<p>I agree with Sally BUT only for those tippy top schools that meet full need and are considered generous in their financial aid awards, and/or cap loans.</p>
<p>Amherst ED can be worth it for the ED boost, for example, but NYU probably not.</p>
<p>Very, very timely thread…
the early FA reads for the ED applicants at Muhlenberg were just released and definitely ditto what Sally has said…and those include significant merit awards…</p>
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<p>Which is what she said . . .</p>
<p>Again, not a good idea if family finances are uncertain, if you’re counting on merit aid, or if it’s a school that doesn’t meet full need. There’s no “probably” about it - NYU would be a bad idea!</p>
<p>ED for high need but middle class students is risky because they could be giving up merit scholarship opportunities at other schools that could come close to covering their needs. Son has a close friend at his state school who was accepted ED to her dream school. Due to a divorce, etc, it became apparent that the money wasn’t available to pay the tuition amounts that the dream school said they were able to pay. She ended up going to a state school but she missed out on all scholarship opportunities offered by the state school since she missed the scholarship deadlines. She now is taking out loans to make up that difference. With thousands of dollars at stake, ED is too much like financial aid roulette for my tastes.</p>
<p>Elizadad, make sure you have a good idea of what kind of aid is acceptable. A school that meets full need with a lot of self help is leaving no buffer for the kid. Something goes wrong, she can’t get a job because her hours are already taken up with workstudy. She can’t borrow because she is all loaned up already with the Staffords and some. Also some schools do have hefty contributions that increase each year in terms of what the student has to pay. Make sure you do your research. Full need packages are all not equal. What is acceptable to you and your student when you have only that one offer may be a whole other story from what you would pick if you had an array of choices, especially if a number of them were more generous than the first choice. </p>
<p>Many kids will change from first choice to another school when given the choices on the table. The absence of those other choices really makes it “a bird in the hand” proposition. And for all you know those birds in the bushes could be a lot more generous.</p>
<p>I thought everyone already knew this but -
Schools that meet 100% of need can use any combination of loans, work study & grants to do so.</p>
<p>Applying RD got my daughter an offer that only included subsidized loans. However some in her class eventually transferred out, because their need was met with more loans than they were comfortable with.</p>
<p>5 kiddos here, high need, zero EFC. Multiple offers. None of the kiddos went ED. Some did use EA however.</p>
<p>So with an EFC of zero, acceptances at meet 100% needs schools and with the Profile the financial aid packages still varied from $5000 to $15,000 per year. Same kiddo, same year. And yes those were HYP, MIT, Duke, Vandy, Swat, Amherst, Cornell, Penn, total of 36 schools.</p>
<p>Aid ranged from no summer contribution vs. full summer contrubution, to $5000 in subsidized loans, to research funds, to laptops, to study abroad, book scholies, $4000 in workstudy vs. no workstudy to $400 in SEOG to $4000 in SEOG. And different schools have varying policies on how they apply outside scholarships.</p>
<p>Again in some cases $15,000 PER YEAR difference. Using the RD apps allowed comparison of ALL the offers and with some “discussion” the best financial aid package was chosen and the first choice school. Could not have happened if gone ED.</p>
<p>Would not have known the “preferential packaging” at the other schools…wouldn’t have known what to ask for or what was even possible.</p>
<p>Was true for all his siblings as well. So would I advise any high need student to go ED, and when I say high I mean HIGH…no room for any errors, my answer would be NO. </p>
<p>Not trying to be contradictory, but way too much too lose by putting all your eggs in 1 basket.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>My high-need son applied ED to a very reachy school, his clear first choice, and was accepted with a very good financial aid award. It was a very smart decision in our case – if that ED app gave him even the slightest edge in getting admitted to a school with such excellent need-based aid (no loans), it would have been dumb to pass up the opportunity. After reading what was then all the knee-jerk advice on these boards to NEVER apply ED if you had high need (it has, to CC’s credit, gotten more nuanced since then), I did all the homework and thought it through myself and came to a different conclusion.</p>
<p>I have two issues with the original post.</p>
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</p>
<p>This assumes that NPCs are always 100% accurate, which they are not.
At my (and my ex’s) income level, the NPC will always come up with an EFC of full price.
And yet, there are stories on the CC of schools somehow “finding” Fin Aid.</p>
<p>And two . . .</p>
<p>Sikorsky read my mind:</p>
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<p>I’ve said the same thing a couple of times here on the CC, most recently in the “William & Mary is my one and only dream school” thread. </p>
<p>Bad idea.</p>
<p>Unless your “dream school” is Wichita State (and somehow, it never is), having a dream school is just inviting disappointment.</p>
<p>My dad has been unemployed for the past 4 years, until my dad just recently got a job ($60,000 or so) and my mom’s on social security disability, so we obviously have financial need. I just applied ED to my top choice, which I adore. I’m not worried because it’s a top, private college which is no-loan for the most needy students, and meets all EFC in general. Plus, if their package isn’t good enough, you can get out of the binding agreement anyway. I don’t know why you would ever not apply ED if you know you want to go to the school, even if you need FinAid. Don’t all schools allow you to drop out of the agreement if FinAid doesn’t meet your needs?</p>
<p>Crimsonstain, did you read Post #27, Katwkittens’ post? She has 5 kids that went through the process with high need and who applied to the type of schools you are describing. And there were big differences among the offers. How do you know what you WOULD get when you just get one offer? What you have to do is decide whether you can swing it or not. For all you know, a like school might have offered you more in a better deal. </p>
<p>I have not experienced this myself, but I’ve read other long time members posts here who have come up with the same thing. Even schools that are supposed to be using the exact same methodology come up with different packages that can vary by quite a bit, especially for a family who is struggling. All you can decide with ED is whether you are able and willing to do the package unless you truly luck out and get a package so doable and beyond expectation that you grab it with glee. It’s easy to turn down a package if it is truly undoable, but if it’s doable, but not so fantastic… well drawing that line is tough because it could be your best offer and if you let it go, you may not even get into like schools. </p>
<p>I know a young man who was delighted with his ED package. Doable, but a little bit of a stretch for the parents, but certainly meeting EFC . Then he got a very nice outside scholarship as well. His ED school’s policy for those was to put it towards the need, so he didn’t see a cent of it. Some schools let you keep it all or a percent of it. That $25K would have made a very nice gift to his parents who were really strapped. In addition, he had to come up with a student contribution and the school expects that to increase each year. Had he been able to compare, he might have done better. You don’t know if you can’t compare.</p>
<p>By the standards I’ve seen were right on the border of the no-loan area (my brothers also in college so that also is more burden). There is no similar school in my mind. It’s Northwestern, and the fact that it’s on Lake Michigan, Near chicago, great academics, Big 10, etc. are all big things for me so there really isn’t a similar school. I won’t care if another school would have offered me $1000 more, because honestly I’m in love with Northwestern. I guess my point was if you love the school, and have need, you’re safe applying ED because you can drop it if you really need to, but most likely you’ll get enough.</p>
<p>I feel, Sally, that this thread started in a tone that low income kids were being told to stay away from ED in a way that isn’t so nice. That is not the reason. I truly believe that the inability to compare offers is something that needs to seriously be considered by those who need/want the money the most. It’s doing anyone a disfavor not letting them know those drawbacks, but for those for whose families could really use the money, where it could make a big difference, the impact can be larger. As I said to Crimsonstained, Katwkittens post really comes to the crux of the matter. You don’t know what you will be giving up and will making that decison in a vacum.</p>
<p>I feel that for those kids with family income that makes them PELL eligible, there should be no ED, and that the ED option at school should be EA in such cases, since the diffferences in college cost can truly make such an impact on the family financials. It might just be a nice extra to get a few thousand extra to those families who are on even keel, but the difference between being able to keep the full PELL award vs having it integrated into the packages is a lot of money that can cover all sorts of things for a high need family.</p>
<p>Good luck, Crimsonstained. My son’s best friend applied ED to Northwestern a few years ago. He had high need and his full need was met with no loans.</p>
<p>In that case, Crimsonstained, you are good. But for some families $1000 can make a difference, especially per year. Also, in your case, at $60K a year, yours would not be considered a low income family despite past financial issues. When I see low income, I am thinking PELL eligible. Many of us have no trouble walking away from $1, 2, 10K We can afford to do so. There are kids from families for which that money can make a big difference.</p>
<p>My kids were Pell eligible when our income was 60K/yr.
Clearly, no one should apply ED if the want to “shop” for the best offer. That’s a no-brainer. However, if a student has a clear first choice and the question is “can we afford it?”, then ED is a reasonable option even for high-need kids, since they can be released from the agreement if they receive insufficient aid – insufficient by <em>their</em> measure, not the college’s.</p>
<p>When we made $60,000 our EFC was $15,000.
That’s before taxes, and with two kids.</p>
<p>I think that the challenge is when low income students apply ED, is that they are flying blind as what really constitutes low income. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, when it comes to getting need based aid, it is not a clear black and white process, especially in situations where parents are self employed, where there are step parents, ex spouses and non-custodial parents. </p>
<p>We have seen families who were “income poor” owned a business and did not get the FA package that they were expecting.</p>
<p>We have seen families where there is a uncooperative ex-spouse or non custodial parent and the kid cannot get a waiver and the package becomes unaffordable to the family</p>
<p>We have seen scenarios where people may be “income poor” and asset rich and not be able to get the aid, needed. Keep in mind that among peer schools, they can look at home equity differently, some capping it at 2.5 times income, some not taking home income into consideration, while others who feel that all home equity is up for grabs.</p>
<p>There are a string of disgruntled people who applied to BU (one parent even asked if she had grounds to sue BU) who though that their income/scores/grades out them in a position that they would receive “X” dollars only for the actual package not to come to fruition (imagine the headache if the family had applied binding ED).</p>
<p>Like Kat in our house it was a RD process. D applied to 7 top schools that meet 100% demonstrated need. For us there was about a 12k spread between the “best” and worse" packages. From schools, that put no loans in the FA package (before there were even no loan policies outside of Princeton), to varying amounts of student contributions, work study allocations, preferential packaging, to how schools handled request for financial reviews, etc. At that time some of the schools that had their own FA calculators came in on the money and gave a better picture than some of the NPC.</p>
<p>I do have the luxury of looking at and talking about a couple of hundred packages year over year. For some parents and situations, it can be a good move to apply ED, but like Kat, I definitely would not recommend it.</p>
<p>That’s really interesting, Emeraldkity. Our most recent FAFSA (for this current academic year) is both our highest income and our highest EFC of all the years we’ve filed. Our AGI was $80,565 (parents earned) and $6,089 (child earned) and our EFC was 9703. This is with just one in college. Do you know what drove up your EFC so much?</p>