<p>I was reading an article about Pomona College and the dean of admissions said, “if someone can show me how applying ED hurts a student applying to Pomona needing financial aid, we’d sure like to see it.”</p>
<p>Pomona, like Amherst, is very transparent in their application of needs-based aid (including loan caps, and in Amherst’s case, loan replacement starting next year). So my question is, if my son’s first choice school is Amherst (which it is at the moment), and we have a very simple financial situation (married parents, income <60K, and some home equity built up in our home, no other investments or real estate or retirement accounts or anything like that), can the accurate numbers I plug into Amherst’s online calculator give me a reasonable expectation of our EFC? (It says about $6500 for us, and about $1500 for my son to earn.) With the loan replacement program, then, wouldn’t that be enough for us to know for him to apply ED without a lot of anxiety about cost?</p>
<p>I was in a pretty similar situation this past year in terms of family income and home equity, with an efc of around 5200 plus 1600 for me. I applied regular decision to several similar liberal arts schools, plus my state school. Amherst's initial offer was by far the best of the liberal arts schools and very comparable to the state school. Their initial offer was about our efc-and by the time the final offer came in the mail, they lowered the parental contribution by about 1000 dollars.
From my experiences, Amherst's policies are extremely generous and i would say one of the best in the country. With the recent announcement that none of their aid packages will contain student loans, I would say that you have nothing to worry about applying early or regular decision-good luck to your son</p>
<p>Same here. D's package was the best, albeit regular decision. She turned down some very prestigious schools for Amherst (the same level, if not higher, due to their better package, and other reasons, as well). Normally, I would say don't do ED if you need FA, but Amherst seems to be up front about it. It's your call. I don't think you will be disappointed, but realize there is always that risk with ED.</p>