<p>The kid I know who was accepted there ED (this was a couple years ago) got very good aid. His award did include a certain amount in loans, but he scrounged up a few local scholarships, and a god-parent contributed a bit, and NU applied all that against the loan portion of the aid package (which wasn’t that high an amount to begin with.) This kid ended up his first year without having to take out any loans at all.</p>
<p>He did however end up disliking the school quite a bit and left after a year. Took a gap year and is now in a top LAC. This would have been a better fit for him all along, but NU had a major program he was very interested in. Then he found he wasn’t so interested in that major, and didn’t like the large school/Big 10 culture at NU.</p>
<p>I’m not saying anything against NU, to be clear. It sounds like a pretty great place. It just wasn’t right place for this kid, although the FA award he received in ED was quite good. The mis-match was not a money thing.</p>
<p>Could an ED expert explain something to me…</p>
<p>If an ED acceptance -FA offer is inadequate and turned down, then the applicant doesn’t have to withdraw his other apps, right?</p>
<p>But, what happens if his RD offers from similarly priced or even lower-priced schools have similar FA packages (similar debt/loans offered or similar gaps)? Is the student obligated to turn down those offers, too, and only accept an offer that has less loans and/or less gap?</p>
<p>Should I email the admissions office and simply ask, about their aid, policies, etc., or even mention the possibility of switching to RD? … Or would any of that reflect badly on me or my application?</p>
<p>Does anyone have any experience with switching from ED to RD after applying? How would it affect my chances?</p>
<p>all your support means a lot to me. Thank you so much!</p>
<p>I am not a FA expert or a lawyer but below is the writing above our signatures. Note that there is no specific criteria or requirement that you must meet for turning down (just not offered an award that makes attendance possible) nor any stipulation of what you can accept from other schools afterwards.</p>
<p>Early Decision (ED) is the application process in which students make a commitment to a first-choice institution where, if admitted, they definitely will
enroll. While pursuing admission under an Early Decision plan, students may apply to other institutions, but may have only one Early Decision application pending at
any time. Should a student who applies for financial aid not be offered an award that makes attendance possible, the student may decline the offer of admission and
be released from the Early Decision commitment. The institution must notify the applicant of the decision within a reasonable and clearly stated period of time after the
Early Decision deadline. Usually, a nonrefundable deposit must be made well in advance of May 1. The institution will respond to an application for financial aid at or
near the time of an offer of admission. Institutions with Early Decision plans may restrict students from applying to other early plans. Institutions will clearly articulate
their specific policies in their Early Decision agreement.
If you are accepted under an early decision plan, you must promptly withdraw the applications submitted to other colleges and universities and make
no additional applications. If you are an early decision candidate and are seeking financial aid, you need not withdraw other applications until you have received
notification about financial aid.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, theoretically you wouldn’t even submit RD apps prior to hearing from your ED school. My kid didn’t, but everything was ready for launch in RD if his ED school had rejected or deferred him.</p>
<p>However, many kids submit apps to rolling admissions schools or non-restrictive EA school and even sometimes RD apps to other schools for whatever reason (just want to spend more on application fees or something ;)).</p>
<p>So, yeah, if your ED school accepts you and your financial need is sufficiently met, then you’re supposed to withdraw other pending applications.</p>
<p>Say you need to get out of your ED agreement, and you do so according the the ED school’s protocol and they’re okay with it, etc… after that you are free to consider any other offers you can get. Some may be better, some may be worse. Doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>It sounds like you can go ahead and submit apps to other schools. Decision time will come when you receive NU’s offer. At that point you either accept, in which case you must immediately withdraw all other apps – or you decline and wait to see what the other schools offer. Two things you cannot do: Accept NU’s offer and then leave the other apps pending; OR go back to NU in April and tell them you want the ED offer after all.</p>
<p>It does kind of bite that you have to make this decision without knowing what WOULD happen if you could see all of the schools’ best offers. Just the way it is. I hate money too.</p>
<p>I don’t think the OP wanted to compare FA packages between schools. I think his/her main concern is that NU doesn’t give him enough aid and he’s just asking how hard it is to reject the ED offer. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think the OP should just apply ED. From an ethical point of view, I personally think that if the school doesn’t meet what the EFC predicts (give or take 10%), then the applicant could choose to reject ED and without withdrawing applications to other schools.</p>
<p>Yeah, Toward, you can do that. If NU’s sample aid model says a family similar to yours in income typically gets 27K in scholarships, and let’s say your family can cough up 7-8K, and you can contribute 3K from summer earnings and workstudy, and say you take a 5K loan (for many students this is considered a reasonable amount) – that still leaves you about 8K short. So I can see how you are left wondering what “meets 100% of need” means in practical terms.</p>
<p>So, you can certainly wait and see what the offer turns out to be. Another thing to keep in mind is to consider is how much aid you might reasonably expect from other schools whose aid is need-based only. Setting aside crapshoot schools like Yale and Harvard, it might not be a lot better elsewhere.</p>
<p>If you decline whatever offer you might get from NU, make sure to have some schools on your list that might award an excellent student like you some hefty merit aid.</p>
<hr>
<p>Okay I just went and looked at the NU FA brochure. I assume your 27K scholarship figure came from that pie graph that gives that amount as the average scholarship for families in the 60-90K income range. That’s quite a large income range! I think you can assume the scholarship amount would be higher the closer you are to 60K and lower the closer you get to 90K.</p>
<p>And that’s where the problem is. He can’t break the ED agreement over an offer he gets in April. Otherwise, we might as well call it EA. ED is a commitment; not a contingency plan.</p>
<p>I understand now—I’d have to confirm my NU decision long before I heard back from Yale.</p>
<p>So really, I guess the only point off applying to Yale at all would be on the chance that NU rejects me… but Yale accepts me… yeah. I might just save that $75.</p>
<p>You guys have all been wonderfully helpful—I’m going to apply to a few more match and safety schools, I think, and then just sit back and see what happens on December 15. When that time comes, I’ll probably have to come back here to pick up some more advice!</p>
<p>Toward–yes, you understand it now, I believe. </p>
<p>Two additional things–first, why not wait on your other applications until you hear from NU? Otherwise, if you end up going there, you spent a lot of money on app fees which you wouldn’t be needing (since once you accept the ED offer, you must withdraw other apps.) You can have them ready to go without sending them now, should you be turned down.</p>
<p>Two, and more importantly, if you really want Yale, not NU, should you be doing NU ED in the first place? Especially as you think there’s a pretty good chance you won’t get enough aid (in your estimation)? Why not apply Yale SCEA, and NU RD? Do you really need the ED bump for NU?</p>
<p>I probably will hold almost all of my other applications—the only exceptions being match schools where merit scholarships would make or break my possibility of paying for it. Those often have deadlines of early December.</p>
<p>With my old SAT score (2100), NU was a more of a reach. I figured Yale was one shot in a million, while doing Northwestern ED would give me a reasonably good chance. So yeah, initially, I did need the ED bump.
I figured it was better to do ED at Northwestern, and still have a shot, than apply SCEA to Yale and waste my early-application opportunity… potentially losing any chance of getting into an upper-level school at all.</p>
<p>When I got my SAT scores and they were higher than I’d expected (2210), I had already gotten everything ready for NU ED—in fact, I’d already submitted the supplement. On the other hand, my Yale app had sat untouched since I decided not to do SCEA. It didn’t even occur to me to change my mind.</p>
<p>I think I’d be just as happy at NU. I wouldn’t have applied early if I didn’t think that…
At any rate it’s too late now.</p>
<p>Good news, I got NU’s financial aid pamphlet today and it’s not nearly as bad as I’d hoped. The pie chart where I got my information ($28,000 or whatever it was) turned out to be only the Northwestern Scholarship size—only a fraction of their total FA package. For most families with need, it looks like the remainder was met mostly with other grants and scholarships, and with smallish institutional loans.
Looks like I’m in good shape!</p>
<p>After all those years on CC, it seems that people still like to post INCOMPLETE information that leads to INCORRECT assumptions. </p>
<p>While a school cannot force an applicant to attend a school if he or she cannot afford it, the school does not HAVE to release a student from an ED successful application. </p>
<p>What is common knowledge is that school WILL release a student to attend a school that is NOT comparable in selectivity or cost. </p>
<p>In so many words, the ED application is a binding contract, and the ONLY party that can rescind it is … the school. Read the fine print of application, including the part where the student commits to withdraw all applications upon acceptance in an ED program. </p>
<p>Shopping around with an ED acceptance is both dishonest and fraught with a number of potential dangers.</p>
<p>The student declines, and the school releases automatically.</p>
<p>“What is common knowledge is that school WILL release a student to attend a school that is NOT comparable in selectivity or cost.”</p>
<p>Except that at the time the student must decline, the other school and/or its offer is unknown.</p>
<p>“And further…if the school has computed your need and they MEET that need…your need has been met.”</p>
<p>A theoretical vanilla need by the school’s standards, but the school has no idea if a family has, e.g., excessive lifestyle debt that nonetheless makes it impossible for the family to pay its computed EFC. That’s why release is one-sided, completely the family’s decision.</p>
<p>However, when a school admits a needy student ED, the school really wants the student to attend. Sometimes the school can do better, given additional info; students should inquire.</p>
<p>ED is meant for the one dream school, and the dream is shattered when the student is accepted but the FA offer is insufficient to allow attendance. Families should use the calculators to at least try to prevent such tragedies.</p>
<p>A student still needs to withdraw application upon the receipt of NOTIFICATION of financial aid. Also, the guidelines offered by NACAC do not necessarily render the agreements that govern ED at each school.</p>
<p>Yeah… I think the common knowledge that ED colleges will only release students to attend a school that is not comparable in selectivity or cost is only “common knowledge” here on CC. I’ve never seen it anywhere else, and as vossron points out, it doesn’t even make sense given the timing.</p>
explain something to me…</p>