No, she applied ED to a meet need school that doesn’t give merit. Our need is pretty high, probably higher than most merit aid she would be eligible for, so for us, applying ED at a meet needs school made sense (for reference our EFC is significantly below the COA of our state flagship, though it’s not anywhere close to 0 or anything). Our situation is not especially complicated & the NPC was right on (actually we did a little better with the actual package) but I saved everything and would have fought it if not. For reference she also applied EA to four schools, though three of those she pulled before a decision was made when she got into the ED school. The one she had already been already accepted to gave her their highest merit ($36,000 per year) but we had not yet seen the need aid part of the package. So I’m unclear if they would have gotten us to the same number ultimately that the meet need school did (the NPC suggested it would, and the overall COA was lower than the school she ended up at, but the NPC severely underestimated the merit she would get & therefore may have overestimated the need aid? Unclear). Anyway, bottom line I could not have let her apply ED to a school that didn’t guarantee to meet all need & whose NPC did not show we could make it work. There were meet need schools that fortunately fell off her list for other reasons where she could not have applied ED due to the NPC number being too high (looking at you Barnard & Mt Holyoke!). Had she kept them on her list they would have been RD only so we could see the final package. Importantly, we were not looking for the “best deal” - we were looking for a school that was my D’s first choice where we could make the finances work. I have no doubt had she “chased merit” we could have done better financially. But she is attending a first-class school, that she desperately wants to attend, where she will get an amazing education & that we can swing financially, albeit with a bit of belt-tightening & sacrifice. If you really want the “best deal” financially ED is not for you. If you want the best chance of attending a selective school and can make the NPC number work then ED is a great option.
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