<p>I need to withdraw the parental consent/commitment to an ED application. How do I do that?</p>
<p>Call the high school guidance counselor and ask for help in this regard.</p>
<p>May I ask . . . what in the world happened that you need to withdraw your consent?</p>
<p>You can also email the college involved, and request that the application be converted to regular decision instead.</p>
<p>You can also contact the school and withdraw your app or ask to move to RD. You can’t stay in ED without consent.</p>
<p>She is going to apply regular decision and not ED. I did find where she was able to go in to the commonapp and redo the “member questions” stating she is applying regular decision. </p>
<p>This school is by far her #1 choice, but financially, I am not positive we can do it. So, she needs to go regular decision.</p>
<p>You understand that if she is accepted ED, you will get an immediate financial aid offer, and you can decline the ED admission if it is not workable for you? In fact, you can decline the ED admission for any reason at all; no one will challenge you on it. The only thing you can’t do is hold the ED admission open for months until you see what financial aid packages other colleges are offering you.</p>
<p>If the college is really your daughter’s first choice, and there’s a decent chance the financial part will be workable for your family, then it may very well make sense for her to apply ED. If she is accepted, and the financial aid package is OK, then everything is great. If she is accepted, and the financial aid package is close to OK, you will have a chance to negotiate with the college before turning them down, and it’s not uncommon for colleges to improve their offers in that circumstance. And if, in the end, the package is just not OK enough, then you say “no” to that college and focus on others.</p>
<p>If you are certain your daughter is going to be accepted at this college, then by all means wait until Regular Decision, when one hopes you will be able to compare multiple offers and use them for leverage against one another. If it’s a college with a reputation for not giving good financial aid offers to ED applicants, then that’s also a good reason to go with RD. But that’s far from automatically true for all ED colleges; I think relatively few do that. </p>
<p>In any event, I would give it some real thought before pulling out of ED. It’s not clear that’s the right thing to do.</p>
<p>Re: #7</p>
<p>Yes, applying ED with financial aid need can be ok if there is a clear line as to what is an acceptable or unacceptable net price after financial aid.</p>
<p>However, if the decision may be contingent on whether another school offers admission and what its net price after financial aid is, then there could be a dilemma zone where the ED school admits and offers a barely-affordable net price, such that one is not sure about attending without seeing other schools’ net prices. In that case, ED may not be a good idea.</p>
<p>Example: your affordability range tops out at a net price of $20,000 per year. Suppose the ED school admits with a net price of $20,000 per year. If there is another RD school that could realistically admit with a net price ranging from $30,000 per year to $5,000 per year, and the student would likely choose that school if the net price were $15,000 per year or less, then there is a dilemma of second-guessing here.</p>
<p>The OP said this college is “by far her #1 choice” and that “financially, I am not positive we can do it.” And she seemed to believe that the logical consequence of those statements was “she needs to go regular decision.” I was pointing out that “she needs to go regular decision” does NOT necessarily follow.</p>
<p>Sure, one can put rabbits into the hat that would make abandoning early decision clearly the right choice, and I acknowledged that. But I can play the same game. Let’s say the OP thinks applying ED doubles her daughter’s chance of acceptance into her “by far #1 choice,” from 20% to 40%, and that as long as the EFC is under $20,000 there, the family would be willing to pay $10,000 more per year compared to her likely cheapest choice. And perhaps there’s maybe a 10% chance that the cheapest choice will be more than $10,000 less. And there’s a 60-70% chance that the #1 school will come in at $20,000 or less. They would not be improving their chances of a good outcome by applying RD rather than ED, and they would be significantly increasing the chance that the good outcome would be at the cheap school rather than the most-desired school. That doesn’t look like sound strategy to me at all.</p>
<p>We don’t know enough about the variables to make a rational judgment. Neither does the OP, probably, but she knows a lot more than we do, like which colleges she is talking about. She has to do the analysis. But a knee-jerk reaction isn’t analysis.</p>
<p>There is a notion on CC and elsewhere that ED exposes families to financial risk, and it really doesn’t. ED does make it more likely that a family will spend more to send a child to a first-choice college and miss the chance to pay less at a less-attractive college. But the family is still completely in control over whether to accept the first-choice college’s offer. You can only be trapped if you allow yourself to be trapped.</p>
<p>It is way more complicated than all that.</p>
<p>At the end of 2012, my husband received a very large bonus, which counted as income. We figured not a big deal, because by the time our daughter goes to college, it will be the 2013 taxes we use. He has never ever earned that much before, and I cannot imagine he will ever earn that much again. Stupidly, it was stock options he had collected over the years that he did not realize were all expiring early 2013. He actually cashed it out at a lower amount to get it in before 2013. </p>
<p>Now, the college she wants to apply ED to requires a CSS profile, which will include the 2012 taxes. The income difference was huge, as in, an additional $80,000 when my husband really only earns $100,000 and we have a large family. But, if she applies regular decision, they only use the 2013 tax information. I called them, more than once, and told them the situation. They said if we apply ED, this is how it is done and the package will be based on an average from 2012 and 2013. Then they said, later, in the spring, we can file for an adjustment based on the 2013 tax info and they “can” adjust it. Not a guarantee, but they “can.”</p>
<p>As a result, it really will not work to go ED. If they figure her financial aid package based on 2012, and they will not guarantee a re-adjustment to be based on the 2013 taxes, then it will not work out at all.</p>
<p>Did you run an NPC to see how this “average” would work out? Is the school usually known for decent aid- or gapping? Because my impression is ED and RD packages are similar at many schools, that play an honest game, in the first place.</p>
<p>Two thoughts: Is your daughter likely to be admitted RD, or were you applying ED for an admissions boost? (As opposed to, she already knows where she wants to go, so let’s just apply and be done.)</p>
<p>Is this your first child to go through the college admissions process? I am asking because you might think that the difference between $100,000 and $180,000 income would mean a big difference in FA, but I am not so sure. My impression is that at most schools, $100,000 in income is going to mean little if any need-based financial aid, regardless of how many other children you have. (I am not a financial aid expert, and schools do vary, but the way FA offices calculate expected family contribution in many cases is not the way parents would expect, so you might want to be sure there would be a difference.)</p>
<p>Yes, try the school’s net price calculator on $100,000, $140,000, and $180,000 to see what kind of difference you are looking at.</p>
<p>Admission is not a sure thing. ED was to boost the chances, but also because she is extremely stressed. She says she has no other schools she loves as much as this one and wants to know. So, the admission boost is the main thing with this school. </p>
<p>On the net price calculator, there is a huge difference between that amounts. I mean, that was a close to double the income in one year. And they are not guaranteeing that they will redo it. But, if she applies RD, then they will use only the 2013 tax info and we shouldn’t have to provide the 2012 income at all.</p>
<p>Im confused. When you do the 2014-2015 Profile, you use your best estimates for the 2013 tax year…you do NOT use the info from 2012. Some folks use the 2012 taxes to estimate the 2013 info for that 2014-2015 Profile IF the amounts are similar. Yours are not.</p>
<p>You need to use excellent estimates for the 2013 tax year to complete 2014-2015 Profile…which is what you should be completing if your student is starting college in fall 2014.</p>
<p>You should NOT be completing the 2013-2014 Profile…which is what uses the 2012 tax year info.</p>
<p>I went back and double checked to make sure I was not doing the wrong form. It definitely is asking for the 2012 info, the 2013, and the projected 2014, for the fall 2014 CSS profile.</p>
<p>If the 2014-2015 Profile is asking for that information NOW, it is NOT going to change when regular decision time comes. Any info that is on the 2014-2015 Profile NOW will also be on the 2014-2015 Profile when you file it for regular decision. The 2014-2015 Profile is NOT going to change. In other words, if they are asking for your 2012 info NOW, they will be asking for it for regular decision submission also.</p>
<p>The figures you actually put on the Profile fields are for the 2013 tax year…which is what your aid will be based on.</p>
<p>When you do the net price calculator, you should be using the 2013 tax year numbers, not the 2012 tax year numbers.</p>
<p>As I recall…the Profile asks you about last year’s 2012 income, and asks you to estimate 2014. But for the actual Profile fields, you use 2013 numbers…not 2012 numbers. Hopefully one of the resident experts here will correct me if I am wrong…which is possible.</p>
<p>Your aid is calculated based on 2013 tax year info and your assets as of the day of Profile filing. Unless something has dramatically changed, it will not be based on your 2012 tax year info…or your estimated 2014 info.</p>
<p>Look…I’m ONE voice here. I would suggest you make a post on the financial aid section about this. Ask which figures will be used to compute your need based aid for the 2014-2015 school year using figures from the Profile. Ask which numbers belong in the a profile fields.</p>
<p>Wow, so sorry I opened a can of worms here!</p>
<p>Given your financial situation, I can certainly see why RD makes more sense for you. Sure, it’s “possible” that ED would work . . . but that doesn’t seem like a risk worth taking. And good for you to have thought this through before it was too late!</p>
<p>I will agree with dodgersmom. If finances are a significant consideration, applying regular decision with the opportunity to compare packages amongst schools is a good idea.</p>
<p>But really…what the Profile for 2014-2015 is asking is NOT going to change when submitted for regular decision.</p>
<p>When a student applies ED, it is true that they are not tied to the school if they cannot attend because of the aid package.
It is also true that by applying ED the student has placed the negotiation power in the hands of the school as the motivation to offer an enticing package has been removed.</p>