<p>Wow I had to go to work for awhile, you know that thing that supplies money for tuition and this thread is deteriorating. Please people support your position, cite your support, express yourself as opinion and please refrain from name calling…it gives me a headache, it’s getting alittle out of hand and snipey and I’m getting offended.</p>
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<p>Anneroku - I an glad you think you know more about my school than I do. Even though I work here and have a child attending. But here you are, some faceless name on a message board who knows absolutely nothing about my school yet is under the vastly mistaken perception she really knows what is going on at my school.</p>
<p>Sheesh- now I have heard it all</p>
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<p>Remember Financial aid basics:</p>
<p>Cost of Attendance- EFC (both student and parents) = Demonstrated Need.</p>
<p>Penn’s and other schools with no loan policies simply means that they will not met the student’s demonstrated need with loans.</p>
<p>It does not mean that a family will not have to take out any loans whatsoever.</p>
<p>If the parent’s cannot or chose not to write a check to cover their EFC, they can take out aParent (PLUS) loan.</p>
<p>Most colleges require that the student have health care. If the school deems that the family does not have “adequate” health care, then they require that the student health plan be purchased. If you don’t want to or cannot write a check to cover the school’s health insurance, you can take out a loan.</p>
<p>Maybe there does need to be some sort of clearing house system regarding Ed. Maybe they should handle it the way the LSAC handles early decision at law schools, where the school tells you your application is no longer being considered because you have been accepted ED somewhere else.</p>
<p>I think the net-net is that students and families should be acting in good faith when applying ED. They should be doing their due diligience which also means being realistic about how much they are willing to pay/borrow for one’s education and if they want to wait to see what else is out there.</p>
<p>I know in my house I did not want D to go blindly into the process so there was no ED application.<br>
During her cycle she applied RD, she was accepted to 7 need blind, meets 100% demonstrated need send in the CSS profile schools. The packages varied by as much $12,000 from the “best” to “worse” package. Dartmouth was very forthcoming in stating that if you have a question about your FA package, you could request a financial review, even if it meant sending in another school’s FA award letter. You don’t get this option with ED.</p>
<p>THis is exactly what we did. We did not send in 6 letters, we simply sent in one. The one we sent, wasn’t the “best” overall package, but it was a peer school, and the school that she was willing to attend if we could not work out the FA situation with Dartmouth. Dartmouth met the package, and off she went.</p>
<p>[Many parents don’t realize until they see it in black and white that paying $50,000 a year means taking out significant loans/]</p>
<p>I am sorry, but this is amazing. How can someone, who doesn’t have the money, not realize that paying $50,000 a year would require significant loans/</p>
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<p>Whoa nelly, 3321 if you are still reading your question was if you are full pay and accepted ED can you get out of the agreement. The clean answer to that is no you cannot. The only specific mentioned in the Penn information relates to the financial aid offered. This was discussed in an earlier post, but specifically if you are full page and accepted ED you are expected to enroll. If something is happening to you to ask this question you should contact your Penn admissions officer to talk about whatever is going on specifically with you. The OP in the quote that was referenced above in response to your question was talking specifically about her financial package vs. a full-ride offer from her state school. Totally different circumstances.</p>
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<p>As far as I know, anyone can apply for financial aid. There is no advertised income limit that automatically disallows filing a financial aid application. Many who apply for financial aid will probably be found to be ‘full pay’ by the aid administrators. What if THEY don’t like the offer (or non-offer, as it were)?</p>
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<p>xiggi, actually many people are <em>still</em> disputing this statement of fact, and furthermore, are adding all sorts of accusations of unethical behavior towards those who choose to exercise their right of release. And the release clause is a loophole, one I never recognized before – and I think it’s a good one. For those students who absolutely have a first choice school, but absolutely need FA, this is a way for them to apply ED without the fear that they will be tied to an untenable FA package. Personally, I still wouldn’t advise it, but the colleges themselves are clearly promoting ED for FA applicants and are using this clause to reassure these students.</p>
<p>Yes, I repeat this over and over: </p>
<p>Should a student who applies for financial aid not be offered an award that makes attendance possible, the student may decline the offer of admission and be released from the Early Decision commitment.</p>
<p>What part of “the student may decline” is not clear? Is there an unwritten “the student may decline only if the institution agrees”? </p>
<p>Is AskBEN’s statement “except in cases where the financial issues cannot be resolved” not clear? Does the school unilaterally determine that issues are resolved?</p>
<p>And in case I was too subtle in post 1226, yes, I am pointing out a big potential loophole, I think, to the ‘binding’ aspect of ED. (That is, there may be some who fully did not expect to “like” the offer, but wanted the backup admit.)</p>
<p>“According to many here, the OP can walk away from her ED commitment to comparison shop other schools”</p>
<p>If a FA offer was involved, that is correct. In the usual case, she is cruelly disappointed that she was admitted to but cannot afford her dream school, so she sadly applies RD to other schools. We don’t know the motives of this particular OP.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys, my question that dealt with someone applying ED who didn’t need FA was theortical, based on someone else’s statement about it not being binding if FA isn’t good. </p>
<p>I am a parent who will be filing our first FAFSA in Jan. I have just been following, and sometimes posting in this thread because the whole issue is interesting.</p>
<p>I had told my sons that the only ED schools they could consider would be public within a certain tuition range, because I had assumed it was binding regardless of FA. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until I read this thread that I realized someone could walk if the FA wasn’t agreeable. Neither son has a college they are “in love with” that offers ED (one offers non-binding EA and an application has been completed, results next month).</p>
<p>By the way, I thought I knew how to quote, but apparently I don’t…so sorry for any confusion my previous post caused.</p>
<p>berryberry61,
I know nothing about your school other than what you have said. If your GC’s are telling you that it is unethical or impossible to <em>ever</em> obtain a release from an ED contract, they are wrong. It is absolutely allowed for financial reasons, as explicitly stated by colleges that offer ED.</p>
<p>Xiggi, there is two-way paper in this thread. :)</p>
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Younghoss, how can you possibly say this without knowing what calmom’s income and expenses are?</p>
<p>I see that post 1174 has addressed the issue I raised a few posts ago. I still wonder if I am the only one who thinks this will ultimately be a fatal flaw for binding ED.</p>
<p>Everybody files for F.A., including those with no hope of getting any. They have an out?</p>
<p>Midmo, the “binding” part is unenforceable in any event, even to applicant who do not qualify for financial aid - whether or not they apply.</p>
<p>The ED college cannot MAKE the student attend – and under the terms of the contracts they now use, they cannot MAKE the student pay. The only thing they CAN do is (a) withdraw/rescind the offer of admission, and (b) report or confirm to other colleges the names of students that they admitted ED. The colleges could take a hefty deposit and make it nonrefundable – but as far as I know, none do. </p>
<p>If the student has decided that they don’t want to attend the college, then they aren’t hurt by withdrawal of the offer of admission – but most people choose to apply ED because they DO want to attend the college.</p>
<p>midmo, I think it’s a fascinating question, and I kind of think that, yes, in theory everyone could apply for FA, whether they need it or not, in order to insure that they have a way out of the contract. In practice, I doubt anyone will try because most ED applicants really want to attend the school, and GC’s will try to prevent this from happening.</p>
<p>This thread has been fascinating. I have direct experience with ED as my son applied ED last year. I was a little concerned about his applying ED because we both understood it was binding, and what 17-year-old is 100% sure of his college choice? But mine convinced me that he was, and so he and I signed on the dotted line (no counselor signature or even notification was required).</p>
<p>Did I read the terms and condition of my son’s school’s ED policy? Errr…actually I confess that I didn’t. I had run the FAFSA calculation (it’s a FAFSA-only school) and I knew that we would be full pay ahead of time, so that wasn’t a concern. I was comfortable with the total cost. But reading this thread has made me curious and so I looked up the wording.</p>
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<p>Ok, who defines “compelling” here? It doesn’t say.</p>
<p>In following the discussion, there seems to be (at least) 3 camps; those who believe the school defines need and only a compelling change in finances between the time the ED app is submitted and the time the award is received by the family is a valid (perhaps the only valid) reason to turn down the ED acceptance; those who believe the family can easily know what the college will define their “need” to be and should only apply ED if they’re comfortable paying the difference between the COA and the college-defined need, therefore the possibility of getting out of an ED agreement is moot; and those who believe the school can calculate what they believe “meets full need” is, and if this is not viable for the family when it is offered as a package along with an ED acceptance, then this is a valid reason to turn down ED.</p>
<p>I think the problem is in transparency of the calculation of need. If all schools were FAFSA-only, the calculation is 100% transparent and all could evaluate exactly what their cost could be. Thus there would be no reason to apply ED if the family couldn’t viably pay their FAFSA-calculated EFC. The schools that claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need do not have a consistently transparent EFC calculation. The EFC calculators online for Profile are inaccurate because schools use the data collected in very different ways. Schools include home equity (or not) in very different ways, they include (or not) the value of sibling savings, they assess student savings at 20%, unless they use the parent rate of 5%, they ask for the value of IRAs (or not), they ask for the value of cars (or not), they include non-custodial parent income/assets, or not. So you see the difficulty of gauging the exact “demonstrated need” for any given college, outside of the relatively rare colleges that actually post their calculators online. Calmom’s example of the wide variation in what her children’s colleges thought of as her “need” is just one data point showing what a wide variation in equations colleges use.</p>
<p>I’d be nervous about making any assumptions at all that a “meets full need” college would really come through for my child based on what I think I’d need financially in order for him to attend. However, if we are to believe the colleges’ published statements that “need” is defined by the family and the family has an option to turn down an ED offer due to a gap in what the family can pay vis-a-vis what the college is offering, then by all means take the college up on this and apply ED to your top choice.</p>
<p>Even though Xiggi’s posts are getting alittle lost I think it’s important to point out that the use of the term “release” is accurate. You agree in ED to attend and college/university can “release” you from that agreement if financial aid issues cannot be resolved. This specific example is Penn so parents and students should famailiarize themself with their individual college/university wording and information regarding ED. This protects the university/college but it also protects the student with regard to the college/uni that the student eventually matriculates in my opinion. With regard to Berryberry’s GCs I think they are doing their best to police and uphold the spirit of ED. My problem with that situation is that they were reported to not be aware that the language of different colleges was well different. I would imagine some of the GC reaction was defensive…what GC wants to know every little detail about every single college down to the nth degree. Hopefully GCs at Berryberry’s school and others would tell their students to call the individual colleges and universities if there are very specific questions.</p>
<p>The fallacy of the assertion that the ED applicant can reject the offer in order to “comparison shop” in the RD round is that they have forever lost the opportunity to attend the ED school. So if they find out later that none of the schools in the RD round give equivalent or better financial aid – they are stuck paying more. </p>
<p>The ED student who walks away on the deal gives up the ability to attend the ED school at any price – when the desire to attend that particular school was the reason they applied in the first place.</p>