA, girls applying to LACs think boys applying to LACs have it easier, Boys applying for CS, think girls applying for CS have it easier, full pay families are irked at subsidizing families who haven’t saved, donut hole families are irked by lower income families going for free, lower income families think everyone else has a professional writing the esssy, private school families worry the competition is too fierce from private schools, public school families worry that private school kids have the edge, everyone is annoyed by the athletes and legacies, athletes are annoyed by lack of recruiting transparency, legacies worry that people are going to think the only reason they got in is because of that status. Those shopping for merit are worried they miss the ED bump, those applying ED feel they will never know if they miss out on something else…
In the end you just have to deal with the cards you are dealt and focus on putting out the best application you can.

47

@wisteria100 Thank you! I think that about sums up this crazy process. I know my DS gave up merit money by going ED. That was ok for our family because we were 100% sure his top choice was the right place for him and yes we could afford to give up that merit. When a full pay student goes ED that frees up money for the RD round, it is a way for the college to balance a class and know what resources they have left to distribute.

48

Just a few points:


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ED is a system designed to benefit the colleges, not the students. It enables colleges to lock in desirable students early in the process – and one thing that makes a student desirable is the tuition dollars that student will bring. So it does confer an advantage for full-pay families. Without ED, most colleges would need to either abandon need-blind admission policies or guarantees to meet full need – because any system that does not give full-pay students a significant leg up would essentially break the bank for institutional aid dollars. Some colleges have particularly strong endowments that could withstand this… but for most colleges money has to be factored in one way or another.

Because ED is meant to benefit the colleges, there is a different set of admission priorities in the ED round than RD round. Although raw stats suggest increased chances of admission during ED, that probably does not carry through on an individual basis for students whose profiles don’t meet the ED priorities. After the ED round, there will be “gaps” to fill depending on the profiles of the ED-admitted students, and in the RD round students who fill those gaps may have an advantage. Obviously there is no way in advance to know what those gaps will be – but for example, if the college wants geographic diversity and the ED admit class is skewed toward students from the Northeast, then students from under-represented regions or states may benefit in the RD round.

A student can only attend the colleges that accept them, but a student who does a good job of targeting schools in the RD round is likely to have more options than the student 1-college-only option for the student who is accepted ED. If students only used ED to apply to clear first choice colleges that they could afford – that wouldn’t be a problem. But the competitiveness of the process, as well as the perceived differential in admissions chances, leads many students to use their ED option on a college that is not their top choice, but one where they perceive admissions likelihood to be greater. In other words, there are students who forego applying SCEA to Yale because of a sense that it is strategically better to play the ED card at Vassar-- and some of those students might well have been admitted to Yale – but of course they will never know. So the OP’s daughter’s statement, " applying ED eliminates all of my other options" - is 100% correct.

[/QUOTE]

49

Another benefit to the school using ED is guaranteeing that a big chunk of the class really wants to be there. That type of student enthusiasm is important to some schools.

Not sure I totally agree with @calmom about the full pay comment. If a school is need-blind, when they look at the common app, they likely have turned off the question about applying for financial aid, so they don’t see that. Of course they can profile by type of high school and zip code, but if a school is need blind, then we shouldn’t 2nd guess and say they are deviously not being need blind.

Yes - some kids use ED very strategically. And I agree that ED at most top schools, is not going to result in an admit for a kid with lower than avg stats for that particular school. But I see a lot of ‘Hail Mary’ ED apps around here. Meaning kids using the philosophy, you never make a shot you don’t take and applying ED to a school they have very, very little chance of getting into based on their scores and rigor. If you have an ED2 back-up plan, that can be okay, but if not, you just wasted a potential advantage.

50

ED clearly benefits certain types of applicants and their family. However, it’s one of reasons why getting into desired colleges becomes more and more competitive. Colleges with ED programs routinely allocate more than 50% of their seats to ED applicants (up to 80% in the case UChicago with its ED1/2). With very few seats left in the RD round, RD acceptance rates keep dropping. Lower RD acceptance rates drive more applicants to apply ED the following year and colleges lock up even more seats for ED applicants. The cycle continues…until almost everyone applies ED at some point. ED is one of the contributors to the problems we face in college admissions today.

Also, can we really expect a 17-year-old to know exactly what college should be his/her top AND ONLY choice while he/she is still focused on his/her HS?

51

There are a couple reasons that ED can work for families in the middle quintile if used carefully. For one, it can take a lot unpredictability out of the equation. Knowing in December what the cost will be makes planning easier for the financial year than trying to plan in April or May.

Second, the value of those awards in spring is not a guarantee for the whole time the kid is a student. Some of the schools my kid was interested in have a drop in financial aid after freshman year and students were on average left with higher loan amounts. Applying ED to a school that doesn’t bait and switch and has lower than average student loan amounts can lower the total amount paid.

52

I do not believe that any child should feel pressure to apply early decision. It is a big decision that should be made only when a student is ready. If a child is not confident that a college is right for him/her, it is better to wait and apply only early action or rolling or regular decision.

But for those who are ready, and for whom the EFC is reasonable, ED confers a great advantage… and tremendous relief if you get in! After my own child’s experience and those of his friends and my colleagues’ students this last cycle, I am a big believer in ED.

Below, I will offer counterarguments to some made on this thread.

A. The Too-Young-to-Commit Argument Against ED:

I do not understand this argument. If you don’t commit on November 1st, you are still going to have to commit somewhere by May 1st. Yeah, sure, kids mature a bit in those six months… but so much so that they will become so much more decisive by then that it is worth giving up a major admissions advantage?

B. The Money Argument Against ED:

At need-blind, meets-full-demonstrated-need colleges, applying early decision will give you the same aid package as applying RD, and these colleges are among the nation’s most generous. I heard that some kids on the GroupMe for students admitted early decision to Williams last year spoke about what a relief their aid package was; they needed substantial aid, and they got it. Many of the kids admitted RD were also talking about the aid as a factor in why they were choosing to go there at admitted days and new student orientation. I also heard similar tales from colleagues’ children who were admitted to other colleges early decision with aid; e.g., a colleague of mine, a teacher with two children, entered the ED process with trepidation that her daughter would get into her dream college but be unable to attend, and was ecstatic when the aid offer arrived and surpassed her expectations. Well-endowed colleges give good aid.

Yes, a full-pay or needs-very-little-aid student might get more money through merit aid packages than through what a needs-only/no-merit college will give them. But if you would turn down a generous merit package at your tenth choice to attend your top choice with a smaller amount of aid anyway, why not apply early decision and increase your chances at your top choice?

C. The Only One Dream College or Possible Regrets Argument Against ED:

I disagree that one should only apply ED if you have a clear top choice. I think it is a bad idea to think about any college, “This is the only place I could be happy.” In fact, I think anyone applying early decision to one college should simultaneously apply early action to one or more safer choices, and work to keep their psychological approach to the application process as, “I will be happy if I get into my ED school, but I also could be happy at any of the colleges to which I am applying, and I am not committing my heart until a college commits to me.”

You do not need to prefer your ED college to all others. You just need to have the type of personality that is optimistic and does not dwell on what-ifs or woulda/coulda/shoulda thinking. Apply ED if you are ready to be happy at the ED college if it accepts you, and never look back.

53

I agree with @TheGreyKing that the student’s personality can play a part in the ED decision. D19 chose eight schools to visit and tour. She liked them all, and three were her favorites. She didn’t want to see any more (I did!).

She decided to revisit one of the three favorites in the spring of her junior year, and started thinking about applying ED there. This September, she visited again, shadowed a student, went to classes, and practiced with her sport (club sport). She came home completely sure that this was a very good match.

Her thought during the whole process was that eventually she was going to have to pick just one school, so why not go ahead and do that up front and see if she could get admitted? She takes after her dad who likes to have things settled and decided, rather than gathering more information and postponing the choice. Also, like her dad, she doesn’t ruminate and second guess decisions (like I might!).

If she is accepted, she will immediately be their biggest fan—I can see her becoming an OA and/or tour guide and wearing their swag every day. If she’s not accepted, she’s back on the same path she was before ED, so no harm, and she’ll start singing the praises of the other seven schools. Maybe I’ll even get her to see some more . . . I really loved taking those trips with her.

54

A college does not have to be need-aware for individual applicants to know that filling a lot of its class with ED admits will skew the SES distribution upward, because the ED applicant pool tends to have higher SES with no need to compare FA offers.

55

Likely already said, but a huge benefit of successful ED for applicants is having to write far fewer applications, finishing much earlier, a more relaxed senior year.

56

Don’t forget that a pile of schools take a substantial number of students in the ED round through programs like Questbridge match. It is an important way for the schools to get SES diversity.

Whether any student should apply ED is a personal decision. It comes with risks and benefits. And while the application process is its own special version of nerve-wracking, most students who do it thoughtfully end up happy where they end up - even if they weren’t happy with the process and the initial outcome.

57

D18 was accepted ED into a meets-need LAC last fall, and the process worked well for her. We needed substantial financial aid, so we were a bit nervous about applying ED, but the school’s offer was within $100 of the NPC.

I certainly disagree that ED only benefits the school. Our daughter completed one application and had an acceptance before Christmas, a much better process for her than applying to 5 or 10 schools and waiting until spring to know where she was going.

I also disagree with the idea that you can’t always compare costs between schools by applying ED. My daughters list of schools included only schools that meet need, and the net prices generally varied with the selectivity of the school - the more selective the school the lower the net price. The school she selected was on the lower end of the selectivity scale and the higher end of the net price, but it clearly was the best fit, and we could afford it. Essentially, we were able to compare costs, and selected the school that was the best fit that we could afford. I understand that if the college list includes schools that don’t meet need, you are looking for non-automatic merit, or if you have a situation that makes NPCs unreliable, then this would not be true. BTW, most of our income is business income, but the NPC worked for us.

Although ED is not for everyone, it really can be a great option if you have a clear first choice school.

58

@3puppies True, and the system favors URMs and first generation students too. For, LAC’s, they favor males. Lots of unfairness in college admissions.

59

This is not entirely true. Most schools will give the potential ED student an early read from the financial aid office so that the student knows in advance what the costs are likely to be. The student with an unusual situation can still find out the potential costs. I think ED can make a lot of sense for a student trying to lock in a spot at a highly selective university as long as the finances make sense.

The problem is for those students who are are looking for non-need based aid. Discretionary merit aid and scholarships are really impossible to predict in advance and make ED very dicey. In our case, that worked out really well for us. My D had a clear first choice and was very upset that she could not apply ED. She was accepted to her top choice in the spring, but by then had changed her mind entirely and chose a different school. She has been incredibly happy and successful there. We often talk about how lucky she got that she was prevented from applying ED. You never know what life is going to throw at you.

60

We generally have differing notions of what’s fair. Schools aren’t trying to be fair; they’re trying to attract and retain the students they want the most (well, private schools).