I appreciate the clarification. So, if I’m understanding the current rules, ED is risky for an applicant whose finances are uncertain — not because s/he cannot decline admission and apply to other schools if the aid is clearly insufficient, but because s/he will never be able to know if less debt was possible elsewhere, and must quickly make a decision anyway. Also, because the ED admission must be declined in order to avoid withdrawing applications elsewhere, the student will lose out on any additional time to find additional financing for the ED school, including private scholarship information which typically comes in in the spring. S/he will have already had to turn down the ED admission. In other words, if it’s a clear no-go financially, fine, but, otherwise, there are definite risks involved. Is this accurate?