Help: Early Decision vs. Regular Decision

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
1

<p>I will be applying to Brown this fall and I am terribly confused on whether I should apply ED or RD. I am 100% positive that I want to go to Brown and it is my number 1 choice by far, but there are just a couple of things that are holding me back from wanting to apply ED.</p>

<p>First of all, there are financial concerns. Brown is pretty expensive and I’m not sure if my family would qualify for enough financial aid to offset the high cost. My dad is a little leery about the whole 45k a year thing and doesn’t want to take out huge loans.</p>

<p>I feel that my application would maybe be a little bit stronger given those 2 extra months to work on it (Nov. 1st to Jan. 1st) in terms of ECs/stronger essays and one of my teacher recommendations (it’ll give him/her more time to get to know me, and thus, a more accurate/better recommendation).</p>

<p>I’d also have to take 2 SAT II’s (French & Math IIc) just once in October since I want to take the new SAT one more time in November to improve my scores cause I know I can do better (I currently have a 2190 composite with my verbal score from the old SAT).</p>

<p>What should I do? Should I just wait and apply RD? Or should I go ahead and do ED, although my app won’t be as great as it could be for RD, and find out early in December whether I’m accepted or not and be able to somewhat enjoy the rest of senior year? </p>

<p>Thanks in advance!</p>

2

<p>Male or female?
How much debt are you willing to take on?
Have you run your finances thru an online estimator like at finaid.com?</p>

3

<p>Female (URM - Colombian)</p>

<p>I'd say about 40-50k at the most. I've tried an online calculator before and it said that our EFC was about 14k but I'm pretty sure that that's not entirely accurate cause I left a couple boxes blank and had to guess on a few things.</p>

4

<p>What do your parents say about the financial risk of applying ED? This is kind of up to them. </p>

<p>As far as the extra time goes...the edge you'll gain by having improved test scores probably won't be as much as you would have gotten by applying early.</p>