<p>The fall term grade will be available around end of November which seems too late for ED I. My son does need the fall term grade to show colleges the improvement of his senior year academic performance. </p>
<p>He's now thinking about ED II. My concern is: </p>
<p>If he apply for EDII and get defer, will he still has chance to apply for RD for other schools?
The decision date for EDII if 1/15 and RD due date is 01/01.</p>
<p>Or, ED I ? Without the fall term grade?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Yes, he can reapply to CMU to schools he did not apply to during EDII.</p></li>
<li><p>If he is confident he doesn’t need the fall grade and wants to apply EDI, I’d say go for it. Otherwise, hold off until EDII or even RD. There’s really no rush, and your financial aid will almost certainly be worse under ED than it would under RD regardless of CMU’s “meet full need” policy. The benefit is an increased chance of admission to individual colleges.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>KATE - Thank you. </p>
<p>But the decision for ED II is 1/15 and RD application due date is 01/01, can he send RD application before EDII decision? I’m kind of confused about the procedure.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s no problem. Just make sure he marks his application as ‘Regular Decision’ and not ‘Early Decision II’ when he submits it. There should be an option available for which deadline he wants it under. :)</p>
<p>Kate- on the financial aid early estimator, the aid seems to be higher if you apply ED. Am I missing something, and are those estimates accurate if the input is accurate?
Also, is the admission rate any different ED I vs. ED II?
Thanks</p>
<p>Your “total aid” would be higher under ED, because they will HAVE to meet your full need (calculated by the EFC). However, most of that extra aid will most likely be work study or unsubsidized loans at crappy rates. (I’m lookin’ at you, PLUS loan.) So it’s like… fake-aid as compared to grants, scholarships, subsidized loans, etc.</p>
<p>If your son applies RD and gets accepted to any peer institutions, such as RPI, Case Western, RIT, Penn, Cornell, Penn State, et cetera, then CMU will review their aid offers (which will almost certainly be higher since CMU are stingy as hell) and will usually increase their own offer by a few thousand to persuade your son to attend. So unless he gets rejected from every institution that CMU would consider ‘peer’, he would likely get quite a lot more aid by this route. </p>
<p>I’m sure there is an admission rate difference between EDI and EDII, but no one has ever tracked or published those numbers so there is no way of knowing unfortunately.</p>
<p>I am being recruited for a sport and the coach is saying to apply ED. The only other peer that I could likely get into (recruiting me also) is Vassar, and they want me to do ED also to make it easier to get in. Unfortunately, these two are mutually exclusive as Ed’s.
My SAt’s are 1820, just took another, though, ACt 25 taking again also, 4.0 weighted GPA, 6 AP courses. Not a likely admit on my own merit, it looks like.
So, if I want in, I’m pretty much stuck with what ED gives me. Do you see any way I could get some bargaining power out of this situation?
Thanks again for your input, Kate.</p>
<p>Ahah, sorry, rsgathman, I didn’t notice your username. Apologies for referring to you as ‘your son’ :P</p>
<p>If your financial situation isn’t great and you need more aid after their ED offer, you can always go storm the finaid office. That’s essentially what my mother did last year when I got in ED and received terrible aid - the finaid office submitted surprisingly easily and bumped up my grant a bit, just enough to help. </p>
<p>Alternatively, aid is recalculated every year. Your aid for freshman year might be bad, but you can possibly bank on getting better aid during your sophomore year and the years following.</p>
<p>Thanks. Is someone with my academic profile likely to have a tough time keeping up with the courses and workload at CMU with an economics program? I keep hearing how tough CMU is.</p>
<p>Your scores are considered to be on the low end for CMU. If you’re a hard worker, though, then you can learn to adjust; I’ve known very intelligent ‘genius’ kids who became bro/ho losers, and kids who would be considered ‘subpar’ who have straight 4.0s. Econ isn’t Tepper or SCS, but it’s no walk in the park, either.</p>
<p>The one good thing about being in HSS is that your first year is largely devoted to taking the Freshman Five - freshman seminar, Interp, world history, stat, and <a href=“mailto:c@cm”>c@cm</a>. These classes are insanely easy (compared to higher level courses at least) and are devoted towards easing you into life at CMU. If you take intro to econ, you’ll have a lot of fellow freshman friends who also have to suffer through Klepper with you. Ditto with calculus. So it’ll be hard, but econ is a popular major so you definitely won’t be alone.</p>