Financial Aid Timeline for ED Applicants?

I am a current junior considering applying ED next year.

If you are admitted ED will you know your financial aid/possible scholarships right away (say, December)? Or do you need to accept blindly and wait until late spring to find out FA?

I want to apply to a school ED but I do not want to be given FA information too late. I know that you can “get out” of the binding contract if you cannot pay, but I am concerned that while the school may think we can pay based on numbers, my family will actually not be able to pay.

Thank you!

Have you run NPCs for each school?

When you apply ED, you will also file the financial aid application. If you are admitted ED, you will recieve your aid package. You and your family will be able to look at it and decide if it is affordable before you finally do commit.

But, frankly, if money is a big issue, then ED might not be a good option. You might be better off applying to several places so that you can compare multiple aid pacakges before deciding.

@Sybylla @happymomof1 My parents had some temporary changes to their incomes that caused the NPC for my first year of college to display a very different number than showed from their regular salaries. I just wanted to see if, in the case that the real FA I receive is very different than the expected FA, I would not be put at a disadvantage if I had to decline the ED offer.

The financial aid application forms are available for submission on October 1 of your senior year in high school. If you are applying early decision…get them done as close to that date as possible.

@sciencegirl2024 you will be starting college in fall 2020, right? Your FAFSA and Profile forms will be available for submission on October 1, 2019. You will do the 2020-2021 forms using 2018 tax year information. Those are the rules.

If there is some one time change to your parent income that is increasing their nickel for 2018, then you would need to file a special circumstances consideration with the college. The rules for dong this are established by each college…so you would need to check YOUR ED school for their process.

Be advised…some schools do NOT consider these at all. They are done on a case by case basis…so there is no way to predict if yours will be considered or a change will be made…or not. In addition, some schools don’t do special circumstance considerations until MUCH later in the application process.

Frankly, if finances are a significant consideration, perhaps applying ED should NOT happen for you. When you apply ED, you are supposed to have already done your due diligence in terms of affordability. It sounds like you have already figured out that your first year would be unaffordable.

If your parent had extra income or a bonus or whatever in 2018…which just ended…perhaps putting some of that extra aside for your college costs should be considered.

Here is the rub…in your case, if you apply ED, you will have NO WAY to compare net costs amongst schools. Your ED net cost could be the highest…but it could end up being the lowest. What if you decline your ED offer and all of your regular decision colleges come out with higher net costs? You know…that could happen!

usually FA comes out with ED result if acceptance. if you have state schools you can apply to those EA too, it is acceptable to back out from ED if money is not enough and go to lower cost in state publics

@anon145

Unless the school prohibits other applications…like SCEA schools do…you can apply to a bunch of other colleges RD but you have to withdraw your acceptances and pending applications if you accept the ED offer to attend.

Very often, kids submit their ED applications AND their RD applications…and just withdraw the RD ones if they accept the ED offer.

@thumper1 Thank you for the in-depth advice! Yes, it would just be the 2018 tax year that is different. The NPC shows a number that isn’t completely unaffordable, just more difficult to cover than the other three years. I will take your advice on the special circumstances consideration. The school I was talking about in my post was UPenn, and I was strongly considering ED because I have heard that they take a large percentage of their freshman class from ED. If I get into UPenn, my parents would be willing to pay the extra amount for that first year to send me there.