<p>Personally I do not think that ED had that much affect on the low-income applicants. I do not remeber if UVA publsihed this, but the majority of the schools that I looked at showed how 100% of a students needs would be met if they were coming from a family that made under X amount a year. Thus, a low income student could still apply early and be almost certain that their needs would be met.
The people hurt by ED is the middle class. They are the ones who do not have any real idea of the kind of financial aid that they are going to recieve, and so it is them who defer from applying early. That said, it still is not that big of a deal for IS students because the cost of UVA is already greatly reduced. It still might be cheaper full cost than some private school with a decent amount of financial aid.
and btw, I do not think that the ED class is signifigantly weaker. Just check the who got in pages on this website and you will see many strong applicants who were deferred and then got in regular.</p>