<p>My family is middle class and if I get in ill need aid. Can they rip me off?</p>
<p>It’s not a rip-off, dude. It’s a trade-off. By applying ED, you agree that if accepted you will go to that school and that you have enough resources to pay for the school with the aid package you’re likely to get (this you know from running the net price calculator). Not with an unlikely amount of merit or by the grace of the gods, but because you have the resources. The school agrees to closely examine your application and perhaps offer you a chance to attend a school you really want to attend at a price approaching that of the net price calculator. Might you get a better deal from another school? Perhaps. Might you not get into this school if you don’t apply ED? Isn’t that why you’re applying ED?</p>
<p>Simple. If you cannot make the Expected Family Contribution, you don’t apply ED. If you don’t want to go there so badly that you’re willing to take a risk, then don’t apply ED. And, implicitly, you don’t complain about the fact that you got into this great school but can’t go because they offered you only the aid predicted by the npc. It’s not for everyone, especially not for families who haven’t been able to save a lot of money for college or who cannot make the necessary sacrifices.</p>
<p>@jkeil911: GREAT answer! </p>
<p>If anything, it can help - top tier institutions want to increase their yield and will be more lenient with extra FA on ED applicants. Do not expect this though. You can drop out of the agreement if you cannot afford the school w/ all FA. However if you know you can’t afford the school, do not apply ED there. It would just cause additional stress and tension if you get in and can’t afford.</p>
<p>OP, do you know how to use the Net Price Calculators? If not, ask and we’ll walk you through it. It’s super important.</p>
<p>When you run the Net Price Calculators at the websites of the places that you are considering for ED, you need to know that if there is anything unusual in your family financial situation, those NPCs might not be accurate. For example, if your family owns property other than the family home, if one or more of your parents owns a small business, or if your parents are divorced and maintaining two households. Also, even though you will be awarded an estimated aid package at the time of ED admission, your actual aid package will not be determined until after filing your final financial aid paperwork in the spring. So there is the possibility that you won’t be awarded as much as you originally thought you would.</p>
<p>If you need a lot of aid, the usual recommendation is to not apply ED so that you can compare all of the packages when you receive the aid offers in April. Here is a good tool for comparing them: <a href=“Award Letter Requirements - Finaid”>Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid;
<p>Alternately, if you have the test scores and GPA to guarantee the awards, apply to one or more of the places that have automatic merit-based aid for your stats early on, so that you have a back-up that you like in case the ED plan doesn’t work out. For information on that, start here: <a href=“Links to Popular Threads on Scholarships and Lower-Cost Colleges - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Links to Popular Threads on Scholarships and Lower-Cost Colleges - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<p>“Also, even though you will be awarded an estimated aid package at the time of ED admission, your actual aid package will not be determined until after filing your final financial aid paperwork in the spring. So there is the possibility that you won’t be awarded as much as you originally thought you would.”</p>
<p>However, some universities will release an accepted ED applicant his binding commitment, if a properly and comprehensively filed NPC FA estimate is not met or exceeded.</p>
<p>For many schools, it’s possible to look up their ED numbers including number accepted and number who enroll. Those numbers are usually close. For example, at my daughter’s LAC, they accepted 238 ED, but 229 enrolled. So somewhere along the line, 9 got out of a binding commitment. We can assume that perhaps a few were rescinded, but al least a few found they couldn’t afford it. But by the same token, over 95% of those accepted ED found they could afford it - and this is an expensive school that hands out virtually no merit. Not everyone went in the ED round paying full price either. </p>
<p>Although we don’t have direct evidence, it’s a pretty good guess that if a school accepts you ED, they play fair. And most schools of this caliber probably have the similar numbers - it’s simply not in their interest to get a bad reputation among GCs as being a school that accepts you and then either doesn’t pay the fair FA price and/or holds on to you even if you can’t afford it. That reputation would spread fast, and I’ve never heard any school described that way.</p>