<p>Thank you; all your comments are very insightful</p>
<p>Jonkras, as you can readily tell from my comments, I don’t think those who need/want financial aid or other awards should apply ED. However, there are some very sharp, top info giving CCers who believe otherwise. Their stance is if you are high need, applying ED to a highly selective school is a good way to go if that school is one that guarantees to meet full need and is reputed to be generous with it. I can see their point, and could go along that way of thought for schools to some schools of the HPY calibre–I don’t even know which ones have ED anymore, But even with Harvard, who is the sugardaddy of financial aid in generosity has thrown some curve balls at people I know. They were not ED, so it was not an issue, but had they been… well, in that case the kid would have gone anyways but the family would have been forced to make the choice on the spot. Harvard interpreted their income/asset situation in a way they did not expect. Come April, it turned out that most all schools also did, but there were significant merit award choices. I’ve just seen too many times when something gets thrown into the mix and your back is against the wall with ED. You gotta commit or let go in a very short time frame without a full view of what other options might be.</p>
<p>All the Ivie’s now have ED with the exception of HYP who have SCEA. Princeton and Harvard just reintroduced SCEA this year.</p>
<p>thanks Kdog044. My friend’s son was accepted to Harvard, EA, many years ago. His father expected that there would be generous financial aid as Harvard does give the best aid overall, in most cases. The family income was at the $60K or so level, and Harvard was about $40K a year then. What was not taken into consideration was that the income was rental income and the units were assessed at a high market value because real estate was rocking those years . They also represented my friend’s retirement nest egg as that was all he had. He was going to get a pittance from SOcial security as he was not paying into the system while managing the apartments was his job. As far as Harvard and the other schools were concerned, he could sell the units or borrow against them. The problem with doing that, would be the income would be compromised in so doing. </p>
<p>Because it was an early read, and not binding, my friend had time to mull all of this over. He also got to see that all other schools looked at the situation like that , and that there were schools willing to pay full freight for his son. He and his son could look at the choices and make an informed decision. Had it been ED, and he had to decide in that short time period, it would have been a rough go. </p>
<p>It’s not always an afford it or not situations with a financial aid package. You might decide to stretch into not affordable especially if that is most of the terrain you want for your kid anyways. Or you might have much better options so it isn’t worth the extra cost. Hard for us amateurs to make the decision with so much emotion involved.</p>
<p>jonkras, there are a few schools where not getting enough financial aid doesn’t release you from the ED agreement. They’re the exception, but please read each school’s rules and ED supplement carefully, especially if the school does not use the Common App ED form. In reality, no school is going to force you to attend even if it drives you into bankruptcy, but it would be much better to apply to those schools RD.</p>
<p>ED is not always an admissions advantage. Some schools have high ED rates because that’s when they are taking hooked applicants (e.g. legacy admits and recruited atheletes). </p>
<p>I bet that if you call up FA offices and ask for a pre-read, they’ll direct you to their Net Price Calculators online. It’s not clear just how reliable these are. If your financial situation isn’t white bread–you own your own business, you’re divorced, etc.—treat them very skeptically.</p>
<p>Thanks all. My S is an athletic recruit, and I think he might get in via ED. This is my only kid, so this whole process is new to me. I hate the idea of applying ED and not knowing the cost in advance. It’s a huge commitment and if the offer is not what you want, it is a huge waste of everyone’s time. In my particular case, I would have no problem accepting an offer if I thought it was good enough. I would be willing to forgo the ability to compare offers later for the right ED school.</p>
<p>Jonkras, you can generally get an early read as others have said, and if you don’t have curve balls in your financial situation, the estimates are usually pretty accurate. Schools really want to keep their ED admits so they will try to make sure it works out. </p>
<p>But you can see how a family going into this blindly, can get blindsided. It sounds so easy to say you can back out if the offer is not adequate, but living that is not always clean cut and easy. I’ve seen it get ugly and painful.</p>
<p>“It’s a huge commitment and if the offer is not what you want, it is a huge waste of everyone’s time.”</p>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, I see it as no commitment (you just say no thanks if it doesn’t work and move on to RD) and no wasted time (assuming Common App, everthing done for ED is then used for the RD effort). There is the huge disappointment of not being able to attend the dream school, but that’s the same whether ED or RD. I actually see an advantage in being disappointed at ED time, since you now have an extra three months to develop some new favorites. Anecdote: our DD1 attended her RD dream school, but wished she had applied ED in order to have saved the effort of preparing the other TWELVE apps! That’s not completely fair, since you need to be at least thinking about the RD apps in case ED doesn’t work.</p>
<p>Didn’t see that the OP’s son is a recruited athelete–nevermind what I said about not getting help on a financial aid pre-read. They’ll certainly do that for you–they really don’t want to waste your time. I was thinking of us mere mortals. 
</p>
<p>jonkras, are you reading/posting on the athletic recruits subforum? Those folks are going to be a bunch of help.</p>
<p>"(you just say no thanks if it doesn’t work and move on to RD)" is the attitude that can get you in trouble when things go south. It’s not that easy is what I’ve been saying. I strongly recommend having those RD apps ready to go with a minimal amount of work. Kids who get rejected, deferred or have to turn down ED acceptance, are usually in bad shape and morale; not the state of mind optimal, to say the least, for feeling out ones applications. And it 's often just as one is going into the holidays and having to prepare for exams, etc.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider about ED is that kids grow and change over the 8 to 9 months during the application/admission cycle. The school, they loved, couldn’t live without and got accepted ED to may be come blah, once friends start receiving admit letters in the spring. There may be a series of what if’s, buyers remorse and maybe I should haves.</p>
<p>The other issue is your high school. Some high schools are very touchy about kids turning down ED offers. Though you might think you can just look at the offer and just say “no thanks”, if the college wants to give it a go to try to work out a package, your high school may insist you do so. What they have at stake is the future of other ED prospects in the future so they are not going to be so cavalier about people walking away from ED. What you consider as undoable, if your EFC is being met and all decide it is a reasonable offer, may not be looked upon the same way, and you have other applications that need to be processed. I personally know of a number of cases, one of them my own kid where ED refusal was not so simple because of the high school’s feeling about the case. </p>
<p>Though I agree about the buyer’s remorse, I think that is something that ALL ED admits get and is not just a financial aid applicant’s thing. Where it would hurt those who need financial aid is when kids you know who have applied to the very schools where your kid withdrew apps are getting packages that are so much better than your kid’s and you have agreed to something that is going to really stretch you. Then you see your kid isn’t all that thrilled about the school anyways. It can be a hornet’s nest when things go wrong.</p>
<p>Here is the Common App rule:
<a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2012/2012EarlyDecision_download.pdf[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2012/2012EarlyDecision_download.pdf</a></p>
<p>We have indeed heard here on CC of a number of HS counselors who themselves are not aware of how ED with FA works. The various cautions are fine, but would seem to be reasons why no one should ever apply ED. Yet in my dealings with HS kids over the years, all I hear is relief when they get into their ED choice, and it’s my impression from reading CC pages over the years that we actally see more first-hand happy posts about ED working out than first-hand reports of horror stories, but maybe I’m filtering. As long as it’s a kid with a dream school, and not one just trying to increase odds of acceptance, and if the calculators indicate a likelihood of success, I think the pros outweigh the cons.</p>
<p>*"(you just say no thanks if it doesn’t work and move on to RD)" is the attitude that can get you in trouble when things go south. It’s not that easy is what I’ve been saying. I strongly recommend having those RD apps ready to go with a minimal amount of work. Kids who get rejected, deferred or have to turn down ED acceptance, are usually in bad shape and morale; not the state of mind optimal, to say the least, for feeling out ones applications. And it 's often just as one is going into the holidays and having to prepare for exams, etc.
*</p>
<p>The problem that we see each year is that many ED kids who find out that their EFC is MUCH higher than what the family expected, have not put the appropriate safeties into place during the FALL. Many/most of the financial safeties that would be handing these ED kids big merit have Nov and Dec 1st deadlines. ED results and the FA pkgs come out AFTER that.</p>
<p>it’s hard to tell the ED kid with an unaffordable EFC that he’s already missed most/all of the deadline for big merit at other schools. </p>
<p>Those ED kids with unaffordable EFCs who miss those early scholarship deadlines really only have few options…commute to a local public, take a gap year, or find a 3rd/4th tier school that will still award big merit. What a frustration for the kid with stats to go to an elite school! </p>
<p>Many try to warn these kids in the all to submit apps to these big merit schools “just in case”. The ED kids either are confident that the school will accept and award big bucks, or they think they’ll jinx themselves by also applying elsewhere!</p>
<p>The school my was son was considering ED was NU. Read their take:</p>
<p>If you are admitted under Early Decision and apply for financial aid, you will be notified of your aid decision around the time of your acceptance, provided your family has filed the College Scholarship Service Financial Aid Profile (CSS Profile) by December 1. Students admitted under Early Decision may be released from the commitment to enroll at Northwestern only for demonstrated financial hardship. That was the part that concerned me. I e-mailed the Adcom and here was their response:</p>
<p>If you apply Early Decision and are admitted to Northwestern, you are allowed to appeal your binding contract for financial reasons. There are a series of appeals and applications you will have to formally file if it is not financially feasible for you to attend. </p>
<p>Doesn’t sound like you can just say sorry I can’t afford it. I would make sure you know exactly the policies of the university before making that decision to file ED.</p>
<p>Hmmm. It seems like NU is speeding a little bit here. They do use the common app but seem to have more hoops to jump through for release. I wonder if there is some history behind the extra documentation?</p>
<p>No, that is what I am trying to tell you. It’s not just a “sorry, I can’t afford it” That just starts up the whole sequence of events which you have to undergo in many cases. THen when your high school jumps into the mix, it can become an issue too. </p>
<p>You can get out of ED easily. You just don’t go. A college can’t make you go there. But the college and your school counselors can let other schools know that you welched on a commitment without going through due process which is an indicator or character. It won’t ruin you for all colleges. A lot of the state schools don’t recognize the binding commitment of ED and don’t care if you broke the agreement. But there are schools and admissions offices that do care. </p>
<p>In the now old book, “A is for Admissions”, a former admissions officer from an ivy league school discusses how top school run their admissions program. She says that it is not true that admissions officers collude with each other to find out who applied elsewhere, nor do they try to second guess where a candidate may get accepted and go. She states specifically that the only exception to the collusion rule is that of Early Decision. That is information that is officially shared. ED commitments are taken very seriously by the schools who have the program as the integrity of the program depends on students and families keeping that commitment. It is for that commitment that some quarter is given for admissions ED, so it is a big deal to such schools. You do not want your other school to know that you backed out of ED unless it was for a very good reason, and the school released you from its commitment. Otherwise, you go to a school that doesn’t care IF you highschool will release your end of year transcripts (yes, some will hold them for breaking ED contracts) or re do the process the following year.</p>
<p>ED is beautiful, wonderful when it works. It can be a nightmare when it does not.</p>
<p>Also, you can’t figure on your EFC being what FAFSA indicates. Our EFC was around $3K and NU came up with a $6.3K EFC. Outside of 401K, we didn’t have anything that would have been considered an asset.</p>
<p>I have heard nothing but wonderful things about NU and ED offers. It is one of a bunch of schools that seems to do well. But as you can see right here, it can be an issue. What to do when you have a low EFC so that $1K is a problem to scrape up and the aid package is a few thousand off, and considered “reasonable” ? For those who are hoping that they get $20-30K, in aid and get $15 instead, there might be some teeth gnashing but for the school of one’s beloved child’s dreams, the $5K+ can be scraped up. For families with low EFCs or in financial hardship, maybe not recognized by the financial aid process, even a small gap can be problematic. Plus you know that there may be another school out there that will pay merit money perhaps, or a state school where the costs are likely to be much lower and maybe even zero.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. NU turned out to be very generous and my son would have attended if he didn’t get an offer he couldn’t refuse. He would have had to max out loans (Perkins and Stafford) plus work study but we would have done what was needed to make it happen.</p>