<p>If someone applied ED to a school and his family could technically afford to go there, but he is also accepted into another school that would wind up being cheaper, would that be a good reason to turn down the ED acceptance?</p>
<p>If someone applied to a specific department (such as business or engineering) and were offered acceptance but not into that department, requiring eventual transfer into that department, would that also be a good enough reason to turn down ED acceptance?</p>
<p>Scenario 1: your hypothetical applicant doesn’t know how to read agreements. If accepted via ED, he is required to withdraw all other applications.</p>
<p>Scenario one: you apply to some schools that have rolling admissions or are EA, and you also apply ED. You apply for financial aid from all of these schools. Magically, you first find out you’ve been accepted to the rolling and EA schools, with lots of FA. Then the ED acceptance and FA package arrive…and you find that the ED school is more expensive. In which case yes, you can turn down the ED school. The ED agreement allows you to turn down the school if the FA package won’t be enough to make the school affordable.</p>
<p>However, if the ED acceptance and FA package arrive and you don’t have any other acceptances in hand, you can’t wait to see if there’s a cheaper school acceptance coming later, during RD. </p>
<p>If you are looking for the best possible FA deal, then don’t do ED. If you think you’ll regret not being able to consider the cheaper option, then don’t do ED. There are cases every year on CC where a student gets in to the ED school, thinks the package looks great…and then realizes that their friends with similar stats are going to be paying far less at other schools. If you think this could be you or your parents, don’t do ED.</p>
<p>Scenario 2: Dunno, good question. Ask the admissions people at the school how they handle this.</p>