Am I imagining it, or does it seem like this year there are more ED students than usual surprised at their aid packages and finding their schools unaffordable? I don’t hear them saying the aid didn’t match the NPC, they just seem blindsided altogether.
Seem like lots more where the parents are saying the costs are too high.
Yes, but what is it about the ED deal that they are not getting this year vs last year? Tonight there is a student who ran the NPCs, whose parents knew they wouldn’t pay in August, the school offers no merit, but they still applied ED.
I think the generosity of discounting as been declining over the past 8 or 9 years. When my first went off to college in 2007 I was so shocked my the amount of “merit” based tuition discounting being discussed with his cycle. It was not unusual to see posts about $10 or $15000 in discounts. I watched the boards with my second and then my third and there is a trend. Whether it’s parents not willing to pay the “ginormous” tuition so saying no thanks to the ED aid letters or the colleges discounting less could be a crap shoot guess.
I don’t remember those discounts for ED students – colleges have historically saved most of their merit for the RD cycle. Why sweeten the offer for a student who has already committed to attend?
At least according to S’s LAC, they provided the same merit to ED as to RD because they didn’t want students waiting for RD just because they knew the deal would be sweeter. The school wanted to manage their acceptance rate (which ED lets them do) but not just by admitting the ‘rich’ kids early. To them, admitting kids who want them enough to apply ED was worth the ‘cost’ of having the same merit available to ED and RD.
@intparent…if you think about it, colleges that are not known for giving merit money to ED applicants will not get as many ED applicants. They want those ED applicants to protect their yield.
Whether it is true or not, I don’t know, but several colleges my daughter considered said that they offered the same merit aid in ED as they do in RD. Admissions offices themselves are stating this.
As @bopper and @N’s Mom said, if a college does state that it offers merit aid, it would help the college lock in (early) students who are highly motivated to choose that particular school by offering them the same merit aid that they would in RD. They do risk losing ED students if the student needs merit aid in order to attend (for whatever reason).
Now if a school states up front that they offer no merit aid and a student runs the NPC and can’t afford it, that is a different circumstance. Perhaps the student applying anyway in that circumstance is just a bit of wishful thinking, hoping the school’s calculation will somehow be different.
I don’t think word gets around well enough for that to work. The power is in the college’s hands, and students and parents don’t really know what every one else’s offers are. Just like colleges say “grades over test scores”, but don’t actually walk the walk, I think they are not consistent on merit with ED students.
@intparent I would agree that the power is in the college’s hands other than the power of the student to walk away if the aid isn’t there.
In hindsight, I would not use ED at all. This is my last child at home, so it’s not an issue, but it’s definitely the advice I’d give others in the future.
It annoys me a bit. I would have liked to have the kid do ED and be able to weigh offers too…
Oh well. Got rejected anyway!
ED has always been for the kids who don’t really need to weigh offers. Fair or not, that is the history of it.
That’s what I mean. My kid did ED, knew it cut off all other offers.
I’m seeing ppl treat it like just any other offer tho, which is very annoying. ED is a big sacrifice and commitment for any boost you may get. But ppl aren’t taking it as seriously as I would have thought!
Being relatively new here I can’t compare to previously…however, I’ve made that observation as well. Seems there are a lot of “Can I get out of ED” type threads! It bothers me as well.
My S did do ED last year, but only after he was sure of his choice and we were sure of our willingness to fund it! (He did get in and we were thrilled!)
Isn’t the “only apply for ED if you don’t need aid” a CC thing? Is that advice routinely given elsewhere? Because the ED contracts specifically allow for the student to back out if the money isn’t right. I agree with the CC conventional wisdom but is it conventional wisdom outside of CC?
For those who were exposed to CC ahead of time, I think there is a lot of wishful thinking that your case will be different. Also the trophy hunting of - I got into X but couldn’t afford it.
I figure the colleges are sophisticated enough to calculate around it. They know their ED yield won’t be 100 percent so they either offer more ED than they need or they make up the shortfall in RD. I don’t think viable candidates are being rejected from ED because of these student’s mind changing. Maybe some are being deferred to RD though.
I don’t feel sorry for the colleges.
I don’t think most people want to say, “I got into X but couldn’t afford it”. We are not a country of people who like to admit, even to ourselves, that we can’t afford the finest things. I am saying I wonder if the ED yield is dropping – this year we seem to be seeing more students posting that they are dropping out of their ED agreements due to the cost. I don’t think we will know – the Common Data Set doesn’t have a section for it, and colleges generally don’t release information that they don’t have to unless it benefits them somehow.
@gettingschooled Isn’t the “only apply for ED if you don’t need aid” a CC thing? Is that advice routinely given elsewhere? Because the ED contracts specifically allow for the student to back out if the money isn’t right
yes - that is true, you can back out of ED if the aid is not enough,(you should run the NPC ahead of time to get an idea) but there have been some posts here where people back out for not getting merit - that’s different. My D applied ED and a few days after she submitted, we got a letter from admissions reminding that ED is binding and while you can back out if aid is not enough and you can’t afford it, if you want to shop around for merit, then ED is not for you.
Both my D’s did ED to non-merit schools. That said, I’ve read about a range of different ways that schools treat ED and non-automatic merit aid. Many (most?) save the best merit offers for RD as a lure. But others (only a few) prefer to give merit awards to their ED applicants.
The latter type of schools tend to be very forthright about merit aid. But the former kind can be a problem for the kid hunting for merit aid. If you have the stats to get merit aid and you love the school, you’d expect that they’d admit you right off the bat during ED and give you the goodies. Sadly, that’s not the case, and that’s not easily available information for most applicants. Just try and get someone at these kinds of schools to commit to telling you that you’re better off applying ED or RD if you are looking for merit money.
D1’s second choice school offered big merit money; they had just stopped offering it automatically to National Merit finalists, but all indications were that if you were NMF you’d get the big award. D1 visited and interviewed–with the head of admissions, as it turned out. I had specifically asked D1 to inquire about merit money and ED. She was told, with a bit of a wink, not to apply ED. So what about the applicants who don’t have the opportunity to visit far-away schools, let alone the luck to have an interview that goes very well with the head of admissions, let alone a savvy-enough parent to make sure the issue gets addressed?
I agree that if you want to shop for the best merit offer, then yes, ED should be off the table. I have no problem with an ED applicant turning down an acceptance that comes up short on merit money, even if the NPC says you should expect no need-based aid.
I’ve told my kids if they want to apply ED to a 100% need met school no problem because we are prepared for our EFC but not for schools that are not 100% need met unless they fit our budget. Carnegie Mellon was thrown out of contention entirely because we knew they were known in our area for being stingy with aid and the calculator reflected that plus was one of the ones where you don’t input much data. We got a exceptional offer from an EA school with a big endowment but thinking we might see a bit of extra merit as we wait out a deferral from another school.
Frankly, I am seeing more and more people who seem to think everything in life will fall into place magically. I call it magical unicorn thinking … so many people believe some magical unicorn is just going to make things work for them. I see it in students, in bosses, in coworkers (my coworker & I ARE the magical unicorns in our office!) … delusion at its best. Yeah, maybe ED packages are worse this year, or maybe we just have more posters who didn’t run the NPC (or who were self-employed so didn’t know how it would shake out). My gut instinct is that it’s just more people thinking that the universe will smile on them special.