Nubie question: I am assuming that a financial aid offer comes with an ED admission offer. What happens if you apply and the aid offer is inadequate?
You are allowed to turn down an ED offer if the financial aid is not adequate.
Keep in mind that if you want to have a chance to compare financial offers from different schools then ED would not be the best way to go.
@happy1 Correct me if I’m wrong, but its not enough just to say the financial aid is inadequate, right? You will need to demonstrate that the amount is unaffordable. Especially if the FA package satisfies your EFC.
@STEM2017 I believe you can just say the aid is inadequate and reject the ED offer (hopefully can confirm this). I don’t think a college can “force” a family to pay more than they want. A reasonable family would run the net price calculator first to get an estimate but I’m guessing that not everyone does that.
Unless you got a full scholarship, you can always say it is not affordable if there is any out of pocket money involved. Nevertheless, one should really check the NPC before applying ED. Not only you may miss the opportunity for applying other more affordable schools ED/SCEA, it may even affect your RD school applications. In my D’s school, the GC would only help applying in-state public schools after a student declining an ED admission offer. That’s her school’s policy.
If possible, apply EA (Early Action), not ED if you need financial aid. Check the requirements for the school’s scholarship process.
@billcsho Wow that policy sounds so restrictive, especially when some schools offer merit aid that would make it cheaper than an in-state option. I’m shocked nobody has challenged that.
@happy1 Why would anyone challenge that? The school told the students up front not to apply ED if they do reply on financial aid to make decision. Also, the school want to protect future students applying ED. One main reasons for colleges offering ED is to protect their yield rate and they would avoid schools that have bad records. This would prevent the students from applying ED if they just want to use it to boost their chance without thinking if the school is affordable or not. When you mention “some schools offer merit aid that would make it cheaper than an in-state option”, that means the student needs to compare financial aid package and should not apply ED anyway. After all, we have great in-state public universities.
@billcsho You didn’t mention in your first post taht students were told not to apply ED if they need aid.
I wholeheartedly agree that a decision to apply ED should be taken with the upmost seriousness and only after due diligence. I was thinking of a circumstance where a family ran the NPC, deemed a school affordable, and then for whatever reason got significantly less aid than the NPC indicated (it does happen on occasion). I would hate to see people who honestly try to do everything right be limited in potential merit aid opportunities if the actual aid for the ED school comes in well below what was reasonably expected.
Anyway, it is not my HS so as long as everyone at the school is informed about the policy and OK with it that is perfectly fine.
The best thing is probably to run the NPC, see how much is expected from the family in total, and see then how much higher you would be willing and able to go. If you could go at the very least 50% higher than the NPC, I think going ED might be an option.
In other words, if the NPC says you need to give $20,000 and you could stretch to come up with $30,000 (or somewhat more), then you would only turn down a ED offer if the NPC turns out to be very far off. If, on the other hand, the NPC says $20,000, the college says you need to give $26,000, and you say you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t have applied ED. A difference of that size could have been anticipated as a strong possibility.
Some people (like the GC mentioned above) may say you shouldn’t apply ED unless you’re sure you can pay in any circumstance. But I think ED is already weighted heavily toward the colleges and well-off families. I’m not going to blame someone for turning down an offer if the school insists you should be able to pay twice what their own NPC stated.