<p>Princeton Review's book gave them a rating of 96 for financial aid.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what rating Princeton Review gave the school. YOUR need based aid will be dependent on YOUR family’s income and assets. I don’t believe Lafayette guarantees to meet full need (someone else can tell me if I’m incorrect about this…honestly I’m not sure). </p>
<p>I will give you my humble opinion…if finances are a significant consideration for your college selection…do NOT apply early decision. ED is a binding application whereby you agree to accept enrollment early if offered a place. You KNOW what the costs are, and there are some financial aid calculators out there that can give you a guess as to what your family MIGHT be expected to contribute. You absolutely should do this. You also need to talk to your family about what THEY can and will pay for your education annually. Remember, the SCHOOL determines the expected contribution by your family…you do not do this. There are a number of threads here from students whose families will only contribute a small fraction of what the school has computed their contribution to be. They are now trying to figure out what to do about their ED acceptances. To be honest, they should have known what the parents intended to contribute BEFORE they applied. </p>
<p>If you apply regular decision, you can apply to a variety of schools and you can then compare financial aid offers and compare total out of pocket costs.</p>
<p>Lafayette is a terrific school. Why would you think that applying ED would be better than applying RD? The “edge” for applying ED is not significant. In other words…if you don’t have the “stuff” to be accepted, an ED application will not GET you accepted. If you have the “stuff” to be accepted, your chances RD are just as good (or very close) as ED.</p>
<p>Remember aid is based on what the school calculates your financial need to be based on family income and assets, not just on you thinking you need aid. You are expected to attend when accepted ED as long as they have met your need as determined by them. If finances are an issue you may be better off not applying ED so that you can compare aid and merit offers from other schools before you decide where to attend. If you are accepted ED you lose the option to compare offers. If you scroll through CC you will find many posts where students were accepted ED but did not receive the amount of aid they considered they needed to attend. For instance
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/624024-ed-decision-shot-down-financial-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/624024-ed-decision-shot-down-financial-aid.html</a></p>
<p>When you look at schools statistics for aid you have to realize they are based on meeting need as defined by them. For instance when you see that the average aid is, say, $15,000, that could mean 2 people each received $15,000 based on each having need of $15,000. Or it could mean that one received $25,000 and the other received $5,000 based on their need as calculated by the school. The average would be $15,000 in either scenario.</p>
<p>Your need is based on your family income and assets. The averages published by schools do not mean that a student with family income of $150,000 will receive the same ‘average’ aid as a student with family income of $30,000. One may receive a lot. The other may receive nothing.</p>
<p>Well, I really don’t ‘have the stuff’ to get accepted for sure by Lafayette College. </p>
<p>To give you a brief picture, I have a 2030 SAT and only a 3.25 weighted GPA (top 20% class rank), and I’m from Arkansas. </p>
<p>If I applied regular decision to Lafayette – which is far and away my number one choice – I would likely get rejected. The accept 37% regular decision, but they accept 68% early decision.</p>
<p>And that significant difference is not likely because their ED applicant pool was better; Lafayette College lists the average test scores for both pools and they were almost the exact same.</p>
<p>So, essentially, both pools were equal in strength, yet the ED pool was accepted at almost double the rate.</p>
<p>Unless I’m missing something, I think my chances would be significantly increased.</p>
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<p>Anyways, as far as how much money I would need…</p>
<p>My brother is currently a freshman at Williams College. My dad, who makes about $90,000 a year, had to pay $17,000 this year.</p>
<p>My dad probably can’t pay more than $20,000 a year, and I think I would be willing to take out $5,000 in loans each year if I need to.</p>
<p>So we have $25,000 to work with, for my brother and I…</p>
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<p>And, by the way, thanks a lot for the detailed response.</p>
<p>ED is used by rich parents to get their kids in schools they would otherwise not qualify for. The reason this works, is that the schools know the kids must pay up, and it does wonders for their “yield”. There are some schools that try to fill their entire class with ED’s, see Dickinson.</p>
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<p>Well…in my opinion…the trade off for your perceived edge in admittance is that Lafayette would EXPECT you to accept their offer of enrollment and financial aid based on THEIR calculation of your need. </p>
<p>I don’t think you can have it both ways…either you agree to go and accept their offer…or you would need to pull your ED acceptance agreement and apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>If you have significant financial aid issues, I would say you should not apply ED…but that is my opinion, and clearly it’s not shared by the bunches of students on this forum who are now grappling with less financial aid than they hoped for with an ED acceptance.</p>
<p>I went through a similar dilemma, which you can read about in my thread about ED and finances.</p>
<p>Frankly, if you really love the school, you need to tell them exactly what the situation is, and if they recommend you apply ED, then you may. It is a lot of trouble and a difficult situation if you don’t get the aid you want/need, so I would recommend you hold off until regular decision if you are really worried about aid. If I could do it again, I think I would. Then there isn’t any obligation to go if the aid doesn’t line up the way you want. While you CAN back out of the agreement if need be, it isn’t the most fun way to handle finances.</p>
<p>Well, given my situation described above, how likely is it that I will get sufficient aid?</p>
<p>[Financial</a> Aid Estimator](<a href=“http://www.lafayetteexperience.com/financialaid/estimator/estimator.php]Financial”>http://www.lafayetteexperience.com/financialaid/estimator/estimator.php)</p>
<p>What you get out of the calculator is all you should expect by the way. Merit aid is far too competitive to bank on. </p>
<p>Thumper1 is right on this one. Dealing with not getting the aid you feel you need in an ED agreement is a really tough pill to swallow.</p>