This is the official thread for those applying ED to American University.
List your unweighted GPA, any SAT /ACT scores, and ECs. What majors are you going into?
Ask your questions, the CC community is here to help!
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Hoping they release decisions around 12/15 this year!! Best of luck to everyone 
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My friend applied EDI to American University in DC and just got a call from Jeremy Lowe in Admissions that she was accepted! Anyone else get a call? She’s worried it was a prank?
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Jeremy Lowe is an official in the admissions office, but it’s extremely rare that students would get personal calls of notification unless they have some extraordinary circumstance. I’d recommend her checking the Future Eagle portal for an acceptance letter and make sure that the call came from the office line listed on his AU profile: 2028856012.
Thanks - she said the call came from that number. Hope it’s the real thing!
She got the official letter today, so I guess American does phone calls too now. 
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We got a yes!! So happy for her. 1320 SAT current school doesn’t rank or calculate GPA she is an IB diploma candidate
AU just dropped its ranking from 72to 105!!! (33 places down) Very disappoiting.
Clarifying some things here:
The ranking is from US News, which dramatically changed its formula for how it ranks colleges. Nothing about AU itself has changed, just the way that US News ranks. You can read their changes here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
One of the biggest changes is that they don’t take class size, terminal degree faculty, alumni giving, HS class standings, or graduate debt borrowing into account anymore, which were all categories which AU did well in (especially class size, which at AU averages 20 students per class).
You can read President Sylvia Burwell’s September message about the ranking here: Values, Choices, and the 2024 US News Rankings | Office of the President | American University, Washington, DC
Of AU’s sister/comparable schools, 19 moved down in rankings because of the methodology changes. US News has also been under extremely scrutiny for their rankings and methodology for many years, so while they are a factor in deciding, take them with an extremely large grain of salt.
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I would just reiterate what positiveshake said. The new USNWR formula for rankings has been the source of much discussion here on CC and elsewhere. Many (many) private colleges went down in the rankings, and many public universities went up. That is because the new formula gives no or less weight to things like class size, high school class rank, graduation rates, financial resources per student, etc. (and more weight to metrics involving Pell Grant recipients and first generation college students). Private schools like AU, Tulane, WashU, Brandies, Wake Forest, NYU and others all fell in the rankings. These schools are just as good as before. The ranking criteria is just different in this particular publication. Ultimately, each student needs to find the right fit for them.
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My DS was asked to switch from EA to ED2, is it worth it to increase his chances?
AU does not offer EA.
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ED will increase chances but you must be able to afford it since it is binding. There is a risk they could offer you less as ED vs RD also. Don’t apply ED unless (1) it’s your absolute #1 dream school, (2) you can pay full board
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Anyone else get admitted ED and then not recieve anywhere near the financial package calculated by the NPC? Ours parent contribution was twice what was predicted, even with conferrring with the FA office last summer. So disappointing and really makes you feel AU lures you in with the hopes you’ll make the fiancies work out some how.
Sadly, it’s a LOT of people. I think this is common at the expensive schools that don’t guarantee meeting need.
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Unfortunately @BoroDad is right. This is extremely common at schools like AU that are private but don’t guarantee need. It’s why they stress not to apply ED unless you can afford the full price. I’d recommend your student reach out to their financial aid counselor at AU to see what their options are.
Thank you for the guidance. We understand how this can go, but the issue is, we did everything AU asks to traige this sort of situation: NPC and talking with FA. When we talked to the office after the offer, they admitted their cost calculator was inaccurate and they knew this could be an issue. It is apparently more important to treat the finances of the pool of applicants as a whole, knowing they will get their full tuition payers, rather than focus on an individual they courted and encouraged to apply ED. If the offer had been anywhere near the ballpark figure we were all working with, I would not be on this forum. Aside from the financies, we decided not to commit to a school where we could not trust the information we were given through the tools the school itself provides. But thanks for listening!
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PS I’ve seen in online forums that there is quite a bit of frustration over AU’s approach to aid and that we are far from an isolated case. I hope others on this forum had a more straightforward process. If not, it is possible to be released from the ED contract on the basis of inaccurate NPCs.
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ED2 are out per Instagram.
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