My son is applying to Rice & has his application ready to submit. My question is: does anyone know if the financial aid packages offered are the same regardless of early vs regular decision? I’ve heard that ED applicants have less bargaining power since the agreement is binding but I’m not sure if that is accurate or not. His stats are: ranked 1/130, UWGPA 4.0, WGPA 4.3, ACT 35, excellent EC & leadership experience. He is sure that Rice is his #1 pick but not sure we can afford the $24,000 EFC that the net price calculator predicts.
Unless you have a change in financial status, you will have no bargaining power with Rice ED. Most bargaining power comes with having other fin aid offers and/or merit awards in hand, and playing the schools off of each other. With ED, you give up the ability to do this.
Of course you can appeal your Rice ED financial aid package, but again, in the absence of a change in some financial factor, the initial package/offer would probably not be increased.
Rice is also known to be hard to bargain with for financial aid, even if you get better offers from other schools.
The EFC is usually pretty accurate about what Rice will do in terms of need based financial aid. However, with his stats your son might also get some merit aid from Rice. Our experience was that Rice didn’t budge on merit aid when presented with a competing scholarship offer from another top 20 school. The Rice admission chances are higher for ED than RD, but it does no good to gain admission if Rice is not possible financially.
It’s not binding, but you must take it or leave it, no bargaining power.
My understanding is claiming unaffordability is legitimate reason for pulling out of early decision. that being said applying regular decision to multiple schools gives you a chance to chose the school that gives you the best offer. This is what I did with my daughter and I had her put in applications into a lot of schools for this purpose. I also had good success appealing her initial fin aid packages especially going to the admitted student events and dealing with fin aid department face to face. I did not achieve this by playing colleges off each other but by persuasively making the case about my own families’ personal finances and this might have been because of the specifics of my families personal finances. All that lead to my daughter being at Rice.
I just wrote this then realized that at this point the ED deadline has passed and your decision already made? But I am sure Rice will give you as good financial aid as you will find.