<p>The upside to ED is fairly clear, although less so than the basic stats would indicate. A large reason why ED acceptance numbers are so high is that they usually include recruited athletes and legacies, two categories of applicants with far higher than average acceptance rates.</p>
<p>What would your family have done if the Penn FA offer had come in just below what you felt would result in a reasonable, responsible level of debt for your family? Would you have been comfortable burdening your child and yourselves with high debt? Sure, you could turn down the offer-and your child could end up at their backup school with an even worst FA package. Or you could forgo an eventual offer from a comparable school with much better aid and snatch up that Penn offer. </p>
<p>Not going ED makes it possible for a family weigh all the options. Is ending up at the dream school worth an extra $8,000 in 4 year debt? How about $20,000? $60,000? How far down the college list is a student willing to go to reduce debt?</p>
<p>Okay, a simple (and simple-minded) analogy:</p>
<p>You win 5 minutes of free shopping at Store X. To take best advantage of that prize, you go to Store X ahead of time, scope out what they have to offer, scan the aisles to determine your best strategy . . . and when you return the next day for your 5-minute shopping spree, you take full advantage!</p>
<p>The problem with ED is that unless you’re a high school guidance counselor, or you have a half dozen kids who’ve already been to college, chances are that you know next to nothing about the types of financial aid offers that you might receive from different schools. Each school is different . . . each has different criteria for determining need. Intimate familiarity with the financial aid offered by School X still won’t allow you to predict the offer you might get from School Y.</p>
<p>That’s why the opportunity to compare offers can hardly be deemed trivial. Most families are fumbling around in the dark when it comes to predicting financial aid offers . . . and the net price calculators are as likely to mislead as to inform. ED is an invitation to make your family’s college decision while wearing a blindfold. There’s good reason to be cautious.</p>
<p>^ Sue. Your right,waiting until the spring lets you weigh all your options. The downside to this is they maybe worse than the Ed choice you gave up!!! No guarantees in life. All things considered you won’t convince me that Ed isn’t a solid choice to make.</p>
<p>My point is that it’s a gamble, one some families can easily afford to make while others need to be more cautious. For both of our families ED turned out to be a good choice, but there are enough cautionary tales on CC to give parents pause.</p>
<p>^ Sue, I agree 100% with your last post. I spent alot of time and effort before we decided to apply Ed. It’s not for anyone who doesn’t want to spend the time to understand all the ins and outs.The reason we did it was UPenn accepted approx 1175 of 4800 Ed applicants. They expect approx 25,000 Rd Apps. fighting for 1250 spots.</p>
<p>And if you can pay for UPenn at all costs… then go ahead. But there is a risk, as other posters have pointed out, that if you have to wait for the FA result and the school is slow that other schools will get a whiff of your ED result, and possibly blacklist you because they think you are trying to play it both ways. You might note that it is some VERY experienced posters out here that have concerns about ED.</p>
<p>I agree with Sue 22 that it is highly unlikely that anyone with a yearly income of 200,000 dollars could expect 35,000 in financial aid. Of course, I don’t know this person’s financial details. However, the Financial Aid Officer at Amherst told me that a good rough (very rough) estimate is that your EFC will be around 1/3 of your income. In this person’s case, 1/3 of 200,000 is about 65,000; I doubt that the tuition/room/board/books at Swarthmore is much over 65,000.</p>
<p>^^It might help if you know what the ED process is before you get all twisted. You apply ED with your Fin aid info. The school gives you your Fin aid pkg at or very close to the time of acceptance. You then decide. Whats the problem??</p>
<p>I would not let DS1 apply ED anywhere. He had no idea where he wanted to go anyhow, so that wasn’t an issue. He refused to “fall in love” with any school until we had all the cards on the table, because he understood that money would be a factor. The only school he got rejected by (MIT) didn’t offer ED anyhow, so no “what ifs” about it to worry about.</p>
<p>We’re a middle income family that can’t afford full-pay but doesn’t qualify for much aid except at very generous schools (one of which DS1 now attends). My DH owns his own business which complicates the NPCs. But… I would let DS2 consider ED if he has a clear first choice where the ED bump might make or break his acceptance. </p>
<p>The reasons I’m comfortable with it for DS2 include the fact that we’ve been around the block once with DS1 and I’ve seen how various different schools look at our financial picture. With DS1, I kinda had no idea how much we were going to end up having to pay, and wouldn’t have known a good offer if I saw one in December/January (without anything to compare it to). But now, I have a very good idea of what we can expect for need-based and merit aid at a number of schools. So I could give my son a number (I’d be a touch conservative) and say, if they offer you below $X, you’re going to have to turn it down. And make sure that he had other solid applications in the pipeline including places where he’d get assured merit. (He will very likely be a NMSF, which makes it easier to find assured merit options.)</p>
<p>At this point (Junior year) he still doesn’t really know where he wants to go, so I doubt it will come down to that, but, I could see going for it under the right circumstances.</p>
<p>Look, without ay admit/FA experience, in the #17 example: ED at Amherst could give you 10k less aid than RD from, say, Williams. And you don’t realize that because Williams is not on the table.</p>
<p>But guess what? Go full RD and Williams (or Nowhere U) could still be a 10k better deal-- and this kid is sitting there still “dreammming” about Amherst. And, at that point, are the parents suddenly more serious? </p>
<p>If families don’t look at the whole thing rationally, then they’re lost from the get-go. If you have NO complications in your personal finances, if you know what you can pay, if you tested that against the forecasters and NPC, if you’ve researched this college and solidly understand why it should be a sole top choice, if you carefully decided that you could even squeeze an extra $ from your budget, if you had to-- and your kid has Plan B– that’s one thing. If you’re misty eyed, forget it.</p>
<p>And, that example where there turned out to be contact with the dad, after all? Borderline unethical, to begin with. A dad who gets remarried before 12/31-- shortsighted. Etc.</p>
<p>Know what I am more worried about? Poor kids out there assuming they’ll get the aid they need, then being hit with a bill for even a few thousand that they don’t have, over and above student loans work study and summer job.</p>
<p>Actually, this is not necessarily true. One of the cavets of ED is that you withdraw all applications and not make any new applications. The parents, the student and the school must all sign off that they understand the process.</p>
<p>In many schools once a student receives an ED notification, the process stops until the student either accepts or gets released from the ED agreement. No transcripts, recommendations or other applications are supported until the ED issue is resolved. No GC worth their salt is going to burn their relationship with a school and risk other students down the pike because one family did not do their due diligence.</p>
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<p>I totally agree with looking forward on this one, because this is exactly how it played out in our house as there was a range of about 12k between the “best” and worst packages from schools that met 100% demonstrated need (including Amherst and Williams). In our house the cost of Amherst was 5k more not counting loans that were in the package (where Williams at the time gave no loans).</p>
<p>Sybbie, This is the problem with uninformed comments. The agreement says " Should a student who applies for fin. aid not be offered an award that makes attendance possible,the student may decline the offer of admission and be released from the ED commitment".</p>
<p>You are absolutely right; a student can be released from the ED agreement.</p>
<p>But what I said was the the application process stops on the end of the high school (or is suppose to stop) until something happens with the ED application; either the student accepts the seat at the ED school or gets released from the ED commitment. </p>
<p>Unless you are a high school administrator, you are woefully uninformed if you think that the process still goes forward and the student can submit applications to other schools if they have not been released from the ED agreement. I can tell you unequivocally at my high school and many other high schools of my peers that the high school does process anymore applications for the student until they have the release from the ED school. If the school request information, they are told that the student is still committed to an ED school and has not been released from that commitment.</p>
<p>Sybbie, You are wrong again.Nothing stops!!! or is supposed to stop!!!You can apply to as many schools as you like(Only 1 ED or RED). You get your Ed decision with fin. aid pkg, and you decide. If you like it you accept.If you don’t you decline and ALL your other Apps. remain active.</p>
<p>With the exception of rolling admission at City/State University, if a school is seeking additional information on an application after having been accepted ED, we let them know that the student has been accepted ED to a school, but has not yet committed to the school so we are waiting for a commitment or a release before we proceed. Can a student parent balk? Of course they can but at the end of the day the UFT, SCA and NACAC will all support the decision not to send any additional information until a decision is made.</p>
<p>^Now your grasping at straws.I have no idea where you got your added info. It’s has nothing to do with whether it’s a good idea to apply ED. We had 1 state acceptance in hand,1 U. Rochester Priority Review in process and 10 other apps ready to go. If Fin aid pkg fell short we would have declined and moved on. NO downside. Those are facts that someone seeking info can count on.</p>
<p>Since the midyear report is bot due on the high school end until mid february, we have time to wait for a release before proceeding. </p>
<p>Not grasping at straws, i am telling you as an administrator in day high school that we let our students and our parents know the school’s policy and we reiterate it be fore sending out the app. We give our students a calendar of due dates according to application deadlines of when request have to be received in our office. We process ED/EA/rolling/priority apps. However once a student is accepted ED no additional applications are processed grot the student unless they are released. And yes we will contact our regional admissions rep for confirmation.</p>
<p>Your missing the point. The ED parents make the decision, YES or NO. It’s meaningless that you won’t send out addtl apps while ED is still in place. If the parents reject the ED agreement you will facilitate as many other apps as they see fit.</p>
<p>^ Now you seem to understand my point.ED decisions are announced mid Dec. along with Fin aid pkg. Parents decide yes or no in mid dec. They can now accept or decline. If decline they still have time for as many apps as they want, and all previous apps remain in place. And any Statte U. acceptances they have are still avail to them. There is NO downside.</p>