ED vs. RD

Applying to College
1

<p>I know this has been asked before, but I'm aware of what happens if you back out of an ED contract. My dream is Rice, I'd go there over anywhere else in the world. If I apply ED, I know statistically my chances go much higher. At the same time, if they give me a bad deal on FA, that would devastate me. </p>

<p>I know you say "is FA matters don't sign up ED" but I think that's silly. I want to go there more than anywhere else, but I don't want them to monopolize me and manipulate my parents and my own finances. There's gotta be some in between. My backup is UT, because FA or not, it is way more affordable. If I get accepted with adequate FA ill attend without a question. So do the benefits overcome the dangers of ED? If it will make the difference between acceptance and rejection...
What do you think?</p>

2

<p>Check carefully, as many ED agreements have an out if the FA offer is not sufficient (though you need to get the FA paperwork in early as well). But you should not count on being able to compare the FA offer with that of another school if you get an ED admission.</p>

<p>In other words, assuming that the ED agreement has an out for insufficient FA as determined by you, do you have a definite threshold net price between “yes” and “no” decisions on your part? If not, then an FA offer in the “maybe” zone may result in a dilemma since you cannot expect to have other admission and FA offers for comparison.</p>

<p>Have you checked the net price calculator at your proposed ED school?</p>

3

<p>ucbalumnus gives good advice. You CAN get out of an ED commitment if you apply for aid but if the aid you receive is not sufficient. And YOU decide what “sufficient” means. The college will not hold you to a specific figure, so even if you are given MORE aid than your EFC suggests that you require, you still can say no thanks, if you feel that the aid you are offered isn’t enough.</p>

<p>If you are admitted via ED, you will get a tentative aid package at around the time of your acceptance. It is tentative because it is based on the previous year’s tax forms and not on the ones that the college will officially use. So if your family’s income or assets have changed significantly in a year, you will have to extrapolate. In most cases, however, the preliminary aid offer is a good harbinger of what is to come.</p>

<p>As ucbalumnus has pointed out, if you accept an ED offer of admission, you won’t have a chance to compare aid offers (both merit and need-based) in the spring. But, for many students, attending a first-choice college at an affordable cost is a lot better than attending just ANY college, even if the price tag is lower. So you and your family need to discuss priorities: i.e., how important is it that you get the best possible financial deal? Would your family be okay with an acceptable deal at Rice even if they feel you could attend another college for less? (As ucbalumnus said, the Net Price calculator can help you predict if your Rice aid offer will be reasonable for your family’s needs. But do take the NPC with a grain of salt. In addition, Rice financial aid officials may be willing to do an “early read” for you, which will be more reliable than the NPC. You can call there and explain that you want to apply ED but are wary that you may not be able to afford it. They may agree to give you a rough idea of what to expect before you officially apply for admission and aid. It’s worth a shot to ask.)</p>

<p>Finally, when applying for Early Decision and for financial aid at the same time, it’s important that you know in advance how the college will treat your application if you are admitted ED but without adequate aid. In many cases, if you turn down an ED offer for financial reasons, then you will be done at that college … i.e., out of the running. But, at SOME schools, an ED candidate who says no for financial reasons can opt to be reconsidered in the Regular Decision pool. That way, if you get lousy aid from all your OTHER colleges, too, you may decide that the aid offer from the ED college wasn’t so terrible after all. </p>

<p>BUT … be careful. A college that allows an ED applicant with insufficient aid to move into the Regular Decision pool will not necessarily admit that student in the RD round. If you were a borderline ED applicant who got bumped into the “In” pile because of your putative willingness to make a binding commitment, you may not get that same boost during RD. Similarly, the aid you were offered in December may not be the same as what you are offered in the spring. So, before you apply ED, make sure you know what the next steps will be, if your aid offer isn’t what you’d hoped for.</p>

4

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<p>I think ucbalum and Sally have explained why it’s far from “silly” to say that.</p>

<p>I would add to what they’ve said that colleges and universities that use merit aid to entice students they want to attend have virtually no incentive to spend that merit aid on ED applicants. If you apply ED, you’re agreeing that you’ll attend if you can scrape together enough money. They don’t have to lure you to go there; they know you’re going. So while I don’t know statistics on this question, I would be surprised if universities and colleges that offer merit aid offer as much of it, proportionally, to ED applicants as they do to RD applicants.</p>

5

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<p>Many college officials will insist otherwise, but --as Sikorsky suggests – the old “Why buy the cow …?” theory is in place here. Colleges are not likely to make their best merit offers to sure-thing candidates who’ve applied ED.</p>

<p>But, if you do apply to a merit-aid school via ED and don’t receive adequate aid, you may be able to lobby for merit money during a post-acceptance appeal. Colleges do not like to lose admitted ED students, so it’s possible that a college will fork over some merit money to an admitted ED candidate who threatens to bail.</p>

<p>However, some merit awards … especially the real biggies … are not determined until the spring … long after an ED applicant would have to say yes or no to an ED offer. </p>

<p>So applicants who are counting on merit money in order to make a college affordable should be wary of ED. This doesn’t mean that ED is totally out of reach for you (note the comment above about appeals) but do proceed with caution. </p>

<p>On another note, ED can actually be a BETTER bet for candidates who have high financial need than Regular Decision is, particularly at the “need-conscious” colleges. A need-conscious school is more likely to admit a student with a low EFC when that college knows that this is the student’s top choice. It makes it a lot easier for college officials to balance their aid budget when they are promising money to ED applicants who are likely to enroll rather than to RD applicants who may not. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, many high school students get poor advice from their guidance counselors in this area. The counselor will say, “You need a lot of financial aid so you can’t apply anywhere that you would have to make a binding commitment.” The truth, however, is that the student can back out of that commitment without penalty if the aid isn’t up to snuff, and the high-need student might be denied outright in the RD round but would have been accepted in the Early one.</p>

6

<p>Interesting insights, Sally. Thank you.</p>

<p>I know it’s unseemly to go about counting other peoples’ money, but from Complik’s first post in this thread, it does sound as if the Complik Family might fall into that very common category, value-conscious but not destitute. You know more about these matters than I do, but I think Early Decision can be a risky path for families in that group.</p>

7

<p>To put it down concisely, let’s say you apply to a school. If you get admitted, let’s say the FA offer gives you a net price $N. There are three scenarios:</p>

<p>$N <= $X: You will definitely attend no matter what other schools offer.
$N > $Y: You will definitely not attend because it is too expensive.
$X < $N <= $Y: You may attend, based on what the other schools offer. This is the ED dilemma zone, because you cannot expect to be able to compare the ED FA offer with that of other schools.</p>

<p>If $X = $Y, then your ED dilemma zone is nonexistent, so you need not worry about being in an ED dilemma with FA (so go ahead and apply ED). However, if $X < $Y, then you have an ED dilemma zone if the ED FA gives $N within that zone. In that case, it may not be a good idea to apply ED if the net price calculator indicates a high chance of the FA giving a $N within the ED dilemma zone.</p>

<p>Of course, you need to talk to your parents to figure out $X and $Y.</p>

8

<p>My parents are entrepreneurs. My dad owns real estate and my mom owns a home health business for speech therapy. (She is also an SLP)
Both of these businesses are under 2 years old and this years taxes have not been filed yet. </p>

<p>What I’m getting at is I don’t know exactly how much they make, but they keep telling me we might not be able to afford a private school. But then my mom says public schools are lousy and a bad education. </p>

<p>I know that through and through if I get accepted, ill be ok and my parents and I will figure the finances out. I just don’t want to drown them in payments, especially since they have 3 other kids. </p>

<p>That’s my situation. I don’t want to be forced to either smother them will bills or drown myself in loans. I want a fair deal, not to be subjected to whatever they feel is appropriate regardless the impact it has on my family.</p>

9

<p>Rice uses the CSS Profile so the businesses your parents own will be a big issue. The school will expect your parents to borrow on the assets and will probably remove some of the tax breaks which were received from taxes to increase your net income. I would not apply ED.</p>

10

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<p>Public schools are not lousy. Yes, some are certainly better than others, but you can get a good education at all of them if you make the effort. </p>

<p>Moreover, your choices are probably not going to be limited to “lousy” public vs. unaffordable private. </p>

<p>If you are strong enough to get into Rice, then take a close look at the characteristics you like most about Rice and then consider similar but slightly less selective colleges where you should be in the running to receive merit aid. For instance, if you want a “real” campus adjacent to a big city, check out American, Brandeis, and Tulane. If you like the sense of community at Rice, try Lawrence U. in Wisconsin, Guilford in NC , and Clark in MA. If the “geek chic” campus vibe is appealing, consider Case Western (OH), U. of Rochester (NY), and Brandeis (MA).</p>

<p>These are just a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples. But the point is this: If you are able to identify several colleges that seem similar to Rice in whatever ways you most most want them to be but are less selective and offer merit aid, you may find that you can get a private college education that won’t bust the family budget.</p>