<p>I've read a lot of things about applying Early Decision to first choice colleges. I know that there are some benefits and other drawbacks, but I wanted to know YOUR OPINIONS on what the potential benefits and drawbacks could be since I have a clear first choice school that I have the numbers for.</p>
<p>Also, if anyone could explain how financial aid comes into the equation with early decision?</p>
<p>At schools with 100% need, finaid won’t change. Also, technically one is allowed to be “unbound” from ED if finaid isn’t enough.</p>
<p>The situation where one should use ED is when they have a clear first choice and are not relying on merit-aid to afford the school. Otherwise, use it to make a perfect fit more likely.</p>
<p>So if I were to apply Early Decision to my top choice, my financial aid package would be the same as it would be if I had applied regular decision?</p>
<p>Yes, technically, because the schools will calculate your need the same way either way, but you lose the opportunity to compare financial aid offers with other schools (for example, if you’re willing to go to your second choice if it is significantly cheaper). Additionally schools will sometimes match a competitor’s better financial aid offer if you call them and say it is your first choice–you lose that opportunity in ED.</p>
<p>Applying ED at a school where you will be relying on need-based aid is OK, but you should be prepared to turn the school down (and lose it as an RD option) if the money isn’t good enough. Know roughly how much families in your income bracket would be expected to pay and expect some volatility in that number. If the school is not known for giving an ED advantage to unhooked applicants, then you probably should wait for RD.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your answer. What kinds of schools give ED advantages to unhooked applicants?</p>
<p>I also know that some schools offer need based aid but they say that the students in higher academic standing get more aid. Does that mean it is merit based? Or do the schools just want to get the smarter kids? If this is put into the context of Early Decision, are there other setbacks to be considered?</p>
<p>If you’re looking for cash, ED isn’t for you. You can choose between a slight admissions boost or the opportunity to compare offers, with your favorite school among them. But you can’t have both.</p>
<p>I also know that some schools offer need based aid but they say that the students in higher academic standing get more aid.</p>
<p>That’s a form of need-based aid, just with some preferential packaging. If they’re not meeting everybody’s need, looks like they’re going to focus a bit harder on the students they really want.</p>
<p>The Ivies that have ED tend not to give any admissions advantage to ED applicants, while some top LACs do consider ED as a form of “demonstrated interest.” Schools with smaller yields would prefer ED because they can accept students and be guaranteed that they will matriculate, but you should check each school specifically.</p>
<p>Don’t ED anywhere FOR the advantage unless it’s your first choice. But if there is no advantage and it’s your first choice, you may as well wait for the RD round.</p>
<p>Hopefully someone can confirm/correct this, but I think that although financial aid offers for ED applicants are the same for schools that meet 100% need, you might get a better offer in terms of a grant money to loan money ratio if you are not yet committed to attending that college.</p>
<p>“The Ivies that have ED tend not to give any admissions advantage to ED applicants”</p>
<p>I don’t agree with this. Some acknowledge that ED is a tip factor. If any are denying it, I don’t think I believe them. ED applicants are valuable both for their enthusiasm and their enrollment-management advantages. If you have a clear first choice and don’t need FA, you definitely should apply ED.</p>
<p>Yes, early decision is worth it. If you take the time to think about why there is such a thing as “early decision”, then you will realize that you stand a much better chance of getting admitted through ED than through RD. See if the following makes sense.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you are accepted into ED, then you are forced to go to that school no matter what. That means you are forced to pay that school tuition for the next four years which means the school has secured 1 customer. Now, say you are accepted into RD at the same school. In this case, you are NOT forced to go to that school because you have other options. This means that the school might possibly lose you as a customer and your tuition dollars the next four years.</p></li>
<li><p>One of the components considered when the USNWR rankings are calculated is the percentage of students matriculated at a specific college among those accepted to that college. The higher this %tage, the higher the school is ranked because it means that students really want to go to this school and are not just applying to it as a safety school. The higher the college is ranked in the USNWR (probably the most recognized college rankings site), the more students who will find that college attractive and will want to apply. This means the college receives more attention, a better reputation for it’s prestige, and more money/tuition because more students are applying. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>In the end, it’s all about the college selling itself and making money.</p>
<p>Don’t ED pools tend to be more competitive than RD pools, especially for more selective schools? That’s is why I think people believe there is no ED boost at those schools.</p>
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<p>Not so. If you’ve applied for financial aid, and you don’t feel that the offered package makes the school affordable for your family, you can turn down the offer. </p>
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<p>Of course the schools want to get the smarter kids, or the kids who are somehow more desireable. If a school doesn’t guarantee to meet need, or includes loans in its packages, then there is wriggle room for the school to include lots of loans, or to just not offer very much money at all. During RD, if you had a better FA offer from another peer school, you could go have a chat with your first choice and see if they’d sweeten things to land you. During ED, you have no such leverage. </p>
<p>The advantages and disadvantages and how finaid is offered during ED will vary from school to school. Since you have one clear choice, you can research the heck out of that particular choice. Ask on this forum, the FA forum and on that school’s forum about ED FA packages. Go searching back to the ED acceptances and see how people did with aid offers. And look at the RD threads and see if there’s any significant difference.</p>
<p>slitheytove, I believe you don’t make the decision regarding whether or not your family can afford the tuition. Or else someone can apply ED and get accepted but then decide to go somewhere else and just make the excuse that the financial aid package he/she was offered was not adequate. </p>
<p>There is probably (i don’t know for sure) a calculation done when someone does mention that he/she did not receive adequate financial aid. This calculation will take into account your specific family situation and calculate whether or not your family can afford the tuition (federal loans, grants, etc all taken into account). </p>
<p>I believe this is more fair or else people will just abuse the ED program and it won’t be any different than RD.</p>
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Ditto this. Although a few colleges may not confer an advantage to ED applicants, many colleges will readily admit it provides a boost that varies from slight to significant. </p>
<p>A few quotes from admissions websites:</p>
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<p>Interestingly, some of these have since vanished from the websites since I last posted them.</p>
<p>Nina1228:</p>
<p>I think it depends on the school. I just returned Michelle Hernandez’s “Acing the College Application” to the library and in this book she is (at least as of 2008) a big proponent of ED. She claims that at the Ivies and other super selective schools the ED pool is usually a bit weaker because it contains a lot of legacy, recruited athlete, and under represented applicants. </p>
<p>The book provided a number of charts showing that acceptence rates were often significantly higher; and thus in her view, justify going the ED route providing an applicant has a clear top choice.</p>
<p>ED is worth it if you don’t need financial aid . That’s why people who need aid don’t apply ED .Financial aid doesn’t come with ED .</p>
<p>ED acceptance policies vary enormously by school, making generalizations in this area difficult You should carefully examine the policies and statistics of the school(s) you’re interested in before deciding whether ED is worth it.</p>
<p>A possibly extreme example is Penn, which in 2010 accepted 1,319 ED applicants out of a total of 3,851 applying ED, for an ED admit rate of 34.3%. Penn’s overall admit rate that year was 14.3% (3,841 accepted out of 26,941 applications). But if you separate out the ED applicants/admits, you’re left with 23,090 RD applicants, of whom 2,522 were accepted, for a RD admit rate of only 10.9%—or less than 1/3 the rate of ED admissions.</p>
<p>Another way to look at it: if all the ED admits ultimately enrolled (and my guess is their enrollment rate for ED admits is pretty close to 100%), then Penn filled 54.7% of its freshman class with ED admits, and only 45.3% out of the RD pool.</p>
<p>Penn strongly encourages legacies to apply ED and says they will have a greater admissions advantage of they do so. No doubt the ED figure also includes a lot of recruited athletes and other “hooked” applicants. But even so, if I look at those figures from Penn and see that if I apply ED I’ll be one of 3,851 applicants competing for 1,319 places in the entering class, whereas if I apply RD I’ll be one of 23,090 applicants vying for just 1,091 places in the entering class, then that seems like a pretty strong reason to apply ED. At least if Penn is my #1 school and I’m persuaded I can afford it, either because I’m full-pay or because I’m confident their FA package will be adequate.</p>
<p>At many other schools the disparity between ED and RD is not nearly as great, however.</p>
<p>Here is the Common Application rule for applying ED needing financial aid:
So if you’re not offered enough, you say thanks but no thanks and apply RD elsewhere.</p>
<p>vonlost:</p>
<p>Some people will never be offerred enough since they have unrealistic expectations about how much their family will need to sacrifice to send them to college. What looks like a bad FA award in December may look a lot better in April and yet turning down your ED school in December is irreversible. Also, if your second choice RD school of comparable quality offers better aid than your first choice school, you have a realistic chance of getting that school to increase its package if it is a peer institution. Even if ED increases acceptance rates, and I believe it always does, it is a bad financial decsision for middle class families relying on financial aid. If financial aid is truly not a concern because you are full pay or can accept anything offerred, then ED will give you that additional tip into a more selective school. The ability to compare RD awards can in many instances save you tens of thousands of dollars. If you look on the financial aid forums, you will see some posters showing an astonishing range of awards from selective schools that don’t seem to make sense.</p>