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.