My ED decision is coming out later this week, and my financial aid portal just updated asking for another document today. The school is need-blind. Wondering if this is any indication of what the decision is?
Probably not unfortunately. My understanding is that those processes tend to operate somewhat independently. D has given extra documents to a few schools, I doubt she gets admitted to all of them.
Good luck this week.
No, it isn’t. Unlike EA, ED has to be accompanied by an offer of financial aid (for applicants who apply for FA), at least within a few days, so applicants can respond to acceptances before the deadlines. In other words, the FA office at the college has to work on your FA application nearly simultaneously as the admission office works on the overall application, without knowing the admission decision.
Similar question: what does the following mean, if anything, re admission status. In the financial aid portal of an RD app (deadline hasn’t past but son applied early) it says “Our records show you will have a sibling in college. Your financial aid award has been adjusted accordingly. Before the fall semester starts, you must complete the sibling verification form, which will come from Financial Aid Services in August”.
Normally I wouldn’t read anything into this. But it is odd and I never saw anything like that with older kid. This is a need aware school with an RD deadline in early Jan.
It means that you completed the FA forms stating that a second child is in college, and the school will make the FA decision based on that. Since many times ‘things happen’ and the second (third or fourth) child doesn’t go to school the next year, they will send you a form closer to the start of the school year and you will have to affirm that the second child is still in college, and maybe even the same college you originally listed, the cost of that school, etc.
@twoinanddone Thank you for responding. I understood that they are saying we will need to confirm sibling in college concurrently in August. But since my son hasn’t been accepted yet, the language “your financial aid award has been adjusted” seems premature. TBH I wondered if it meant he’d been accepted. Wishful thinking, no doubt.
The FA office will be determining FA for all applicants concurrently with the admissions office deciding whom to admit.
For need-blind colleges (i.e. most colleges), that is done because the FA offers need to be ready when admission offers go out.
For need-aware colleges, the FA amounts (or at least close estimates) need to be available in the final stages of admission work so that admission can use the information to hit their target FA need for the admit class (of course, there is still risk that yield among high and/or low FA need admits may differ from expected, resulting in missing the target).