I'm a little confused by Early Decision.

Parents Forum
21

@HMom16 you wrote:

Possible…maybe…but not always the case.

Fact is…most ED schools will NOT “negotiate” your financial aid offer compared to other schools…because when you applied ED, it was with the intention of attending if accepted. These schools don’t care what other schools offer you…because really, their school was supposed to be tops.

In addition, many EA schools do NOT issue their financial aid awards until later in the admissions cycle…because the acceptance isn’t binding and decisions don’t need to be made until May 1.

My kids both got EA acceptances…and only one came with a financial aid award at the time of acceptance. But it was a merit award, not need based. Need based awards weren’t received until late February or March…long after most ED acceptances need to be either accepted or declined.

Also…with regard to “negotiating” schools will only do so with peer schools.

I think planning to use an EA financial aid offer to bargain with an ED financial aid offer is not something students should expect to be able to do.

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@thumper1 Interesting - my kids received their financial aid offers with their EA acceptances. I didn’t realize it varied by school. In that case, I agree with you.

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“One thing to consider - it is possible to apply both ED and EA in order to get financial aid information for comparison’s sake. You would still be committing to go to the ED school if the financials are acceptable but by applying EA as well, you would be able to make a more informed decision. In addition, if the ED school is significantly below the EA schools, you would have grounds to negotiate or decline the ED offer.”

You also have to be careful about some EA school requirements. Some prohibit you from applying to an ED school if you are submitting an REA app. For example, you can submit an EA app to Notre Dame, so long as you aren’t submitting an ED app elsewhere. I think this is true for other schools, but you should check.

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I think most schools send the FA package along with EA acceptances now that FAFSA opens 10/1 uses prior prior. Perhaps thumper1 was pre high school class of 2017.

@AbsDad I don’t think you’re going to get what you’re looking for from Smith, Amherst or Mt Holyoke but good luck.

Did your girls try the ACT?

25

@HMom16 You do NOT get to renegotiate just because another school gives you a better deal. If that were the case, any kid could just decide to attend their in-state public. You need to decide if the offer is feasible for your family, not if it is the best deal on the table. Especialiy if the offer is close to the school’s NOC, applying ED obligates the kid to attend no matter what financial offers other schools might have made.

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@Dolemite

Even NOW many EA schools don’t do those packages until later innthe cylce…because they simply don’t have to.

I still stand by my statement about ED schools. They are NOT going to typically negotiate with you using an EA offer…because the ED school is supposed to be your top choice. Period. The have NO reason to negotiate your aid.

27

No. The FAFSA opening did not really make the FA packages come out much sooner at most schools. There is no need for them to rush out the package like ED, so why should they do that. It is not likely to make it before the ED commitment deadline which is usually a couple weeks after admission offer. So applying EA at the same time is not likely to allow you to compare financial package. In most cases, you should have already withdrawn all EA applications before they send out the FA package shortly after you received an ED offer.

28

@thumper1 is right – EA schools typically do not issue need based awards until later in the admission cycle, and the desire to “negotiate” aid is not a legitimate reason to withdraw from ED. You can either afford the school or you can’t.

I’d add that some schools also sweeten the pot with merit offers later in the game. That is, even if an EA school does offer some financial aid with an early admission, sometimes the student is invited to apply for other scholarships during the RD round, or sometimes additional merit aid is offered even without the requirement of an interview or application. So the December comparison between ED school and EA school isn’t a true picture of what the landscape may be in April.

Colleges have an incentive to offer more merit aid to students when they are competing against other colleges. They also rely on data for enrollment management. They don’t decide how much to offer solely on stats or merit – they are also weighing in the student’s likelihood of attending and trying to maximize the value of their aid dollars.

29

Caveat on the NPC’s – garbage in, garbage out. Make sure you have done your homework and have all the data at hand that you will need for FAFSA and CSS Profile (if applicable), and put in the real numbers into the NPC, not just guesstimate’s…

Caveat on “Meets Full Need” schools – what you think your need is, and what the college thinks your need is may well be two very different things. Remember that college is a privilege and some sacrifice may be required.

30

Yes, and the meets need schools don’t meet need based on FAFSA EFC in most cases.

Ohio State has a merit deadline of Nov 1, Pitt of Dec 15, but sometimes the student doesn’t get notified until January or later.

If your EFC is too high and unaffordable, especially with two in college at the same time, you need to Target schools that give merit, and where your girls can get enough merit to make them affordable.

Most private schools with their high sticker price most likely will not be in affordable range with only merit, if you don’t qualify for much need based aid. Some only give need based aid.

Now if you look at tOSU and if you receive a National Buckeye scholarship that can save $12,000 I think. If stats are higher it might stack with another award of a few thousand.

They consider Pitt a safety but it is only a financial safety if paying $25,000 per twin is affordable. $30k for tuition, fees, r&b instate, minus $5,500 student loan.

Merit below 1500 SAT is not likely. Especially for instate students it is difficult to get the bigger awards.

But it is worth applying. They can retake SAT and apply really early.

If PA or pharmacy is an interest, it is invaluable to enter a direct admit or conditional acceptance program. Acceptance to these programs can be very competitive.

A good program that offers merit and is 5yr PA for example would be St Francis University in PA. Also Gannon, Seton Hill, Duquesne (not sure if they are 5 yr programs).

I would apply as early as possible.

For pharmacy Pitt would be the top choice in PA, especially if you get conditional acceptance to the PharmD program. If you keep a 3.25 GPA and get a high enough PCAT score you have a seat reserved.

31

Of course Ohio State has an excellent pharmacy school as well. But it requires a bachelor’s degree before the PharmD program so that means 8 years instead of 6 and OOS pharmacy school tuition is much higher than instate tuition at Pitt.

Temple also has a pharmacy school but I think it is a 3+4 program.

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The thing to remember about pharmacy school…if it’s a direct admit program…undergrad ends at a certain point…after two years in some cases. Make SURE that any undergrad aid your kid gets for the first two years is able to be used once they enter the professional part of their program which is viewed as grad school.

33

Financial considerations aside, ED can be a strategy for increasing the odds of admission at highly selective colleges. You need to do a hard, realistic assessment of where your child ranks compared to recently admitted students. You can search for the “Common Data Set” for colleges of interest and get very detailed data for each year’s applicants and admitted students.

At our D’s top choice college (where she applied ED and was admitted), the first-time applicant admission rate for ED applicants that year was 41.1 percent and the overall first-time applicant admission rate was 31.1 percent (which included RD and ED–the college didn’t offer EA when she applied, but does now).

If your child is in the middle of the pack, or less academically, unless he/she brings something else the college is really looking for, such as geographic or ethnic diversity, he/she might not be accepted EA or RD, but might have a better chance during the ED cycle because the ED commitment is the one of the ultimate ways to demonstrate interest and enthusiasm for the college.

The downside, of course, is that if your student is in this situation, the applicant will probably not qualify for merit aid, which we found is quite limited at highly selective colleges anyway.

If the student is assessed to be in the top tier academically at several colleges under consideration, and if they offer merit as well as need-based aid, it may be a better strategy to apply EA or RD and compare financial aid offers, especially if cost is a major issue, as it is for most families.

Our D is currently a college junior, is doing well, and does not regret her choice at all. We did do a campus visit early in her senior year of high school, and recommend that highly to those considering applying ED.

Her college guarantees to meet 100 percent of demonstrated need (according to their formula), and although our D is eligible and receives some institutional need-based aid, it still involves a considerable financial sacrifice on the part of our family to pay for her higher education.

The NPCs weren’t that accurate for our family’s situation. They are a useful tool, but not binding. Our D received an estimate of eligibility for need-based aid with her ED admission package. After we completed her CSS PROFILE and IDOC tax forms (before they switched to the prior-prior year system for financial aid determination), her institutional grant aid eligibility actually increased by 22 percent. Now with FAFSA, CSS Profile, and IDOC available online earlier, hopefully ED and other applicants offered admission will receive a more accurate estimate of need-based aid with their admission letters.

It was a huge relief to our family to receive her ED admission offer before Christmas of her senior year in high school. We consider ourselves quite fortunate. She may have received better financial aid packages from other colleges, but her college choice is a good “fit” for her overall. Each family’s circumstances and priorities are different.

34

I also have twins (seniors) and also live in PA. We opted not to do ED anywhere, even for schools for which the NPC result was reasonably affordable, because we have to balance two financial aid packages. My kids did apply SCEA to a college that would definitely have been affordable if they were admitted, but there is no commitment involved with that (other than the restriction on other early applications), and if one child had been admitted there, we would have known better what we could afford for the second. I do suggest an early application to Pitt, just in case your daughter is eligible for some merit aid, and just to get that acceptance in the bag and take some pressure off.

35

One more thought about Early Decision – you should know that the college reserves the right to not make their decision early. In other words, besides “admit” or “deny,” they have a third option to “defer” making the decision until a later round…

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What about ED II?

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Generally, schools that offer ED II treat it similarly to ED I, with possible results being admit, deny, or defer.

38

My youngest DD did ED…but that was because we could afford the in-state tuition regardless of merit. It is about half the price of the list price of private schools.

39

Also some colleges do ED to lock in applicants…they give them merit but then those ED students improve their yield (and therefore their ratings)