<p>How are EA and Single Choice EA applications accessed? What are the pros and cons? We want to weigh our financial aid options.</p>
<p>How are EA and Single Choice EA applications accessed? What are the pros and cons.We want to weigh our financial aid options. I know our EFC and it seems to be about what we pay for private school now. Our thoughts are that if accepted EA then there really won’t be a need for a safety school. Our goal at that point would be top LAC, Ivy or for top merit scholarship awards. We do want to weigh our options with financial aid and or merit money. Two of the schools our S would be in top 25% , admittance rates or 35-43%, third EA S would be top of the 50% admitted, 22% admittance rate. Single Choice EA is a reach school since only 10% are admitted.</p>
<p>For the 2 schools my son applied to EA, it was just the regular app, but sent in early and with the EA box checked. For SCEA, you may need the guidance counselor to sign off as in ED, but I’m not sure about that. There were no cons for my son for EA (unless you count having to get 2 apps done early–I think this was a plus because his common app was then ready to send out to RD schools too). The huge plus was that he got 2 early acceptances. If they would have been rejections, he would have had time to apply to extra, even safer schools.</p>
<p>Or you can get deferred from EA which gives you a chance to add extra to that application as well as future ones.</p>
<p>The College Confidential rule of thumb is that EA and ED are not the best rounds for students who are hoping for large financial aid offers. The schools offer competitive fin packages in the regualr round of admissions–after they know how many full pay students they have enrolled.</p>
<p>Get advice from curmudgeon.</p>
<p>a few friendly amendments</p>
<ul>
<li><p>having all the offers on the table at the same time doesn’t necessarily allow a family to “jack up” the fin aid offers by playing the schools off against one another (a friend tried this - - of the 4 schs he approached, 3 said “no” flat out and the 4th increased the award by $2K - - from a $16K grant to $18K)</p></li>
<li><p>while a sch’s ED fin aid offer isn’t likely to differ from it’s RD offer; beware applying ED to schs that don’t gaurantee to meet 100% of need</p></li>
<li><p>all fin aid awards are not equal - - even if the $ amout of the pkg is the same (a school may mask “merit” aid as a generous fin aid grant, as opposed to loan)</p></li>
<li><p>ED offers an incred boost, so it may be worth not having all the offers on the table to get S/D into his/her dream school - - especially if it’s a really compet sch</p></li>
</ul>