I really want to go to UPenn as I love their business school and their dual degree programs. I have great grades (99.92), test scores (35 act), and extra circulars (class president, football captain…) and I have had my heart set on upenn for awhile now and have always wanted to apply ED as their acceptance rate goes from 7% to 25%. Now though, my Dad is really firm on waiting for regular decisions so that we can compare financial aid offers, but I am not so sure. We are upper-middle class so the money is there but it is still nice to save when possible. My real question is how much do financial aid offers fluctuate amongst schools of similar caliber. If I could be assured that all my offers from top schools such as Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Penn would be within $5,000 then I would be ok with risking my chances applying ED. If the offers fluctuate more than that I would be much more hesitant. I have worked very hard in high school and I want to go to a top school even if it costs more, but I don’t want to throw away potentially saving $40,000 over the course of college.
Have you tried running the Net Price Calculators on each school’s web site?
If you aren’t getting any need based aid, then your price tag at various schools will be exactly as listed on their websites.
Secondly- the Penn ED stats are a little misleading. Penn is candid about the fact that if you are a legacy, they will only consider legacy in admissions IF you apply early. So if you are not a legacy, you need to look at the 7% vs. 25% understanding that those odds do NOT apply to you. Your odds are likely to be identical ED vs. regular decision. The 25% rate includes a lot of kids with a U Penn parent…
Those schools only give need based aid, so if your family makes too much money, you would be full pay there.
So do sit down with your dad and run net price calculators.
You need to apply to some admissions and financial safety schools as well. So you have some viable choices come spring.
My understanding with many of these schools is that the big scholarships go to the top few applicants. This means that they themselves do not know until the application pool is in. With ED, you force the college to speculate and most likely they will be conservative. The NPC will give you a good idea of the average aid they will send you. If you can meet that number on the NPC, then go for it. Good luck!
If by “these schools” you mean the ones that OP mentions in the first post, than NO. None of “these schools” provide merit scholarships, even to “the top few applicants.” Any money they provide is based on financial need.
What is the annual income of this upper middle class family?
These competitive schools do not meet give merit aid (Penn, Yale Princeton and Columbia give only need based aid).
What sort of aid does your dad exoect that you will receive…it will be based largely on your family income. So…what is that?
This post said that you applied last year ED to an Ivy:
I would guess that was a fib since the OP posted in July of THIS year that s/he is now a senior in HS.
Please clarify. What is your family annual income?
Perhaps it’s not as high as you think it is if you father wants to be able to compare financial aid packages.
And really, if you are not a competitive appmicant for regular decision, you aren’t one for early decision either at these tippy top schools.
as in post #7, he already applied last year…
I wish that @heffo42 would come back here and tell the real, true story…and clarify his conflicting posts.
But really…at the end of it all, it doesn’t matter regarding the OP. If the family has high enough income to NOT qualify for need based aid, he isn’t going to get aid from those highly competitive schools on his list. And if he isn’t a well qualified applicant in the RD round, he isn’t going to be one in the ED round.
The schools might acceot a higher percentage of students in the ED round, but they don’t accept less qualified ones simply because they apply ED. The ED applicants are STRONG applicants as well.
In at least one post in 2015, this student indicated that he applied ED last year.
Then, more recently, he posted:
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07-25-2016 at 10:33 pm in University of Pennsylvania I am going into my senior year and am looking at Ivy league and equivalent schools. <<<
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Either he’s telling stories or more than one person is using this screenname.