Observation: From reading some Common Data Sets, it appears most colleges (even some highly competitive ones) admit a greater (sometimes much greater) percentage of Early Decision (ED) applicants than they do from the total applicant pool (ED + RA +RD).
Conclusion: Colleges admit a lower percentage of Regular Decision applicants, as compared to the total applicant pool. I mean, that has to be the case, right?
Take away: If you are applying RD, you can expect your chances of admission to be a bit lower than is shown by the overall percentage of applicants accepted. So, while ED may improve your chances of admission, it may negatively affect your chances of getting financial aid.
I guess I’m stating the obvious here.
If a school meets full need, then applying ED will not effect your chances at need based aid.
Some people feel that it may effect your chance at merit aid, as merit is often used to lure high achieving students to a school, and if you apply ED you don’t need convincing. But there are also plenty of kids who apply ED and get merit
ED gives you an ‘out’ of declining if you cannot afford to go to school there. You are trusting the ED school to give you a good FA offer ; they don’t deviate from the NPC all that much, so I doubt that it will make much of a difference either way. Just research costs fully first.
It’s in the interest of ED schools to provide enough fin aid for their admits to attend.
The point of ED for a school is that it wants to lock in a percentage of the class; what’s the point of admitting someone who can’t show up because of finances?
In fact, one school (CMU) guarantees to meet need in ED but not RD.
Agreed that ED may lock you out of merit money.