Early Decision and Financial Aid.

calmom
Wed, 03 Jul 2013 19:25:24 +0000

there’s no danger in applying ED if you don’t know. If the ED FA offer is insufficient, it is declined, and you apply RD elsewhere



This simply is untrue, because it is hard for a person to know whether or not an award is sufficient if they don’t have anything else to compare it with.

The year my d. got into NYU she was also admitted to an out-of-state public U that she had added to her list as a safety, thinking it might be affordable. However, the out of state U. offered only loans – no grants – whereas NYU offered a small grant – so while NYU was expensive and required loans, the public u. would have cost even more.

Of course my d. had many other choices, so she opted for a private that offered more money. But what if she hadn’t had those choices? What if there was no option for her that was a financial “safety”? How would she have known in December that the $8K grant that NYU offered was significantly worse than what other schools that admitted her would offer? For some students the end result is going to be paying more money and taking more loans than they had hoped, no matter where they end up – but it must feel bitter to end up taking out $50K in undergraduate loans to pay for Podunk College instead of that same $50K for Dream U., because of lack of info at the relevant time.