Matching Financial Aid

2Leashes
Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:43:07 +0000

alving107—my post below isn’t necessarily meant for you. It’s just a statement in *general *for those who apply ED and who might not realize what they’re getting into. :)

I don’t understand why students apply ED to a school they aren’t 100% positive they want to attend. It’s supposed to be a binding contract and a *lot *of thought should go into it before applying early. You’re basically taking away a spot from someone else who *really *feels this is their dream school. There are other schools who offer EA (Early Admission) such as Stanford. That’s different from ED. You just cannot apply EA to other schools at the same time, however if you get accepted to Stanford AND Harvard, as an example, you aren’t committed to Stanford.

ED is not the same. Once you commit to a school through Early Decision and get accepted, then you’re expected to attend. Like vballmom said, there are certain situations such as not enough financial aid that will excuse you. Or a grave illness. But, if you wanted to compare what other colleges will give you, you should have applied Regular Decision and waited for your FA packages to come through. I also see this for kids who also are still on the fence or don’t think they have a chance for another school such as UCLA. So they go ahead and apply ED to Cal Poly or where ever and then ae surprised to be accepted to UCLA or the other school. They suddenly realize they might have made a mistake and should have waited RD.