<p>So some people do not apply ED because they want to compare financial aid packages.</p>
<p>Would it be a good idea to apply ED to a college who meets 100% of the financial needs .of the undergrads?
I mean, if you get accepted, you'll still be able to afford it, so what's the risk? Is there any thing I overlooked?</p>
<p>Remember, the SCHOOL computes your need, not you. There are many families who find that what the school thinks they can pay is far more than what they feel they can pay. Need based financial aid is based on the schools computation of your need and what the school feels your family can contribute.</p>
<p>You overlooked that the colleges define need, not the student’s family. Try the NPC (net price calculator) on the college’s web site to estimate the cost. The accuracy of a NPC is not guaranteed. If your family’s financial picture includes owning a business or being self employed it can be very misleading.</p>
<p>Are the net price calculators accurate? How much do they vary?
Also, I come from NYC where a dollar does not even buy you a bottle of water ($1.25!), would that affect the financial aid of a school from a smaller state? (Do you understand what I’m trying to say?)
I did use them and they are calculating my price at 8k-10k, excluding board and book and personal items fees.</p>
<p>The net price calculators aren’t perfect. If your family owns a small business or your parents are divorced and/or remarried, the numbers can be wildly off. And they don’t ask as many questions as the CSS Profile and some college-specific forms you fill out later do. I don’t really think colleges take the cost of living for different regions of the country into account, either. You CAN turn down an ED offer if you can’t make the financial aid offer work. What you can’t do is wait to compare offers. AND, if you have to wait for your FA package to confirm, you are still going to have to fill out other applications (one student on CC this year did not do other apps, then got an awful shock when his FA package to his ED school came late and was not sufficient). :(</p>
<p>OK thank you for the advice. I guess I shouldn’t apply ED since there are so many variables that can affect financial aid.
I was hoping it could help me get a leg up during admissions, but I probably shouldn’t apply ED if paying is such an important issue.</p>
<p>One more point, except for a relatively few colleges that have no loan policies, colleges that meet 100% of need do so with a combination of grants, WS & loans.</p>
<p>Just so you have an idea how wildly unpredictable financial aid offers can be . . . one parent on CC reported variations of up to $20k/year in the financial aid offers received by one child! And these were schools that supposedly met full need . . .</p>
<p>Even if the net price calculators were showing a family contribution of zero, I wouldn’t take a chance on ED . . . as entomom pointed out, there are just too many variables.</p>
<p>Also, in answer to your question, no one gives a damn that you live in NYC. You’ll be expected to pay the same percentage of your family income as a student who lives in out-of-the-middle-of-nowhere, Mississippi. And schools are also going to expect your parents (1) to have college savings commensurate with their income and (2) to be prepared to take out loans commensurate with their income. So, if your cost-of-living prevents that, you’re likely to get some unaffordable offers. If you apply thoughtfully, you’ll also get others that are affordable. But you absolutely need the ability to choose between those offers, and not get stuck with the first marginally affordable offer you receive.</p>
<p>You see, if you’re really lucky with ED, you’ll get an offer that totally works or totally sucks. So saying yes or no will be easy. But you’re far more likely to get an offer somewhere in the middle - not as good as you’d hoped, but maybe manageable if your parents cut back on living expenses, and borrow more than they can really afford to borrow . . . and, yes, that’ll leave them totally up a creek when it comes time for your siblings to start college . . . but you really LOVE this school and this may be the best offer you’ll get (after all, it’s ED!) . . . so maybe you should to accept the offer even though it kinda sucks. And that is where ED will screw you!!! It’s almost never as easy a decision as you expect it to be.</p>
<p>P.S. And once you start looking at schools that don’t meet full need, but offer merit aid, ED will mess with you even more! Schools don’t need to “bait the hook” with merit money if you’ve already committed to ED, so you can fully expect a merit award of . . . zero.</p>
<p>Also, ED does not always give you a leg up in admissions. Though a higher percentage of students are typically admitted in an ED round, these students can have incredibly high stats. If that is the case, applying early may not help you.</p>
<p>Thank you, all. I guess I will not apply ED.</p>
<p>Consider finding schools that offer Early Action! We felt it gave Daughter a “leg up” on admissions. So nice to have acceptance letters and tentative financial aid offers in December. You still have time to apply to other schools, fill out scholarship apps and compare offers.</p>
<p>Everyone seems so against ED. You can get out of an ED agreement if it does not work out financially. I applied ED to a full need, loan free liberal arts college because I knew that my family does not own any business or house, I had run the net price calculators, and the college is usually ranked near the top for financial aid. </p>
<p>I ended up getting great aid, and I’m pretty sure ED gave me the edge to get in (at this school its like 38% ED acceptance rate vs. 12% RD), otherwise I would have had to go to a school with worse aid. Just throwing in my two cents, If you know what you’re doing I don’t think its a bad idea.</p>
<p>There can be times when ED makes sense such as your situation, lavenderman. But saying “you can get out of an ED agreement if it does not work out financially” is true but oversimplifies the situation. Suppose you get your ED offer and you can’t <em>really</em> afford it, but maybe if your parents borrowed a little more than they really ought to, and scrimped and cut the household budget… And the problem is that you don’t know if that’s the best offer you’re going to get, or if some other school would have offered you a much better deal. But yes, the risk of not doing ED is that you might not get into that school at all, and maybe that <em>was</em> going to be your best offer. In general, though, the ability to compare multiple offers AND to “negotiate” with financial aid officers by showing them any better offers you may have received, can end up resulting in saving families HUGE amounts of money. Which is why most people here are against ED unless you’re full-pay and don’t need to worry about getting the best financial aid deal.</p>