| More on the issue of financial aid and EFC. Last year, every school S1 was accepted to provided "100% of need." Also, each of them was essentially the same price. Financial aid in most cases was similar, including a small amount of work study. Cornell University, however, decided that he was in no need of any aid whatsoever--despite the fact that every other school saw him as eligible under the limits of the federal guidelines for work study. Basically, Cornell would have been 20K more expensive. (We didn't appeal at Cornell because he was much more interested in Mudd and MIT; if we had appealed, maybe that would have made a difference)
The same thing has happened this year with S2, albeit with a different school and with less significant differences. Unfortunately, that school is his present favorite. Since it wasn't an ED application though, we are able to appeal/negotiate.
Hopefully, someone who was ED to HMC can post about their experiences. All our experience shows is that an applicant may run across an outlier on aid and that would be painful if you applied ED to that particular school. |