How hard is it to get out of an ED agreement?

Paying for College
1

<p>Hi!</p>

<p>I applied Early Decision to Northwestern, and I feel like I have a very reasonable shot at getting accepted.
I know NU claims to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need, the statistics it has released put me in a little doubt. I come from a mid- to low-income family, so net cost is a very significant factor to me.</p>

<p>I still plan on applying to Yale and maybe Duke, basically because Yale has always been my dream (I only recently gave it up for the slightly more realistic goal of NU).
I feel much more confident about Yale's financial aid... simply because it's, well, Yale. On the off-chance that Yale accepts me, how hard would it be to get out of my ED agreement with Northwestern on financial grounds?</p>

<p>For my income level, Northwestern's aid stats suggest I would get around $27,000, which is definitely not 100% of my need. Some of that would probably be loans, which would hamper me down for years to come. The fact that I come from a large-ish family in a rural area might help me out a bit, but still.
By contrast, I would fall comfortably under Yale's margin for a parental contribution of next to zero, which would also be completely loan-free.</p>

<p>In this scenario, would I be able to make a case for breaking my ED agreement?</p>

<p>Please don't take this as an underhanded attempt to break contract. If NU accepts me and gives me the amount of aid I need, I would be perfectly happy to attend it. But I believe I have a legitimate concern. </p>

<p>I'm sure many other applicants are in similar situations, so more broad answers would be great too. </p>

<p>Thanks for your time!</p>

2

<p>My understanding is that you are released from Early Decision if their aid package is insufficient. The family, not the college, makes the final decision about sufficiency.</p>

3

<p>But if that is the case, then there isn’t much to stop a family from claiming insufficient aid just to get out of the agreement. I assumed some sort of request would need to go before the FA people?</p>

4

<p>If Northwestern admits you, you will look at their financial aid package and decide if it is generous enough. If not you must decline the offer of admission before applying to Yale or Duke. You cannot hang onto the NU acceptance while shopping for other colleges.</p>

<p>The Common Ap has this explained on the form near where you sign the agreement. You can be sure that Yale and Duke would take this breach of ethics seriously.</p>

<p>Your high school guidance office is unlikely to assist you in applying to the other universities. Their signature is on the form as well.</p>

<p>If you need to compare financial aid offers, change from ED to regular decision. Generally applying ED is a bad idea for someone who needs aid.</p>

5

<p>If the aid package is insufficient, I’d first contact NU’s financial aid office and ask for a review. They just might be able to bump it a little. And yes, I assume you’d need to communicate with FA if you simply can’t afford it even with their aid package. </p>

<p>But in the end, the college’s idea of what you can afford might be very different from your family’s reality. They can hardly force you to attend and then boot you because you can’t pay for it. However, there may be procedures I’m not aware of; one of the FA experts will soon come by to tell you the details (or prove me wrong :wink: ).</p>

<p>ETA - Cross-posted with twomules. The other problem with applying ED is that you will never know what other colleges might have offered. For that matter, you’ll never know what NU might have offered you on RD. I agree, see if you can change to RD.</p>

6

<p>But I really do love Northwestern, and if the aid is even close to sufficient, I think I’d be content to just go there even if it means I have to scramble for the funds… The question is mostly hypothetical, I think.</p>

<p>Just out of curiosity—my chances thread is [here](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/801961-odds.html]here[/url]—would”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/801961-odds.html)—would</a> I have a comparable likelihood of getting in if I changed to RD? Or is it not worth the risk?</p>

7

<p>I don’t know anything about Northwestern’s admissions. Have you looked at the common data set for last year’s application season?
[2008-09</a> First-time, first-year (freshman) admission, Common Data Set - Northwestern University](<a href=“http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/commondata/2008-09/c.htm]2008-09”>http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/commondata/2008-09/c.htm)</p>

8

<p>Should you get an acceptance from NU for ED, you will get some kind of form or other request to confirm your plans to enroll and probably send in a deposit. If you have concerns about your financial aid offer from them THAT is the time you will have to resolve it if possible, or get released from your ED contract.</p>

<p>You will not be able to hang around waiting for a possible offer from Yale. You will not be able to compare an offer you get from Yale.</p>

<p>If you don’t like the early FA from NU, and they won’t adjust it to meet what you believe it needs to be, then you’ll have to get released from the ED contract long before you ever hear anything from Yale.</p>

<p>But, yeah, if you think the FA from NU is insufficient, you would be free to decline the offer and take your chances at your other schools.</p>

9

<p>In 2006 my eldest son was accepted ED to RPI.</p>

<p>Our EFC at the time was somewhere on the order of $8 or $9 grand. Our income level sounds similar to your family’s.</p>

<p>The initial package they offered us left us with a balance of $27 grand. We appealed and they added another $2 grand in loans.</p>

<p>There was no way with his elder sister @ Colgate and two more kids working their way through high school we would be able to come up with that kind of money (about triple the FAFSA EFC) - and that was just his first year.</p>

<p>So yes we were able to back out of the agreement.</p>

<p>But this is why no one should apply ED if they are dependent on financial aid, unless it is a school like Colgate that promises to meet 100% of need. My son found himself on December 20 with no school and not having filled out any other college applications. Your situation looks very similar to my kids’.</p>

<p>Stony Brook U has rolling admissions, and the Stevens IT deadline was February 1, so that is where he applied, and ended up @ Stevens. It worked out but it was much more stressful than it needed to be. Stevens didn’t meet 100% of need either, but the package was much better.</p>

<p>I hope this all works out for you <em>hugs</em></p>

10

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<p>If you think the aid is insufficient at NU, you would decline their offer of acceptance ED. You would then be free to apply to schools that are NOT in the same financial league as NU…think less expensive instate public universities. As mentioned…your GC is unlikely to help you apply to a school like Yale or the like AFTER you break an ED agreement to NU.</p>

<p>In addition, you, your parents, AND your GC signed an ED agreement when you applied ED to NU. Yes, you can say the money isn’t enough…but if the calculations NU make and the aid lines up with those calculations…then NU will have MET your need. You probably don’t care…most students don’t…but this could affect future ED applicants from your school.</p>

11

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<p>I don’t get this…Even now you know NU’s EFC is more than what your family could afford, so why did you apply to NU ED. Do you believe NU would some how change your EFC after you were admitted?</p>

12

<p>So you can change from ED to regular after application submission or are we talking about changing before submission?</p>

13

<p>Toward, when you say you come from a mid-low income family, what do you mean? My son’s friend (from a lowish-income family) get great need-based at NU in ED a couple years ago.</p>

14

<p>As others have said, you need to make the decision when you get the aid package from NU, not four months later when you get an answer from Yale. Yale respects other ED agreements, if you break one in April that you’ve already assented to, you could lose the Yale acceptance.</p>

<p>Not ethical, and not smart.</p>

15

<p>Another thing…you will likely get your ED decision from NU in the early part of 2010. You will have to make a decision yes or no IMMEDIATELY…you don’t get the option of waiting for a RD decision in April and financial aid from Yale or wherever else. If you say yes to the ED acceptance, you are REQUIRED to withdraw all other applications and acceptances.</p>

16

<p>I just reread your original post - you have to decide in December or January about NU (our ED deadline was December 31). You can’t wait and see if Yale or anyone else accepts you. That is the whole thing with ED.</p>

<p>If you just wanted to know earlier, and wait to compare, you should have applied Early ACTION, not Early Decision. Going ED means that if they accept you, it is binding and you have to withdraw any outstanding applications.</p>

17

<p>Well, it’s not quite true that it’s binding. If you can’t afford an ED school with the FA offer you get, you can certainly be released from the ED agreement.</p>

<p>However, I think the salient point for the OP is that NU will want a confirmation that you’re attending (or not) long before you’ll hear from any other colleges in the RD cycle.</p>

<p>If you decline NU because the aid isn’t optimal, then you run the risk of finding out later in RD that it was the best offer you got… and now it’s no longer an option.</p>

<p>Yes, you are supposed to withdraw all your other apps when you’re accepted at your ED school, but I am skeptical of all the claims that the sky will fall if you don’t. Problem is, that even if you leave them out there I’m not sure what good they’ll do you if you’ve already confirmed and deposited at NU.</p>

<p>I don’t think the surveillance network over students applying to college is that developed, but the one place where I think getting into trouble could happen is if you confirmed with NU and then dropped them to pick up an offer from another highly ranked school like Yale. There are lists of ED admits that circulate among higher ranked schools. I read an article once about them. Quite of few of the admissions officers said they just throw them away and never look at them. But others do. You just wouldn’t want to be that kid who gets unlucky and has the offers then rescinding from both schools.</p>

<p>I think your stats are quite good for NU anyway. Maybe you should contact them and let them know you’d like to switch to the RD admissions cycle. I mean, it’s a trade-off, isn’t it? You’re the only person who can decide.</p>

<p>My kid applied ED with a mountain of financial need, but in his case his ED school was his #1 choice school, plus it’s a school that meets full need without loans. We figured that even if they determined an EFC that was a bit too high for us, since there were no other loans packaged he could borrow whatever modest amount was needed to fill the gap. They also have a dedicated online FA calculator we could do, and it didn’t appear that there would be a gap that would require borrowing.</p>

<p>And our offer was virtually identical to what their calculator estimated.</p>

<p>Now was this the very best offer we could have gotten anywhere? It’s impossible to know that, but since it was his 1st choice school, the question was whether or not it was do-able financially, not whether it was the best bargain in town.</p>

<p>I think that’s how you need to look at ED apps when you need FA.</p>

18

<p>Wow, thanks for all the input!</p>

<p>Okay, so here’s my exact situation.
The College Board’s calculator says I have an EFC of about $3,800 to $5,000.
If NU’s financial aid package is anywhere near this—maybe requiring 8 or 10K tops—I can probably find some way to figure it out. I guess I could conceivably go with even less, but that would involve lots and lots of loans.</p>

<p>NU claims it will meet 100% of my need. I couldn’t find an exact, official reference with a quick Google search, but here’s a link from Yahoo’s [url=<a href=“Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos”>Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos]page[/url</a>] confirming it.</p>

<p>Their average percentage met is 100%. However, their average financial aid package, even for my income group, is about $27,000. This is only a little over half of the total cost.</p>

<p>My situation is offset by the fact that I have a large-ish family, live in a rural area, etc., which lead to our low EFC. This could conceivably move me to a lower bracket on the income scale, or whatever. But the thing is, according to their viewbook, even students with the lowest level of income ($0-$30,000) received an average aid package of about $29,000. I simply don’t see how this could be consistent with their 100%-promise.</p>

<p>So should I believe Northwestern’s statistics, or simply have faith in its promise? Is their something about those stats that I’m missing? Are they skewed in any way?</p>

<p>Most importantly, given all the details of my situation, is it advisable to switch to RD?
(hint: I really, really don’t want to do this if I can avoid it reasonably. But if that is the most wise decision, I guess I’m prepared to…)</p>

<p><em>sigh</em>
I hate money.</p>

19

<p>It is well known that a lot of full need schools claim they meet 100% of need by counting loans, work study, and scholarships. We all cringe to hear that we were generously given the privilege to borrow a lot of money along with the privilege to pay for a lot of interest years and years after graduation. Also another big factor in the aid number is asset, income is not the determining factor.</p>

20

<p>Someone will have to verify this…but I believe NU recently implemented a no loan program for low EFC students. If I am not mistaken…this is relatively new. Perhaps someone with more knowledge about NU’s financial aid policies can tell us all.</p>

<p>Edit…I just checked the NU website and I could find NOTHING about their loan policies. The finaid website actually said that finaid packages could include loans. So…I’m probably wrong on the above. BUT they do say they meet full need.</p>