OP’s parents are not from the US, are upper middle class, have 2 kids, have saved approximately $100k for college, and are not excited about OP’s ED acceptance. It sounds to me like the OP’s parents didn’t fully understand what they were committing to when they signed the ED contract and paying will in fact be a financial strain.
“This whole discussion inspires a reasonable strategy in my opinion: apply ED for the perceived advantage in admit rates, but also apply for financial aid, even if you believe you can pay.”
To me there’s a difference between colleges that offer merit aid and those that only offer need-based aid. If only need-based aid is available then by all means say “run the NPC, if that’s affordable then apply, if you get that amount of aid then you are morally obliged to attend”.
But for colleges that offer merit aid to a subset of admitted students, how can you predict what your aid will be? Should you never apply ED to a college if you will require merit aid for it to be affordable (in terms of your family’s financial well being, not what the NPC says you should be able to “afford”)? Or should you be able to apply ED and turn it down if no (or insufficient) merit aid is offered? Personally, I think the latter is a perfectly reasonable approach.
And I’ll add that “can pay” has many different shades of gray. If I “can pay” by spending all the equity in my home or by not sending a younger child to college, should we be forced to do that if the college doesn’t offer any merit aid?
@itsgettingreal17 ^ Is this for sure or is it the student’s understanding of the family finances? I am sure my kids didn’t know the specifics of what we had in savings/investments when they were applying to colleges.
The OP never said they were relying on merit going into the ED agreement. They also said their parents did understand the agreement.
Wash U is a highly desirable school. I am sure they could fill their class many times over with the applicants they have. The family made a mistake on applying ED. They can’t really afford it. I think OP should contact the school now to let them know that after careful consideration and working through their finances they have realized the school is not affordable to them. They are still still in the midst of RD round, I am sure they will be able to replace OP. I do not see any reason why OP should go for one year to just “full fill his ED obligation,” and then transfer. The spot is better given to someone who would want/can be there for 4 years.
I would be a lot harsher if OP is regretting because he thought he would have a shot at higher ranking schools. In this case, it is more about finance. There is no reason why the family should pay $70K (one year) or $300K for the mistake.
@Twoin18 It doesn’t matter what you think should be reasonable. The fact is that as it stands now, not receiving merit is not an acceptable reason for backing out of ED. The only acceptable reason to not honor the commitment is if you applied for aid and did not receive sufficient help. That’s it. That’s what everyone’s agrees to. OP has already said his parents can pay for him to attend and he’s just worried about them not being able to pay for grad school now. Schools as competitive as WashU don’t even regularly offer merit so that should never have been a factor.
bamamom2021 & collegemom9 I used to be very black and white. With life experience I’ve come to understand that there is a lot of gray and that people make mistakes, change their minds, have misunderstandings etc. This young student should not feel obligated to make her parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Somewhere, somehow the wheels fell off the bus on this one. I’m willing to be understanding of that.
@Twoin18 wrote:
I like that formulation in concept, but with a refinement. The NPC is a rough estimate. It is designed by schools to only approximate what the actual aid offer will be, and we have seen many instances on this site of huge discrepancies between estimated and actual.
How about the college commit to offering whatever its NPC was at the time of the estimate, so long as the requested inputs were accurate? This places the burden properly on the college, which has full control over the construction of its own NPC calculator. It also allows the applicant to make an informed decision and solves some of the asymmetric information problem.
In your formulation, the “moral obligation” follows if the college actually offers the estimated amount - which it is under no obligation to do. None of this is spelled out in the unenforceable ED contract, either. Inserting morality strikes me as an unfair burden to be placed on the applicant, who again has forgone valuable choices in an ED/RD system set up neither by her nor by the colleges for her benefit.
Didn’t we all sign these one-sided agreements (without even reading them, in most cases) when we install a piece of software, or sign up for something, since there’s no alternative? Is there anything fundamentally different about ED agreements?
WashU meets 100% of demonstrated need. My son will be attending a peer of WashU that also meets need. We were in a position where we needed financial aid in order for my son to attend. I ran the NPC MANY times typically overestimating the value of our home to give us worse case scenario. I printed out and saved the results and everyone in our house know the amount we could pay and that if we didn’t receive close to what the NPC predicted, we would need to back out of ED if accepted. My son was accepted and every penny of our need was met (which exceeded that which was shown in the NPC). Schools like WashU and my son’s do not offer a lot of merit and no one should count on it. We did our due diligence and though it would have been so sad to back out. I knew that we did everything in our power to honor the commitment we made. People need to stop blaming the “evil” colleges. If you need merit do not apply ED. No one is forcing you. We are all adults here and can choose to do this with our eyes wide open or bury our heads in the sand. I choose the former.
^ No, there is little difference I can see between the ED “agreement” and a typical contract of adhesion. For public policy reasons, these are seldom enforceable.
@1NJParent I’m sorry I don’t see any similarity in the 2.
I used to be more black and white, but over time I have learned that good people do make mistakes, and there is no reason to continue with the mistake. There is no shame to say it was a mistake and trying to fix it. In this case, there is not even that much damage done to the other party (WashU). I really do think it is better to back out of it now than to go there for 1 year and then transfer.
The similarity is that they’re all one-sided and offer no alternative.
This is not the same as a student applying ED and then wanting to attend another elite school instead. This is a student having second thoughts about the financial feasibility of attending his dream school. A student having the maturity to recognize that maybe attending his dream school will be too hard on his family financially given his brother’s educational needs and his own possible medical school needs. He would be trading in his acceptance to attend his state U, not to attend Harvard. I don’t really understand the animus or why would anyone, INCLUDING WashU, would want him to matriculate under these circumstances. Yes, he and his parents should have done a better job calculating this out before he chose to apply, but that’s history at this point. It seems to be that there is no benefit to anyone of having him attend a school that his family really can’t afford. My freshman year roommate at an Ivy was forced to leave school her senior year because her parents couldn’t pay for the remainder of her education. She would have been better off at a cheaper institution and the Ivy would have been better off not having her as a drop out on their books.
OP, talk with your parents and GC, and then do what’s best for your family. I commend you on your poise and maturity in addressing this issue.
Lots of people jumping on this kid, but I think he should back out with a clear conscience. Just because his parents said they understood doesn’t mean they really did. It sounds to me like they never thought he’d get in and didn’t properly think it through. To that end, he can’t force his parents to spend their savings, nor to fund the rest once it’s depleted. It sounds like the parents are uncomfortable with the financial strain now that it’s real and fully thought out (as is reasonable), and if I were the OP I would really be worried about what happens when the money runs out. What if they’re unable to make up the difference from their income and refuse to take loans- the student limits aren’t funding WashU. There is literally not an ounce of harm done to the university if he goes to the state school instead. None at all. I wouldn’t worry about WashU in this scenario at all, personally.
@1NJParent ED offers no alternative?? How? The alternative is to apply RD. You get to read the terms and if you don’t agree you don’t have to apply ED. If that was the only way to apply you might have a point…
Affordability and willing to pay are two different things.
The later may not be the good reason to back out the ED contract.
Contracts of adhesion are all about power imbalances and information/sophistication asymmetry. When admissions criteria are opaque, and yet the advertised ED admit rate is a multiple of the RD admit rate, yeah I’d say we should start using the the basic contract law principles that every first year law student learns in figuring out the available options.
WashU is a terrific school, and obviously the OP is really trying to do what’s right for her family. Make a decision based on the obvious attractiveness of WashU versus available resources, but please don’t worry about the ethics of this at all. WashU isn’t.
For almost everyone who apply ED, the reason is the higher likelihood of acceptance. RD doesn’t offer that advantage, so it’s not a real alternative for students who need some extra help with acceptance. Colleges use that incentive to entice applicants to give up their other valuable options (applying early to other private colleges, comparing financial aid packages, etc.).