Counselors need NOT discourage low income students from applying ED. That is the purpose of the out. Many schools such as UPenn, WANT these students applying ED if it is their first choice. They don’t want to give all of the best opportunities to the wealthy.
It is not discouraging but a valid advice to low income students. They can always apply RD to those schools if those college really WANT them. More important, those students need to have affordable, or even the most affordable, options which may or may not be achieved by applying ED.
There is often a huge admissions boost by applying ED. Low income students are entitled to that too, especially at schools that claim to meet full need.
Applying ED to a 100% need college is a great idea for lower income students. And they should not apply ED to schools that don’t offer full need financial aid.
So, Ed to Williams as a lower income student is a great idea and the same with NYU is a terrible idea.
AbsDad, I only hope that this is a forward-looking question for a soph or junior student, not that your D applied ED, you realize the FA isn’t going to work, and that she still kept applications open that are now giving her better $$. That would not be cool.
Remember – EFC is what the colleges feel your family can pay, not what YOU think you can pay. There is often as substantial difference between those two calculations!
Thanks, all.
@CountingDown it is forward thinking. 
What has happened here is that a guidance counselor recommended that my daughter look into Lehigh. My daughter never considered it, but now she seems to think it is a better choice than the other 2 schools she had in mind, both of which, on the surface, are far cheaper schools.
The counselor told us that my daughter “should” end up in the top 3% of her class this year as long as nothing changes, and that this would probably be enough to get her in if everything else was fine.
Low income students should absolutely apply ED. I’m talking about kids who will not qualify for aid and who apply ED to up their chances, knowing they may just break the contract anyway. If you know you can’t afford the number on the NPC or the Early Read (as in our case), then your GC should discourage you from applying ED.
This is how it goes at my school; we will submit ea applications and rolling admissions. We will not process any RD applications until we hear from the ED school. When a student has been accepted the application process stop. No transcripts or recommendation letters are sent until the school receives in writing from the college that the school has withdrawn the ED application
There is an expectation that when one applies ED that they have done their due diligence, which includes running the net price calculator or getting an early read from the school.
Is this a public or a private school?
public
Remember the ED application says that when accepted ED, you will withdraw all applications and you make no new applications. So we halt the process
What about schools with a RD deadline before ED notification, or schools with an early deadline for scholarships?
What authority do you have to do that? What if there are financial aid appeals.
It seems like you could really damage a student.
What if the ED notification is late. What about ED2? What if the school doesn’t report the release in a timely way.
Seems like you’re school is setting itself up for a lot of liability. .
There are very few if any RD deadlines (other than rolling admissions and scholarship consideration, which we will send) that happens before the ED notification
No, we are not setting our self up for liability because we tell our parents in writing way before senior year what our process is (in addition , we ran it through legal).
Most ED 2 applications happen after the RD applications at the beginning of the year. Most ED responses are due before the end of the calendar year (December 31), when most RD applications are due.
In addition, we have until mid February to send mid-year reports for RD applications. By this time students will have had 2 months from the time that they hear from their ED 1 school.
@abdad You can decline. The biggest reason to get a good estimate of FA to assure you can afford it before is, as someone said above, you can only ED one school. It should only be your clear #1 and something you can afford. If the NPC shows it is not, don’t waste your ED on it. Move on and try the RD round to see what FA comes.
I’m not understanding how this would work when one of the many schools that offer ED 2 is involved. For instance, one school that I am familiar with has a January 1 application deadline for both ED 2 and RD. ED 2 applicants are notified on February 15; RD applicants are notified on March 23. Other schools with ED 2 have similar deadlines.
While YMMV, I am not talking about policies at every school or at every DOE school, just my high school where this is not an issue at my school. We rarely if every have kids applying ED 2
We have a pretty good gauge on where our kids are applying who is applying questbride, Posse, ED1, EOP, HEOP, etc
I have a large Title I opportunity program population (they are not applying ED anywhere that does not meet 100% demonstrated need so they are already using their ED card with Questbridge/Posse, where everything will be covered).
Many of my students want to do RD for EOP/HEOP schools because it also pays for grad school, therefore we encourage and they want to cast a wide net.
@absdad : based on what you’ve shared about your daughter, Lehigh seems a very odd recommendation. Read the Princeton Review’s description, the Fiske guide. What did she like about it?
So does the net price calculator for Lehigh make it affordable? Or not?