<p>mqrite</p>
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<p>No, what the ethically challenged posters have said is to game the ED system by applying and if you don’t hit the FA jackpot while gaining the admissions boost, just decline the acceptance. Big difference. What the ethically challenged posters need to understand is if you want to shop around FA packages, do not apply ED</p>
<p>dstark</p>
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<p>Life isn’t easy. But need I remind you that Parent’s and their student bear the PRIMARY responsibility for funding their education - not the colleges. All those whining because the aid they were given isn’t what they wanted should be ashamed of themselves. If you don’t like the GIFT of aid a college is giving you, find another college</p>
<p>bluebayou</p>
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<p>This is just another example of you being obtuse</p>
<p>Teachva:
Even if an ED college is a first choice, finaid remains an unknown. I suggest focusing on those colleges that have Jan. 15 or so RD deadlines rather than on ED 1 or ED II colleges. You run the risk of being offered inadequate finaid again.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. I hope my mistakes will help others make better choices.</p>
<p>" for the moment, ask him to focus on schools that have ED 1 and ED II whose deadlines have not yet passed along with RD schools. "</p>
<p>Nooo. Have him focus on rolling admission and RD schools. He may not get any money from ED schools particularly since a top 8 school already has not given him any financial aid. The more competitive collleges are, usually the better their financial aid is. Since money is a concern, applying to rolling and RD schools will allow your S to compare offers. He probably has the stats to get some excellent merit aid at some second tier schools and some schools in the bottom half of the first tier.</p>
<p>For many students, an in-state public is their best financial safety – a college they know will admit them and that they can afford. He may have the stats to get merit aid from his flagship state school.</p>
<p>A couple of people–BerryBerry and Mummom, to be precise–insist upon talking about people “whining” about FA awards.</p>
<p>I hope you are not talking about me. I am not “whining”–to the contrary, I am deeply grateful for the generous awards offered us by two schools that actually did meet need. </p>
<p>I chose to reveal some personal experiences here in hopes of providing a dose of reality and helping others who might find the information useful. I do not think that I deserve to be insulted by you or anyone else as a result.</p>
<p>Teachva, your son should immediately apply to a good range of RD schools-- <em>NOT EDII</em> schools, where the same thing might happen. There should be plenty of choices with workable deadlines. He has plenty of time to get the Jan 1 apps in, and just a few superb LACs with post Jan 1 deadlines that I can think of (at least as of 2008) are Pomona, Swarthmore, and Haverford. If he has a good Personal Statement and one other good essay, he should be able to recycle them with some editing for most applications. As long as he gets his Common Apps in on time, the rest of the pieces can follow. I’m sorry about his ED disappointment.</p>
<p>You obviously did due diligence and were blind-sided by the results. Just start applying elsewhere NOW, and don’t wait to hear the results of any appeal at the ED school.</p>
<p>Agree with Consolation–get working on other apps ASAP. Also get with GC and teachers who wrote recommendations first thing after the break and have the paperwork they need to fill out ready to go. Colleges are more lenient with deadlines when it comes to paperwork that comes from a party other than the student.</p>
<p>Also agree with NSM–get off the ED train. RD all the way.</p>
<p>If you can’t afford it now, barring future scholarships that may or may not bear fruit, cut your losses now and find a college that you can afford. I build in a 5% raise in COA per year for college costs. You don’t want to be in a situation where your kid gets 2 or 3 years into a college and then you run out of money.</p>
<p>^, Yes, I was wrong to suggest looking at ED II schools. I was focused on deadlines more than on finaid when making the suggestion, but there are RD schools whose deadlines are similar. Focus on those instead of ED colleges.</p>
<p>No, Consolation I was not referring to you. If I remember correctly, I think our situation is similar to yours in terms of paying for college. We are taking loans just to pay our EFC! I do not think we are the only ones doing this, either. Yes, we hate it, and it is a burden for us, but it’s a choice we are making to do what we think is best for our S. No one is forcing us to “beggar” ourselves.</p>
<p>There were <em>many</em> other posters who chimed in early in this thread who made great points and then left. Perhaps they took offense at being labeled the “ethics police.”</p>
<p>Actually, I looked back and it wasn’t you, Consolation --it was the poster who said expect to take out loans to cover some if not all of your FAFSA EFC, nevermind the additional money the Profile comes up with! I can’t remember her name. I remember giving a resounding “amen” to that point!</p>
<p>All of the private schools my S applied to came up with basically the same amount (around $17k) to cover our “need” (as they see it). We are grateful for that much.</p>
<p>If my S had received the 17K you received, we would have been grateful too. We are working on RD apps. We will have two in by Jan.1. Then, we will focus on Jan. 15 apps. </p>
<p>No one will be in the office at the ED school until Jan. 4th. So the ability to appeal their FA decision will not be available until after the Jan. 1 acceptance deadline. So, we are moving on.</p>
<p>Techva, just fyi. DS sent an e-mail to one of his schools and got an automated response saying ‘closed until 1/4.’ But then he got a real answer the morning after, so can’t hurt to send off an e-mail. That will also cover you if there are questions about applying to other schools after getting accepted ED.</p>
<p>Teachva: Perhaps your S will do better money-wise in the RD round. My S did several of his apps during Christmas week anyway, as did many of his friends. In our case, however, there was no “we” involved since he did them entirely on his own. This was fine with me, as much as I would have loved to have read his essays! Good luck.</p>
<p>Teachva,</p>
<p>I think first and foremost, you need to make sure that your son has a financial safety in the mix where if admitted, he would be happy to attend. </p>
<p>If your son is applying to similar schools as the ED school, he may have similar outcomes as far as financial aid is concerned. If this happens, then you will end up with a bunch of schools that are financially out of reach and he will still have no place to go in the fall.</p>
<p>Cast a wide net of schools. This may be coming down a notch in the rankings to find a place where he stands a good chance of getting merit $$. Even with merit $$, be careful to read the fine print regarding the ters needed to keep the scholarship.</p>
<p>Make sure that your son gets officially released from his ED school as his GC may request proof of the release to move forward in the process (sending transcripts, evaluations, etc.)</p>
<p>“Maybe Brown wants its accepted ed students to go to the school. You’ll have to ask Brown.”</p>
<p>I was curious, so I did, back on 12/23:</p>
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<p>I got this response today:</p>
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<p>Mummom, did you interpret this as whining?!?!? I wrote this, and it certainly wasn’t written as such! (I’ll also note I have danced around the topic of where I stand on ED and/or breaking it.) </p>
<p>I was simply stating the reality for many families. That EFC number is always a shocker -and what PROFILE does with it can be an even bigger jolt. If a family <em>chooses</em> to take on an expensive school, unless they have done an admirable job of saving and investing, borrowing to make EFC may be an option they have to consider. </p>
<p>The reality is that many families believe colleges will take into account COL differences, the size of one’s mortgage, etc. when determining EFC. I’ve talked to parents with PhDs and good jobs who think that money will rain down from the sky and scholarships will materialize from thin air. I know parents who have saved diligently from Day One and are still shocked at how much this college thing costs.</p>
<p>Having dealt with two different high schools’s guidance departments over the past few years, I am fairly well convinced that counselors are advised to avoid talking about money. My hunch is that they don’t want to be seen as “directing” students to schools based on socioeconomic status and would prefer to leave that decision to the families. Fair enough, but there are still a lot of people who don’t discover the reality of the FA process until mid-senior year. Kind of hard to do much except retrench by then. The handouts the school does distribute are dated by the time they come out of the copy machine – and the weblinks on those handouts point them to our erstwhile friend, the EFC calculator. </p>
<p>As for college financing at our house, I went back to work part time, against medical advice, despite significant ongoing medical issues that had kept me home for five years, just so that we didn’t have to borrow a chunk of our EFC. (Not whining. Am happy to be alive and able to work, period!) We don’t have other family members who could help us. We were close enough to full pay that we knew substantive FA was unlikely, even with professional judgment for huge medical bills. We have no investment properties, trusts or other assets – just our home equity, retirement plan, two eleven-year old cars, three sewing machines and what’s in the bank. S1’s efforts have also added a substantial chunk (40-50% of COA/yr. between scholarship, Staffords and work) to paying the tution bill. We’re just grateful we can do it, and my S is more than willing to pull his oar.</p>
<p>My kids knew from about 6th grade on that we would help them go to the college of their choice, but that they would have to have significant skin in the game. Our philosophy is that this is a family effort. Other folks will have different ways of doing things. </p>
<p>ED was never on the table with S1, as he was not ready to irrevocably commit, and two of his top three schools offered EA. S2 would have seriously considered ED II had he not been accepted at one of his EA schools. We were willing to risk the tradeoff between FA and acceptance in that case.</p>
<p>I can also see how some applicants may feel shorted on ED FA packages this year; with the damage to endowments, packages may be slimmer (or packaged differently) than in prior years. Even folks who did their homework on affordability and a specific school’s track record on FA may have been surprised.</p>
<p>Note to teachva – Carleton and Macalester have a 1/15 RD deadline. Swat is 1/2. (I just checked their websites to be sure.)</p>
<p>No, I was <em>agreeing</em> with you entirely!
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote in your above post either!
It certainly is difficult to communicate via message board, isn’t it.</p>
<p>I saw a lot of comments about this thread dying, or staggering on forever, or having already died, mixed in with a lot of good information, when someone suggested I look at this thread. Check for the links to authoritative information, ask new questions in new threads if needed, but consider the back-and-forth here CLOSED. </p>
<p>Reminder: the Terms of Service here include taking care to avoid personal insults. </p>
<p>Have a happy New Year, and enjoy your school holidays, or wrapping up regular round applications, as your family’s case may be.</p>