My D’s friend applied to Smith and got in. I advised her to sit down with her parents to do the NPC and make sure it was a viable option. She said that the NPC had come back with very generous financial aid estimate. I honestly was skeptical of the ED strategy for this family. Turns out that they were expecting merit on top of financial aid and she got no merit scholarships. She turned Smith down.
This was not the right strategy for this high stats kid. She should have applied RD to Smith because she had a very high likelihood of getting in RD anyway. Then see if they offer anything to entice her to come. But I couldn’t tell them that because it was not my concern and they would not have listened to me anyway because they were sure that they had a great strategy.