My D27 has been preparing to apply ED to Brown - it’s her top school and she wants the acceptance rate advantage. However, I am concerned that we won’t be able to make the Expected Family Contribution numbers work. We are a high need family, and her older sibling goes to another 100% need met college, for which our current EFC is about 50% of Brown’s estimate. (From checking other similar school’s calculators, Brown has the highest EFC by a lot.) The Brown financial aid office told us that we can submit a special circumstances appeal ahead of the ED decision date, so that Brown can re-run the numbers in light of the other sibling in college and our unusually high medical costs. I know that if the numbers don’t work during ED, we have a legitimate reason for release from the binding commitment. I’m more concerned that if she applies ED and gets in, then we lose any leverage to make the financial aid package work. Whereas if she applies regular decision, gets in, and gets other college financial aid need-based offers, we can submit those to Brown for comparison. (But that is of course dependent upon her getting into another 100% need met college.) The thought occurred to me that we could possibly submit her sibling’s financial aid package for this year as leverage during the ED round if we needed to appeal. Does anyone have experience using a sibling’s financial aid package in the ED round in this way? Overall, I’m wondering what’s the point of getting in during the ED round if we can’t make the financial aid work. My D’s thinking is that if she doesn’t get in, then it won’t matter. Based upon your experience, should my D apply for ED or wait for regular decision?
Questions:
Is the sticker price for the other sibling’s school similar to Brown’s?
When will the other sibling be graduating college? I believe Brown still considers other siblings in college when calculating financial aid. So when the older sibling graduates, your EFC will go up. Are you ok with that?
Maybe, as long as Brown considers that school a peer school…not all meet full need schools will be peers in Brown’s eyes.
I don’t think there is much, if any, acceptance rate advantage after removing all the hooked candidates from ED (recruited athletes, kids of profs/famous people, development office tagged applicants, Questbridge/other CBOs.) The ED pool is also stronger than the RD pool. Brown says this on their site:
And this:
To me, this says there is no per se ED advantage, especially for unhooked applicants. Do I think it’s possible there can still be an advantage for unhooked applicants in ED simply because they are very strong applicants who fill some institutional need? Yes. And that institutional need in theory could be filled in ED and then not available any more to RD applicants. But that’s really splitting hairs.
So, apply ED if your D would always wonder ‘what if?’ she had applied ED, and she is a very strong applicant. But IME, with your financial aid uncertainty, it sounds like considering other offers would be preferable. And worst case scenario, how would you and your D feel if she did get accepted in ED and the financial aid just doesn’t work out even after appeal?
Simple answer is not to ED. RD is the better choice.
There likely is none. The ED acceptance rate includes athletes, Questbridge, and other invited guests so it is likely artificially high relative to RD.
I don’t know why you’d lose leverage in either decision. Either way, they risk losing you. If you apply to RD and get a better package to a peer school, that might give you more leverage.
When you’ll lose leverage is when you have only one in school and your cost goes up. Or when you don’t have an HYP level package to show them to hopefully match.
And IIRC, you can always submit a special circumstances appeal if your daughter gets accepted RD at Brown, and you want reconsideration of your financial aid award. This option is not just available to ED students.
OP certainly can appeal/ask for professional judgment of an RD financial aid package, assuming OP’s D is accepted in RD. I don’t see the 2027-28 appeal form, but here’s last year’s: https://finaid.brown.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/2026-27_AppealForm.pdf Assuming this form doesn’t change, note the high medical expenses will have to have occurred in 2025.
I also agree with momofthree’s points that OP will need to be ready for Brown costs to increase when there is not another sibling in college and/or they no longer have unusually high medical costs.
No, the sticker price is 50% less than Brown’s estimate. They will overlap by 1 or 2 years - sibling might need an extra year to graduate.
I no longer volunteer as an alumna interview at Brown-- but I did so for many years. I think you can take the university at their word that there is no advantage to applying early. The statistical blip you see is as a result of WHO is in the early pool, not that they are evaluated with a different lens than the RD pool. And in some instances- don’t know if this applies to your kid- the extra time (better essay, strong grades for first semester, etc.) is going to help make a stronger application.
I think the aid question is a little more nuanced. I’d encourage anyone applying early to recognize that they MAY get more money on appeal, they may not. And therefore, the RD applications need to be ready to go, including rock solid safeties (financial and otherwise).
I don’t think showing Brown that your kid got a better package from ABC college necessarily is meaningful, especially if ABC college will stack merit with need. Brown doesn’t do merit, period, end of story, so the comparison’s either with more generous colleges (Princeton, looking at you) or need/merit college’s might not yield a dime more from Brown.
If the NPC shows that Brown is not affordable- If it were me, I’d tell my kid “apply RD and let the chips fall where they may” while focusing on the more affordable schools on the list. Good luck!
I think momofthree was asking what is the full sticker price before aid. So, if the sticker price is $70K and you get $35K in need based aid, your net price is $35K. But Brown’s sticker price before aid is $97K this year, so the same level of aid may leave a higher net price, just depends on how Brown calculates what your family can contribute according to their formula. Also, if sibling’s school includes merit aid in addition to need based aid, Brown is not going to be moved by that.
Both D and I keep reading and seeing these online college admission advisors/groups point out a 3x increased acceptance rate and that 50% of the entering class is from the ED pool! When I brought this up with Brown admission office, they told me that there is only a slight increased rate bc of the hooked applicants. Btw, is being apart of the CBO Matriculate constitute an advantage?
Yep. It’s sad and misleading. Although it is true that around 50% of the seats of the entering class are filled in ED. RD will have a lower acceptance rate and lower yield than ED, although more students will be accepted. (Because of lower yield they have to accept more than 50% of the students in RD to fill the 50% of seats left. But the acceptance rate is still lower than in ED because there are many more applicants in RD.)
I would take that to be true then, assuming it was from an admission staffer. I always encourage students to talk directly to schools, and for finances totally ok for parents to speak with financial aid. IMO what Brown says on their website is NOT saying there’s never an advantage to applying ED. Their verbiage is quite nuanced.
Maybe. If your family has relatively limited income, if she’s first gen, from a rural area, a low populated state and/or is a disadvantaged student in any other way, that can matter. I am glad she is getting application assistance from Matriculate, that’s an excellent org.
Sorry - totally misread. Thanks for pointing that out! Sibling also goes to T15, no-merit aid school, but they do include loans (Brown doesn’t). Sticker price is basically the same ($1K less). But now that you mention it, let me check sibling’s package to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.
Brown will add federal student loans if you request them to do so— but they are not automatically part of the aid package, so they can help bridge a gap if necessary.
My student recently graduated from Brown and we received financial aid — and also successfully appealed our original package partially due to high medical expenses for a couple of years. We also had two in college for two years and they did take that into account.
Feel free to DM me if you have any specific questions.
Between there’s, Questbridge and more, there has to be numerous invited guests. Please ensure your student isn’t ‘stuck’ on Brown.
I’d RD - that’s me but most importantly make sure she doesn’t fall in love - at it seems highly unlikely to be affordable. And that she is experiencing a wide range of schools, some of which are affordable full pay or with auto merit and not based on an NPC.
Adding on, one thing that we did when assessing our college budget was calculating college “savings” in terms of what we wouldn’t be paying for once kid was in college — ie, food for most of the year and the cost of ECs, since those were covered by the college.
I believe Brown when it says there is no advantage–as applied to most applicants. I also agree there are probably exceptions, but only for specific circumstances, and I would not consider that an important qualification unless I knew I was in one of those circumstances (like if I was a recruited athlete and the coach wanted me to apply ED).
Meanwhile, I don’t know what will happen with other offers and negotiating in your specific case, but I do know when families here do things like chase merit and compare offers and sometimes negotiate, they can be pleasantly surprised with the ultimate result. Surprised both in the sense of where the kid ends up choosing, but also with exactly how low of a cost of attendance they were able to secure.
So personally, I think cost-sensitive families with highly competitive kids should almost never ED to colleges unless the NPC is saying they will get a full ride, or at least close to it. I just think there is too much potential for these pleasant surprises, particularly for highly competitive kids, to rationally lock yourself into an option which may be affordable, but barely.
I’ve been reading other posts that for RD showing another comparable school (no merit, same sticker price) that the student got into (like the one sibling goes to) has helped in many (but not all) cases. I just wasn’t sure if this would be the case showing a sibling’s package (with exact same family numbers) could possibly be helpful in the same way.
So are you saying that being low income would this make a difference in the ED round in terms of increasing chances?
I talked to someone who answered the phone in the admission’s office? Is there someone else in their office that you’d recommend I ask to talk to?