This is the official thread for those applying ED to Colgate 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!
HelloāOur family is in a bit of a quandary. Our son has Colgate at the top of his college list, would like to apply ED, but we have questions about our financial commitment if he is accepted. Since there is a mention of providing your stats in the thread intro, he has a 3.9 UW with either honors or AP classes all 4 years, has a long and well rounded list of extracurriculars, including a few selective college Book Awards his Jr year (like every other high achieving kid these days!), and great teacher/head of school recommendations. He is not a D1 athlete (but is being courted by several selective D3 schools).
Weāve done the online financial aid calculators as instructed by our regional admissions rep and the outcomes are not looking possible for our finances; the challenge is my husband owns a small business that he operates without a bank line of credit, so company profits are the line of credit, which your tax return does not (and wasnāt meant to) demonstrate. Our sense is that the online tools arenāt equipped to take take these types of personal nuances fully into account.
Attempting to get more info from the financial aid or admissions office directs us back to online calculators or gives us a boilerplate response (āwe are unable to meet with students individually at this timeā) or give us assurances that weāll be able to decline an ED offer due to our financial situation. This is our oldest so weāve not been through the FASFA or CSS process previously.
Any insights or advice are appreciated! Thanks so much in advance.
The ED agreement is not a legal contract. While it should be honored, if you believe you can afford it and made a good faith effort to verify that, IMO you can walk away if the offer is not sufficient.
Question about early decision similar to the one above: My son submitted his app early, in October, but did not designate it as ED. He was very worried about the ābindingā aspect and our ability to pay. I am curious if colleges might look at that as a lack of interest, or signal to them that he views it as a āsafety school.ā Like, if we were his first choice and he submitted in October he would have checked the box for ED1?
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If he submitted his app in early October for the RD round, then it may just be put on the back burner until they get through the ED1 and ED2 rounds. We did some of those with S22 and it was a long wait until March! If he thinks its a real first choice and he wants to go there, then he can likely call and convert it to an ED.
Thanks. Itās really among his top choices, but again heās worried about the financial side. We will have a good bit of need (we have a lot of kids) and he might actually decide to go to a ālesserā school if they gave him a TON of aid that a better school doesnāt match. Part of that is the freedom less cost gives him in choosing a major. At the same time, thereās a great chance that Colgateās more generous financial aid might make it more affordable than other schools. At the end of the day it was just too much for him to think about so he just went RD, and was wondering if thatācombined with his early application dateāwould signal to them that heās not that interested.
Hard to game the system on RD timing. Hopefully because he put in early effort and got his application in early (basically with all the EA deadlines) it shows heās a serious candidate with real interest in the school (especially if he had personal reasons he shared about the school that were in his application and supplementals). If he got lots of his applications in early then you will start hearing from some of the schools in the next couple of months and you have another decision point on whether you want to use the ED2 option on 1/15. My son did ED1 and it likely helped his admission a little but many of his friends did RD and had choices they were deciding between. You may also be able to reach out to the school and discuss the financial aid concerns in general w an ED application - their office is pretty responsive. What they likely wonāt do w ED candidates is work with you if have an FA offer at another school and you are hoping to have Colgate get closer or match. For that you will need to go through the EA/RD process I think.
Colgate does not track demonstrated interest so no worries there.
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Hey Veeshla,
I have applied ED1 to Colgate, and the website says mid-Dcember decisions will be released. You seem very knowledgable, do you know possibly the exact date and time when they will release decisions?
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I suspect December 13thā¦in the afternoon. 13 is a special number at Colgate. Good luck!!
Colgate announced an EDI results date and time of 12/13 at 7:13pm ET.
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My D applied RD to Colgate but just received an email from admissions about considering converting her application to ED2. Has anyone else received this and does anyone think it is a good sign that she may be admitted ED2 if she makes the switch? Any thoughts would be helpful and greatly appreciated.
According to Colgateās Common Data Set (Section C), this appears to be a standard offer open to all of its regular decision applicants.
Best of luck to your daughter.
My son also received it and Colgate is definitely a reach for him. I think itās a standard offer.
Good luck to all 
Thank you for your reply. That is what we thought but you do not get these ED conversion emails from all schools and you know they are sending them out too.
Good luck to you too!
I just read that Colgate ED was up 24% from last year. That seems crazy. Does anyone know what the acceptance and deferral rates were?
If itās your top choice and the cost isnāt a concern, absolutely apply ED2. The school is trying to make offers to students that want to attend. Standard offer or not, it separates folks that are committed vs a backup.
My son got the same. Heās also a reach. Ours offered a webinar about converting later this month. I actually signed up but I donāt think we could do a binding ED. He has a twin brother, and the FAFSA changes this year mean our expected family contribution will be twice what it was last year. So we have no idea what we can afford even if schools meet full need. We are totally flying blind. So binding is too big a risk.
I agree that Colgate is transparent about and offers conversion to ED2 for everyone but is a proactive email sent to a student asking them to consider conversion mean anything? I saw the common data set and all
It says is that it offers this conversion to all applicants. What I am asking is whether a proactive email is a signal of anything. I have daughters that are in college already who did not receive these conversion emails from Colgate and applied RD. They did not get in either.