College financial planner advised do not apply ED. Thoughts?

twoinanddone
Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:59:54 +0000

Not being able to use ED changes the chances of getting into one school. ONE. Yes, your chances of getting into a school might be (might be) better if you apply ED, but it is still ONE school. ED has higher acceptance rates and even seems like they accept students with lower stats in the ED round (the advantage), but remember that those ED numbers include legacies, athletes, special programs (Questbridge? Posse?) and other students who, if they applied RD would probably not be admitted on stats alone. ED has a lot of hooks in the pool and if you don’t have a hook, you aren’t competing against those applicants, but against the other plain old applicants with no hook. Are your chances really better in ED?

If you still want to go ED because you think the chances are that much better, you can do some work up front to see what your financial aid might be. You can ask for a pre-read for financial aid, you can research what the awards usually are. As much as we like to think our finances are complicated or special, schools aren’t reinventing the wheel for every single applicant. The awards are pretty standard. You most likely will get the same NEED BASED award in the ED round as in the RD round.

My kids applied to only one school each, not ED, but we knew what the awards would be. The first year, they did not receive any need based aid. The merit awards were as stated in the NPC or websites. Only ‘surprise’ was that a couple of the awards went up $500-$1000, but so did the tuition to match the increases.

ED has pros and cons, and one of the cons is that you don’t get to compare financial aid awards. You have to decide if the pros outweigh that con.