<p>If you have a low GPA (2.9) and are applying to University of tennessee early decision, will this help you at all?</p>
<p>Early decision can help in the admissions decision. It lets the Admissions staff know that their school is number one on your list, and that you are willing to bind if you are accepted. However, I wouldn’t say that applying early decision will boost your decision in such a significant way. It is still good to raise your GPA if you can, do well with your test scores, and make sure you have some good activities. Early decision can only help, and never hurt.</p>
<p>Well I heard it can hurt with scholarships, if money is part of your issue.</p>
<p>Really? I see early decision as a good thing with scholarships, as long as you are an exceptional student. My friend got into Lehigh early decision for engineering with 30k a year. I feel as though the ED helped him with this scholarship.</p>
<p>Financial aid is the biggest worry of ED… Some schools use it in the RD round to convince a student to accept admission, ED cuts out incentive to give really generous financial aid in some cases.</p>
<p>If you need a lot of financial aid, do not for one minute think that you can apply ED. You need to apply in the regular round (and to rolling admissions schools) and then you need to line up all of the financial offers when you have received them.</p>
<p>In this day and age, 30k is nothing for a 50k a year school to give out. Chances are that that student’s family EFC was 20k and the school just met full need.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sing it again, happymomof1!!! If you can influence just one more person, then that’s one fewer post I’ll be reading that says “I got in early decision, but I need to say ‘no thanks’, because I need more Financial Aid. How do I go about doing that?”</p>
<p>In answer to the original question: what does ED gets you?
ED gets you an early decision. If you are accepted you will know in Dec. or thereabouts of your senior year of high school. You will not need to send anymore applications out, no more admissions fees, test score sending fees, transcript fees, no more letters of recommendation. You won’t have to write any additional application essays, and you won’t have to be pre-occupied with the whole college admissions drama for most of your senior year. At some schools it can give you a better chance of being accepted. People will argue about how much of a boost it can give an applicant’s chances, but the truth is that this depends on what school you’re talking about and how they employ ED as far as filling a percentage of their freshman class. In some cases it can be better for people with the academic background/stats/ECs/essays/etc. that put them right in the thick of the normal profile for admitted students, but not necessarily head and shoulders above the normal profile. The reason is that you have signaled your committment to attend by applying ED, and you are having your application read and considered among hundreds of applicants, not thousands. The admissions office just has more time to dedicate to reviewing those applications.</p>
<p>The downsides are you must be really sure the college you apply ED to your absolute first choice – that no matter where else you would apply to, if you were accepted at all of them, this ED school would be the one you’d choose without reservation. Otherwise you may find that as you go through the rest of your senior year and you’re hearing about the other colleges your friends are choosing to attend, you begin to feel like you made a hasty choice and the reasons you chose your ED school don’t seem so solid anymore.</p>
<p>The other downside is financial aid, because you will not have the opportunity to compare the different offers you get from different schools. You also will have potentially less negotiating power to get a bit better offer than your original one. That said, I have known several kids go back and ask for an adjustment in their ED offer and the adjustment was made for them. Still, you’re probably in a stronger position when you have not committed to attend already (as in RD) and to do so you’d need some adjustment in your aid package.</p>
<p>There are exceptions to this. My son applied ED with a lot of financial need, but we did our homework beforehand. Plus the school is very transparent with its aid policies, all aid is need-based, we have very simple family finances, we knew quite accurately what the aid would be prior to applying, the school meets full need and does not package loans in its aid packages. It’s rare set of circumstances, and not one that contradicts the general wisdom of not applying ED if you need lots of financial aid… but there are exceptions to that general rule.</p>
<p>I think ED is a great option for certain students, but it’s not something to be taken lightly.</p>