ED @ Northeastern

Northeastern is by far and away my daughter’s first choice and she’s a year away from applying. So her plan is to do ED. From what I read ED is for people who don’t necessarily need any financial assistance. However, I have also read that if you’re high up in the applicant pool you have a chance to receive various types of scholarships, i.e., Deans and Merit. Can someone explain what seems like a bit of a dichotomy. Thank you.

Northeastern gives primarily need based aid to undergrad students. Their scholarships are awarded to top accepted students…and not just ED accepted students. I wouldn’t count on getting one of these. You have no idea what the other accepted students will be like.

Do you qualify for need based aid? You can run a net price calculator for NEU to get a rough estimate of your annual cost…as they are currently set for students starting fall 2020.

If the net price calculator shows a completely unaffordable cost…you need to consider that.

If you apply ED, you are basically committing to the school if accepted. So they know they have you and can offer you less financial aid because they don’t need to entice you.

My experience with my daughter and her friends (we are local to Boston and a LOT of people from her high school go to Northeastern) is that it’s common to get merit aid, but that’s usually in the neighborhood of 10 to 20k per year, and Northeastern costs more like 70k per year, if you include room, board, tuition, fees, everything.

My daughter got a $12,000 per year Dean’s Scholarship (we didn’t qualify for any need-based aid), and her stats were right in the middle of the accepted applicants.

@NUStats the info re: number of students to receive non-need based aid (merit aid or athletic scholarships) can be found on Northeastern’s Common Data Set.

Just a quick look at the 2018-2019 tells me that about 30% of the kids who ENROLLED received non-need based aid that averaged at about $20K.

Of course, that doesn’t tell us how many ADMITTED kids were offered this type of aid, but I would say that it’s common to receive merit aid. After all, 70% of the enrolled class came in without it.

Sorry, meant to say, that I wouldn’t say that it is common to receive merit aid at NU.

@NovaMom93

Northeastern is moving in the direction of providing mostly need based aid…which is perhaps why 70% of the students don’t get merit aid.

The number and amount of merit aid awards has been reduced over the years.

Wondering what the %age of students receiving need based aid is…I’m sure it’s on the Common Data set as well.

ED doesn’t commit you to the school if the aid package isn’t sufficient. Do run the NPC if you qualify to use it.

And colleges can’t just short your need-based aid because you applied ED.

My son applied EA last fall and received merit aid.