This is the official thread for those applying EA/ED to Northeastern University.
List your unweighted GPA, any SAT /ACT scores, and ECs. What majors are you going into?
Ask your questions, the CC community is here to help!
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This is the procedure for getting an early need-based financial aid estimate if you are considering applying ED.
Early Need-Based Financial Aid Estimate – In order to provide you and your family with the ability to make an informed financial commitment before applying Early Decision, we are committed to providing you with an early need-based financial aid estimate. To receive your estimate, you must submit the following no later than Wednesday, October 25 .
- An application to Northeastern for Fall 2024 via Common App or Coalition App. Please note an Early Decision application is not required for the estimate. All application types will be able to receive an early aid estimate if students are considering a change to Early Decision.
- Your 2024-2025 CSS Profile (and NCP Profile if required).
- The early aid estimate request. Please note this will be available for all Fall 2024 domestic applicants on October 2 via their Application Status Check.
- Any additional financial aid documents (such as federal tax returns) that Student Financial Service may require.
*Please note that the early need-based financial estimate is for domestic students only, and early estimates for merit scholarships are not possible, as these are tied to the admission review and selection process.
- Application Fee Waiver – A waiver will be offered to students who apply for Early Decision I or II and apply for financial aid.
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I just saw this on the website as I was looking for other information! I want to add that we did this last year for our son, and we are very glad we did. The need-based aid was more generous than we anticipated. He was accepted ED and the financial offer was pretty much spot-on for what they had estimated.
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My daughter is applying ED. She already has a financial pre read (athlete) that does not include any merit money. If she gets merit money, will that reduce the institutional aid? She is getting a decent amount of aid according to pre read due to having 2 siblings in college at the same time. Should she include her National Recognition award or just stick with the institutional aid? Institutional aid is promised to go up at same rate as tuition increases. National Scholarship would not. Also, do they even have the National Recognition awards anymore with removing race in admissions?
It can’t hurt to include the National Recognition award in the app. No one knows what will happen, but why would she not include it?
Adding, per the website, which apparently is not updated for the new school year:
To confirm eligibility for this scholarship, Scholars should submit Recognition Program documentation to Admissions by email (nationalscholar@northeastern.edu) or by uploading the documentation through the Application Status Check by April 2nd, 2023.
Seems like this is saying they don’t stack financial aid and merit:
Northeastern National Scholarships replace any Honors, Dean’s, Connections, Sophomore Achievement, or International Scholars awards and may result in a change to previously awarded Northeastern University Grant or RaiseMe micro-scholarship funds.
I would call the financial aid office to ask this.
I would rather her get the institutional aid because it is guaranteed to increase with tuition. I guess it does not really matter. I am assuming the merit aid reduces the financial aid by the amount of the merit money given.
The financial aid office does not know the answer. I tried calling. The person who answered the phone was unsure.
I see, I missed that above. It’s not comforting that the financial aid office doesn’t know the answer. I’d probably email and then wait a few days to see if someone higher up can come up with an actual response.
From the website part I quoted, it looks like proof of the award needs to be uploaded before merit is given. So, what you could ask the financial aid office is whether the award doesn’t get added to the package (replace the grants) until after the award is uploaded, such that the award could be included in the app (for admission purposes) but then she could simply not upload the proof, as a means of avoiding the merit displacing the grants.
I’d also want to ask, where a student has had merit displace part of a grant, in future years with tuition increases, is the grant reconfigured based on newly-calculated need annually (i.e., grant increase would cover the lack of merit increase) or whether the grant only increases in direct proportion to the % increase in tuition.
Great suggestions! Thank you!
Another question for my other daughter applying to Northeastern. If she wants financial pre-read done before applying ED but waiting on October SAT scores, can you switch to ED after you get the financial pre-read? I noticed, in the pinned post above, that you have to have a submitted application before asking for pre-read. But, we don’t want her to apply ED until she has cost estimate.
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You can submit an EA or RD application and request a fin aid pre-read. If the aid makes Northeastern feasible, the application can be changed to ED.
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Awesome! Thank you.
Based on following NU for years (both my D’s graduated with UG and masters, latest in 2022) it seems that NU will determine what your overall need is and provide their set amount either through merit or FA. I would not expect more overall than what the pre-read shows, and if it a bit more based on the national recognition scholarship, that would be a nice surprise. The NMF and national recognition program scholarships are not what they used to be, but in recent years, sometimes folks have reported that they might get an additional $2-5k, so it certainly seems worth reporting.
Note that admissions and FA seem to change a bit year to year, so until offers start coming out, know everything is up in the air.
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From historical tales here, FA does not get recalculated each year unless their is a significant change in family finances and a review is requested. Merit aid given frosh year stays the same and need based aid will increase the same % as tuition as per the NU promise.
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My son is confused if he should do Early action and Regular Decision, His SAT is 1510, GPA 3.842 is 9 APs including senior year and 6 Dual enrollment courses. His GPA might go up in mid year thats why he is confused if he should do EA or not as he will miss out the chance to showcase better GPA. He had B’s in Maths in 10 and 11th grade and doing better in Math in Senior year so is not sure if he should wait. He will be applying for Computer science. Can you please help?
My son got $30k per year for NHRP. That was in 2022. I guess she will include it in her honors on the common app.
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That’s wonderful. NMF and NHRP used to be full tuition a decade ago, then dropped to $30k to now stating it will be a competitive offer. They do say the maximum merit aid is around $28k/year.
Is your pre-read for more than $30k of aid? Either way, I still would not expect more aid in total than what the pre-read tells you. Anything above is gravy. Sounds like your D is already accepted as an athletic recruit, which makes life simpler unless she is still choosing between schools. (Does NU offer athletic scholarships in advance so you know?)
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She still has to go through application process but 100% intends on going to NEU.
Does anyone know if the admission rates are higher for early ACTION (not ED) Thanks
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Early Action definitely. They defer a lot of students to RD anyway asking for mid-year reports if they want to see more.