I question because so much has changed, so quickly, in even ten years. And so many of the books and articles are taken at face value by so many. (Often, despite authors open about the limits of their view.) Look at all the fuss about the Duke studies and Espenshade, without a closer reading. And then it spreads. I know how this works at one sought after school and yet see so many preconceptions touted as absolutes. That’s my perspective. That’s all.
What has changed that would affect the data result? The book is still in print, and since that study is so well known and so often cited if something of substance had changed either the original authors would modify or some other challengers would provide evidence. Either way, I am of the opinion that you don’t doubt data without other data.
I would agree with you that people often take statements at face value without evidence. So let’s conform both sides of this discussion to evidence and we won’t have to worry about that.
As someone mentioned, I’m a little surprised an NPC calculation at Penn leads to the student needing to go $40K in debt.
My D had thought she would apply to Huntsman ED, but has switched to Penn RD. The Penn NPC gives us about an $11K bill with no loans (assuming she works at school to make $3K for expenses). We have a $14K EFC and I’m not sure we can even do $11K, so if she gets in we might ask her to take out a $3K or so loan (especially if it’s subsidized) to get us down to $8K per year.
So that puts her at about a total of $15K in debt even with us only paying $8K of the $14K EFC. It seems that to go $40K in debt you would be only able to pay an amount at least $10K less than your EFC.
I’m not saying that doesn’t happen. I’m sure there are many people with a $30K EFC who reasonably don’t think they could come up with more than $20K.
But I think that if you were to go back to Penn and say that, even stretching as much as you can, your D couldn’t graduate with less than $40K in debt, they will either make the offer better or would understand you are not “weaseling out.” (It’s also possible the NPC just isn’t working right for your situation, so their initial offer might not even be that far above what you can pay.)
On the other hand, Huntsman is a fantastic program and seems to offer great opportunities, so it may well be worth going into some debt for if necessary.
Here’s one input. From 2012, but suggesting changes.
What has changed in 10 years?
Schools lever ED to improve yield and decrease their admission rate.
Legacies have to lock in during the ED round to gain advantage.
Athletes are also in the ED round.
So are other special admits like development cases, questbridge, etc, .
So if you look at the “lift” in the ED round, one would need to strip those hooked applicants out to get a truer picture of the unhooked ED acceptance rate.
I can’t see anything in that article saying that there is a lessened benefit from early admissions – in fact the main point of the article seems to be that there are many more early admission applicants precisely because of the benefits. Remember, we are not talking about the overall ED acceptance rate, but rather the statistical benefit from applying early.
*Grading early admissions can be a little like analyzing a baseball game after four innings, but it has grown in importance over the last decade, with many Ivy League and other prestige campuses filling 45 percent or more of their classes in December.
“Because of those schools resuming early admissions, we think more of our early applicants are people who are really committed to Georgetown,” said Charles A. Deacon, dean of admissions.
Other schools, including Scarsdale High, in Westchester County, said they had not seen significant change, but declined to be specific.
And some places saw plenty of success this season. At the Trinity School, on the Upper West Side, more than half of the seniors who applied on the early track were accepted (the school would not say where while the admissions process continues). At Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn Heights, 61 of the school’s 80 seniors applied early, and 52 were admitted — including five to Yale, three to Harvard and two to Princeton."*
From that article, all seem to support a (non-quantified) benefit to ED.
I understand, @ClarinetDad16 , and as I mentioned the study that is the foundation of the book accounted for that statistically.
This would seem to also indicate a reason for benefit to applying ED
We shouldn’t take this thread too offtrack, so I’ll try to resist that. But, eg:
“Their odds have definitely decreased,” said Christoph Guttentag, dean of admissions at Duke.”
“You do not need a perfect score on the math SAT to know that if more people are applying — many top-tier colleges say the number has doubled or tripled over the last five years — competition is stiffer.”
So, not just the lure of ED, but the reality. Not just some hs that did well, but the overall picture.
Good points about how the ED admission rate stats can’t be taken at face value – the ED pool may be stronger, may include all the legacy applicants, and may include all the recruited athletes. And schools also vary in how they use it.
Brown, for example, told us that there’s not much ED advantage after you back out the hooked legacies and athletes. But that is just how Brown does it, which fills 38% of its seats through ED.
At other schools, you see about half the seats going to ED-ers – Penn, Vandy, Northwestern, Duke, Emory. Those numbers seem pretty overwhelming at that band of schools. And here’s what Duke itself says on its website:
“There is an advantage in the admissions process to applying Early Decision.”
I’m not sure that this is true. A large proportion of the difference may be due to each student applying to a larger number of colleges than their predecessors in earlier generations did.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
The purpose of this thread is not to parse the ED percentages; that has been covered many many times elsewhere on this site. Please get back to the original question.
Overall rate, completely independent of whether or not there is a relative benefit to ED. Same with the second quote.
You mentioned above that you don’t like to blindly trust anecdotal statements, so I am confused why you would interpret the above to support your assertion. The study I refer to was scientifically done and peer reviewed, and even if I were to agree with the above as supportive of your position it should require the same to refute.
I do agree we should not threadjack, so I will finish my position with this experiment you can do with you own school’s data to see if it supports you.
**
- Log into Naviance, click “colleges” , then “college match” (you may need a student’s account to get this)
- Scroll to the bottom where it says "Colleges That Have Accepted Students Like You ". Click "adjust matches" and enter any statistical data range of GPAs and SATs you want, although I recommend a competitive one and one large enough to give you a good amount.
- Make sure "been accepted" and "any type" is chosen and click "update matches"
- Look at the acceptance data result (please note this is a superset of ED and RD applicants). Copy into spreadsheet if that helps or just jot down some numbers
- Now, click "adjust matches" again and choose "early" and run "update matches" again
- Compare the acceptance rate results. At our school they are shockingly higher at nearly every college, and higher at every single school with more than 1-2 acceptances.**
Admitted this is a tiny set of data from Postmodern’s high school, but I would really like to know if anyone’s is substantially different, for any data range.
I will stop the threadjack here and just read any responses. Have a great Thanksgiving all!
What happens if you transfer the $18k (plus interest) loans to your daughter and something happens and she can’t afford the payments on the combined ~$45k of loans? Will you be able to help pay it without disrupting your son’s college plans? If something happens to her before you transfer the loans, can you repay the whole ~$20k? If you can’t or the plan will only work out if everything goes right, then I wouldn’t take out the loans. I’d switch her application to RD and take a good look at all the financial aid packages she’s offered.
I agree with @austinmshauri – my step son’s girlfriend is obligated to pay back, in addition to her own loans, a loan from her parents that was funded by her younger brothers tuition savings-- I think that is a lot of pressure for a girl just finishing university at age 21
Simple math. The family can’t afford the EFC.
When my daughter started college her FAFSA EFC was low enough to make her eligible for partial Pell grant (under $5000). The CSS-Profile EFC was roughly $12K higher than that. So the college pocketed Pell grant, but still expected us to come up with the difference between FAFSA & Profile calculations. Needless to say, that wasn’t something I could do ou of current income.
One problem I had was home equity – I had lived in the same home since my DD was an infant and it had increased substantially in value. The college that wanted +$12K above the FAFSA EFC was actually more generous than most, because it used a conservative methodology to calculate home value.
they are homeowners, so their home equity goes into the mix. We don’t know their finances, but lets assume that the maximum they feel comfortable paying out of pocket is $25K a year, and Penn calculated their EFC at $40K annually, and awards them $30K each year in grant money. Penn has met “full need” … but the family still faces a considerable burden and there is a $15K annual gap between what they are able to pay out of pocket and what Penn expects them to pay. So they have to borrow. In my example, you might expect the family to borrow up to $60K over 4 years, including the student debt, depending on hos much the student can contribute out of her own earnings.
The OP has looked at the NPC and already determined that Penn’s view of their EFC is likely to be too high for them to bear without borrowing.
Need-based aid doesn’t work that way – it’s based on numbers and a formula, not parental budgetary considerations. Certainly Penn will be happy to release the family from the ED obligation if they make that “stretching as much as you an” argument… but in a need-based system, the aid amount is not negotiable in that way. Rather, to get more aid the family would need to point to some specific type of expense that can be taken into consideration (such as extraordinary medial bills) … no just a generalized pleadings. It can help to have another need based aid determination from a peer institution for comparison – but that’s not going to be available to an ED-admit.
Parent loans can’t be transferred to the student and retain their government guarantees, rates, protections, etc. The only way to ‘transfer’ a student loan taken by either the parent or the student is to refinance it, and that’s not easy to do. You are asking a lender to grant a loan ($20k? $30k?), unsecured, and the borrower (child) would use the proceeds to pay off the parents’ loan. Not likely to happen. A lender is more likely to lend the money to the student, with the parents as a co-signer, at the time the money is needed (as a student) and then have the co-signers released after the student makes several years of on-time payments after graduation.
It sounds like the OP is worried about the cost of Penn but the student and husband aren’t worried so don’t want to withdraw the ED, or switch it to RD. A lot of people would be very happy to get a Penn education for $40k in debt, even if a free education is available elsewhere. It’s a decision made every day, to take the free offer or to pay for something you want more.
It is easy to get caught up in wanting the best, even if the finances are difficult. The OP has twice, I believe, said that she hopes her daughter does not get admitted ED so clearly is very anxious about the financial end of things. Unless there is major wealth in the family, paying for college, especially for a “dream” school, is not easy. The husband and daughter seem to be minimizing the OP’s concerns (?), and that could be frustrating. There is a younger child in the picture as well as retirement needs. Good luck!
The daughter has already been allowed to apply ED. I do feel for the daughter if the parents change their minds now . ED is best for families where the college is clearly the best fit and the finances are not an issue.
Will going into debt for the current student’s dream school cause either of the following:
a. The next student will be more financially restricted in college choices.
b. The parents’ retirement savings will be insufficient, potentially requiring assistance from the kids after they graduate from college.
?
Either one could be a source of future family conflict.
Are you saying that she has applied ED to Huntsman, AND RD to UPenn?
If you decline an ED acceptance to Huntsman for financial reasons…then wouldn’t UPenn for any other reason also be unaffordable?
If you decline Huntsman admissions ED…why would UPenn accept this kid RD?
When you apply to one of Upenn’s coordinated dual degree programs, you have to pick a second choice college in case you are rejected for the dual degree program. Dual degree applications are read first. If you are rejected from the dual degree, your app is thrown into the pile for your second choice college, and will be looked at with other ED or RD applications, depending on what option you’ve chosen on the drop down menu. So, yes, she has applied ED only to Huntsman, largely because we couldn’t justify the debt for a single degree program.
If we turn down Huntsman ED because of finances, we would not expect to be reconsidered for RD, nor would we want to be, because obviously we couldn’t afford it.