It’s fairly common to apply EA to several schools even when applying ED somewhere. It is non-binding and many schools fill a high percentage of their class through EA. It is a good application strategy.
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You can only apply for ONE Early decision which is binding and you need a signature from the school counselor. Early Action is not binding and not restrictive, it is pretty much the same as RD except the decision date(s) for the EA are around by the end of Jan or Feb instead of March.
If his ED choice is accepted, he will need to notify all other EA schools to withdraw his applications. The worst case here is we paid the application fee for the 6 EA schools and my son wrote the suppl essays for those schools earlier.
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Got it. Sounds like a well thought out strategy to increase his chances. Like I wrote before, if he chose 12 schools, and he would be happy to attend any of them, then the hard part is over EXCEPT…having TOO many choices. I told my boy the best problem to have is too many choices. Its like you’re at a buffet, with so many dessert choices. All are great, but you only have room for one. Sounds like your boy is going to have too many dessert choices 
Does everyone who fills out financial aid get the idoc request or to do items on their financial aid checklist. I haven’t received anything yet. Getting a little concern.
Federal Financial aid or the CSS profile? I did fill out the Federal financial aid and they only asked me to authorize them to access my tax returns. about 2 weeks later, the application is approved, and provided me an EIC number. something like that. However, the CSS profile did send me an idoc request to submit a copy of tax returns, w2, and etc.
Check your emails, they may go to your spam folder.
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yes, it sounds like a buffet but he only wanted to eat 2 items (Cornell and NYU). All other deserts are there just in case both Cornell and NYU don’t work out. To be honest, I preferred Dartmouth and my wife preferred Tufts University but my son said NO to both of them as his first choices. hahaha
Good that he knows what he wants. I am glad that we spent time doing college visits with him (my wife and I took 1 week off from work and drove thousands of miles with a big dog in the car, and not easy) and let him see where he wanted to spend the next 4 years.
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On the Financial Aid page, my daughter’s To Do List cleared out. But if I select “Cornell” for Institution and “Financial Aid” for Function and hit “go” then I see all the documents that are currently “processing” under Status. I see the CCS Profile plus several supporting docs from IDOC. They’ve been in the processing stage since the to do list cleared out. Does anyone know how long it generally takes for them to process?
Where do I see this
It’s entirely possible that you won’t receive your financial aid package until AFTER the ED decisions are released. Which stinks because some kids will know that they got in, but still won’t know if it’s affordable.
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There’s nothing under to do for me so I’m a bit stressed that it’s bad news as far as admissions for my son.
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seeing from the link above that is says 3-5 days
I would assume this means that his file has already been processed.
Yes but I don’t even see anything getting processed at all. I’ve been checking that link since a week ago. Also Cornell has never requested any docs from me.
I had to call financial aid and they were very helpful. You might want to call them if you are concerned. From everything I’ve read, financial aid is separate from admissions so I don’t think it’s an indication either way but you might want to confirm that they have the documents that they need from you.
So I’m guessing maybe I don’t qualify for financial aid which is ok because we were only doing it for the loans for later on should my son decide to do his masters. I did call them and their response was we have everything we need. Which I guess is just my CSS form.
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if you think you wouldn’t qualify then that would make sense for sure
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I wonder what will happen if Cornel or any university happens to admit 90% students who need financial aid? How would they operate the business? I know they have large sum of endowment. But that can run out in a few such years. Is financial aid really 100% independent from admission process? This could be top business secret which no one outside knows.
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Did your boy do any summer programs at any of the colleges he applied to?..from what I gather, that is an additional plus point. Again, anectdotally, admin officers have commented that they look for evidence of true interest to match what’s noted in applications. For example, my boy is all about comp sci, specifically video game development. He spent 2 weeks at Columbia one summer, and 2 weeks at Tufts the following summer…all learning coding and game development. Cornell didn;t have summer program options…but they have classes specifically geared towards effective video game development (who knew??)…anyway, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact I’ll be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars so my kid could learn how to make video games (Yes, I know its a big and very profitable industry)…but just the notion…OY!
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Expensive summer programs are generally not considered admission bumps.
IMO they can help with the “why us” type essays but unless it’s a competitive entry summer program, it’s not going to do anything more than that.
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