<p>I asked Cornell Financial Aid Office 4 days ago and today I get an answer. They said that there was no appeal and the financial aid decision was final.
Other Ivies may know that I back out my early decision agreement, so do they consider me an untrustworthy person even though I tried my best to not to back out?</p>
<p>babyboom…You may be looking at a gift if you are rejected. Now all you could do is wait and see and hope for the best. Good luck.</p>
<p>So I’m new to this, but a question: Is ED ever a viable option if you have firm requirements for financial need? Wouldn’t you need to take that into account beforehand? It seems that one would give up all possible negotiation with the ED route.</p>
<p>Babyboom, if Cornell does not give you enough financial aid for you to attend, you then ask them to be released from the ED agreement due to financial need. Once you get the release, you are not going to be considered as someone who “backed out” of your ED agreement.</p>
<p>Backing-out would mean you accepted your ED offer, deposited and agreed to attend, and then next spring, say, when you start hearing from other colleges and decide to jump ship for another school… that is what they mean by “backing out” of the ED agreement.</p>
<p>If the offer you get makes going unaffordable for you, they will release you. Can you imagine for even one second a school that would pretend to “force” a student to attend when it will financially break their family? It would never happen.</p>
<p>Mr.K: There is not much negotiation involved. Some posters have reported that some schools will try to match a financial aid offer made by a peer school. Not every school will make this effort and money is tight in this economy. It is not a negotiation.</p>
<p>Greta: So here’s my concern. If you go ED, there’s less incentive for the university to make a special effort to reel you in. The merit aid might be smaller, and the need-based aid might have a higher loan-to-grant ratio. But if you’re RD, the school knows that it will have some competition, and you’re more likely to get a better package. So how could ED ever be a good move if you need the cash?</p>
<p>From what I can tell, ED only makes sense if your heart is completely set on a particular school, your chances could use some help, and finances simply don’t matter. That seems like quite a parlay!</p>
<p>I suppose that everybody could stand to improve their chances, but how many people are 100% sure, and are unencumbered by financial constraints? Even full pay families feel crushed by these costs.</p>
<p>MisterK, I do not think that ED is a good option if you absolutely need financial aid and want to maximize the aid you receive. You are at a disadvantage because you do not have full information about what your options are when you receive the award, and are under pressure to make a firm decision very early on. The time pressure coupled with the emotional pressure (you just got accepted to your dream school … if you turn it down, what will happen?) – will tend to push you into making a potentially unwise decision if you receive a financial aid award that comes close to but does not meet what you expected. </p>
<p>Whether it is called “negotiation” or something else, there is room to work with financial aid departments in the spring. Some will look at offers from other schools and may adjust theirs to match, some very explicitly say that they won’t do that. But all schools have an appeal or review process, an you may learn information in the course of comparing offers that will have a bearing on your aid.</p>
<p>For example, my daughter was accepted at multiple schools, RD, which prepared financial aid offers. </p>
<p>College B, which was a top choice for my daughter, adjusted the FAFSA to reduce her EFC and make her eligible for a Pell grant. That surprised me, so I asked what they did-- I wanted to be sure that I understood everything about the award so I would know what to expect in future years. They explained that because of an unusual tax situation reflected on my income tax return, they had exercised “professional judgment” to adjust my income downward. </p>
<p>College C, which was a peer institution, offered my daughter a financial aid award that was substantially weaker than College B. It happened that my daughter preferred College B, so I didn’t bother to appeal the award from College C. But if I HAD wanted to seek a better package – I would have explained to College C about the high taxes and “professional judgment”, and ask whether they could also take that factor into consideration. That is something I would not even known to ask about but for the learning experience of being able to compare awards and discuss the calculations with different financial aid offices. </p>
<p>Financial aid from private colleges is a very complicated thing, and my experience was that I kept on learning new things along the way. </p>
<p>I think there are a handful of schools, such as Harvard or Stanford, that have adopted such generous aid policies that a person can be fairly safe applying to them – but I also believe that most of those super-generous schools have also dropped binding ED, if they ever had it.</p>
<p>I’d add that I think that its a myth that ED “improves chances” for students who are applying to reach colleges. It probably does improve chances for very strong students at highly competitive colleges, since the application pool is stronger – but I don’t see why any college in its right mind would tie up a space in its class with a student who was borderline for admissions, knowing that the RD round will bring better or stronger students. Unless, of course, that student has a hook – in which case, they weren’t really “borderline” – but it is true that some hooks like legacy or athletics will dissipate if not used in the ED round.</p>
<p>Thanks calmom for your insight. Hopefully I’ll learn these nuances step-by-step; thankfully, still a year away.</p>
<p>babyboom: Sorry to hijack your thread for CC 101 Intro to ED Theory!</p>
<p>MisterK, ED can work out well for families with high need. There are only so many colleges which meet full need with either no loans or defined loan caps. We looked at it as playing musical chairs and having a chance to sit down before the music stops. This requires a pragmatic view that pretty much all of these schools are great and since in the end you can only attend one of them anyway, choose one in November and hope to be done early. I would only suggest this to families with straight-forward finances who have run the calculators and feel comfortable with their EFC.</p>