Breaking ED Agreement Advice

[1NJParent]

@ucbalumnus

Perhaps ED schools should do the following:

For ED applicants applying for FA, have the FA office issue a contingent-on-admission FA offer quickly (well before ED decisions are issued). Give the applicant an option, based on the contingent-on-admission FA offer, to continue binding ED (no option to back out for financial reasons) or convert to a non-binding RD application well before ED decisions are issued.

Basically, the school says “if you are admitted ED, here is what it will cost you: $______; do you want to stay with binding ED or switch to non-binding RD?”.

For ED applicants not applying for FA, same thing, except that $______ is the college’s list price.

This isn’t what colleges that offer ED want. They want near-certain commitments from ED applicants. From their perspective, what’s the point of reviewing and admitting an ED applicant and then s/he turns out to be just a “maybe”? They could have offered EA instead and they choose not to.