Early decision but no money..?

sybbie719
Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:59:04 +0000

I think that the net-net is this; no school is going to make you attend. By the same token, no school is going to allow you to attend if you do not pay the bill. But it still does not mean that there are not caveats to applying ED and for families that do their due diligence and have the money talk up front, ED could be a good thing for that family.

Again as in everything else, YMMV what my family may consider a good package, someone elses family may say not good enough. The things that you should keep in mind that the Ivies are very straight up in their joint statement in saying that they will honor the ED commitment of the other Ivies. So if you are admitted ED to Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Penn, or Cornell, the other ivies will honor that commitment whether or not you ultimately decide to attend. Getting accepted ED and withdrawing from one does put a wrinkle in your chances of being admitted to the others.

While many schools say that they will meet 100% demonstrated need, the packages can and do vary from school to school, I can only talk to how the process played out in my house where my child was accepted to 7- 100% meets demonstrated need schools, ranging from an Ivy, to elite LACs, which were all comparably priced as far as the cost of attendance .The there was over a $10,000 difference in the FA aid packages with 7 different EFCs, work study earnings & student contributions where all of the schools received the same information (maybe one of the biggest downside of applying ED is you do not get to compare packages). At our house, there was over a $4,000 difference between her first and her second choice school. in the end, we were able to use the FA package from the second choice school to request a financial review from the first choice (both schools were peer schools and head to head competitors as far as their student bodies).