Congrats on Cornell!!!
I’ll be surprised if UCLA is affordable as UC’s rarely offer aid to OOS students. Emory is possible; do you prefer it to Cornell or is this just an exercise “for fun”?
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If you’re OOS for UCLA it won’t be affordable since they don’t offer FA to OOS students, but Emory might be.
Do you like Emory better than Cornell ?
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Thank you!!! And yes I would definitely prefer to be in a warmer environment if possible. I’m hoping that the financial aid package is similar 
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Congrats! When will you hear?
Emory said I will receive the financial aid some point this week and I have until Friday to decide
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I don’t think the OP is insane. I think the process is insane to permit this sort of abuse of the system of financial subsidies for college applications for students who come from low income households . With a household income of <30K, an applicant would have qualified for a free application anywhere, and OP made use of that, to excess. Financial aid is not a merit scholarship, it is financial aid. OP has chosen to attend Cornell, on full financial aid, a wonderful outcome for them.
I honestly don’t get this, unless it was an effort to get in the news with a “Local student wins millions in scholarship (um, no, financial aid offers)” title. OP, who had very decently high stats, applied to nearly a hundred schools, not because they weren’t assured of the best possible financial aid offer (with a household income of <30K, they would qualify for max allowable fin aid anywhere) and not because they were worried about getting in (their relatively high stats assured them of acceptance at probably over 50 of the schools that they applied to) but because it was free and easy to hit send.
Oh, and BTW, OP also apparently violated the terms of Princeton’s SCEA, having also applied EA to not one but two private colleges (RPI and NEU) while applying SINGLE CHOICE EA to Princeton, whose terms specifically state “If you apply single-choice early action on Nov. 1, you may not apply to an early program at any other private college or university within the United States.”
I would love to see a muck-raking article in a major newspaper about the system that permits this sort of abuse. Kids whose parents pay for college applications do not apply to 100 colleges! My kids spent many hours researching which schools were the best fit for them. One applied to only four schools, another to I think four (due to the need to apply EA to be eligible for merit scholarships) with another three or four held in reserve to be potentially submitted only after EA results came in, if desired. Students who qualify for the Common App fee waiver are very likely to qualify for full fin aid, so the argument that they need to apply to more than 20 schools because they need to shotgun for fin aid is not valid.
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Merit aid is financial aid.
Good point, not a good look.
The thing is that schools that meet full need for all students tend to have low admission rates. If one applied to the 20 schools with the lowest acceptance rates that meet full need, a given applicant could easily go 0 for 20.
Each student’s search is unique, and when the student needs significant aid, that often requires more than the average number of apps. Especially if the student is not tippy top academically speaking and would not be competitive at any of the meet full need schools.
I do wish OP could luck whether they stay at Cornell, or Emory comes thru with good aid.
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We had our kid apply to a rolling admissions school early in the process. We chose one that had automatic merit and that kid would be happy attending. I don’t understand why the OP had so many rolling admissions schools, unless none gave merit info quickly (for our kid, UAH and Auburn both sent some merit info within weeks of acceptance). I understand applying to many schools with low admit rates (but more like the common app limit of 20, not 70), and i understand merit hunting. But, in the OPs situation, I, too, am at a loss as to why they would apply to so many schools rather than pick a few where merit + need should cover their costs. And Alaska and Hawaii would likely have prohibitive travel costs. Even though we can afford plane tickets we told our kid that if they were within a drivable distance they would be able to come home more often if they needed/wanted.
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I thought the OP did a good job of explaining why they applied to so many schools. And I appreciated the fact that they immediately declined the acceptances they knew they would never attend.
My three kids applied to 17 schools total (6, 10, 1). So our family took a completely different approach. However, my view is “if it works for you, do it!”. It worked for the OP – probably made them feel secure in an uncertain situation – and it’s no skin off my nose how many schools they applied to.
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Let’s keep focus on the OP please
Sure, I’d be happy to clarify. I emailed RPI and NEU after I got my Princeton decision and they agreed to consider me for the EA round. Also, my family income was higher than 30K the year before I applied. It significantly decreased after both my parents lost their jobs in the summer of 2023. This means that although I did not get a complete need-based financial offer, many of the schools I was accepted to were unaffordable because they did not consider my extenuating circumstances. Cornell was one of the only schools I was accepted to that gave me an affordable offer. Let me know if you need me to clarify anything else!
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IMO at this point there is no need to clarify further.
I think the only posts from now forward should be to congratulate you!
Please let us know if Emory works out financially. But either way you have a great and affordable outcome which is fantastic.
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Princeton releases SCEA in mid December, only a few weeks before the RD deadline for most highly selective schools. Why would you have contacted NEU and RPI to ask them to then consider you, that late in the process, as EA? Did you reach out to other schools, too, to ask them also to consider you in the EA round, after you had been rejected from Princeton in mid December? It just seems to me to be an odd thing to have done, to reach out to schools in mid December and ask for them to consider an applicant for EA, six weeks after the submission deadline, and so close to the deadline for RD applications. I have never heard of anyone having done this, ever.
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I strongly feel the OP doesn’t have to answer these sorts of questions, or justify themselves. They owe no one an explanation. It really isn’t our business.
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And certainly not in public. If they want to continue the conversation, PM is more appropriate.
I can see reasons for applying to a large number of colleges, if you have a challenging financial situation. It’s not just a question of which college you’d most like to attend, but which college will be most affordable after grand/scholarship aid, or even if any college will be affordable at all.
What I don’t agree with is seemingly applying blindly without doing basic research about critical topics above For example, nearly all colleges on the list offer a NPC or some way to estimate finances. If the NPC suggests the college is not affordable and there is little chance of a special scholarship beyond NPC, then it’s probably not worthwhile to apply, even more so, if you are not particularly fond of the college.
After the 11 acceptances in the EA round, the search can be limited further… only to colleges that are likely to be better in some way to the preferred college among those 11 acceptances. This is one of the key benefits of applying during the early round. It sounds like Cornell and Emory fall in to that category, but the vast majority of the other 50+ colleges probably do not. I’d expect the time and effort to apply to so many colleges negatively impacts quality of applications, reducing chance of acceptances. It’s great things worked out well for the OP, but not a great strategy.
Congrats on all the great acceptances!!
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