D20 was accepted to her top choice via ED1 - so feel very fortunate.
Surprised to see quite a few not pursuing ED - as one has to pick a top school eventually, why not get an admission boost by signaling #1 choice?
Totally get the merit strategy.
@KaliHoosier It must be the same school! I am hoping merit is included in the portal at the same time as it was for the other two acceptances heâs received so far. Hope both your D and my S get the good news and that it comes early in the week!!
Congrats to all with the ED acceptances. It must feel so nice to be done! Our D17 did ED as well, but her situation was a bit different. She was a recruited athlete and it was a school with a < 10% acceptance rate, and they required ED in exchange for the coaches support. My son, OTOH, is looking at schools where the acceptance rates are much higher and he didnât have a clear #1 choice. So he chose to apply EA to all the schools where that was an option but wasnât ready to commit yet to any specific school thru ED. I have to admit that comparing merit was a factor too, as D17s school meets full needs but does not offer any merit.
@j2oso We didnât go the ED route partially because we werenât targeting schools that even had an ED admission plan. Another big reason is that we were not interested in paying our EFC, or anything close to it. One other reason is that a student really doesnât have to apply ED if their stats are in the top 25% of the recent admit class. You know: Big fish, big merit, small pond.
Chasing merit here (and my D20âs top schools did not even offer ED). So far itâs been good. Three acceptances so far, two with merit offers (and one is her top choice), the other one still has a chance for merit but it is decided later. She is waiting for one more letter this week (fingers crossed) and then will know the other three at the end of January. Then it will be waiting on offers and deciding. My D20 has her favorites of course but she really loves all the schools she applied to so I think she will land happily at any of them.
@j2soso in our case none of my DDâs top choices are big reaches for her so the admissions boost with ED wasnât really needed. On the other hand she knows her total cost for tuition room and board needs to be around $30,000 per year to avoid taking out private loans, and none of her schools are at that price point without merit aid. She liked both UCF and FSU for example but with the OOS tuition plus travel costs, she needs a decent amount of merit aid to make them viable options. If she gets better merit from one and also gets into honors for that one, then that one becomes much more appealing than the other one. For her smaller private school they do rolling admissions so ED wasnât even an option for them. Plus their acceptance rate is so high it wouldnât have been needed anyways.
With my DS18 he had 5 schools which were more or less equal in his mind, other than one which was towards the bottom. So for him when he got good merit to a state school (making them $22,000 a year vs $50,000 a year even with $25,000 merit at the private schools) and honors acceptance, it became an easy choice. But before that merit and honors, it wasnât as clear of a top choice.
I can totally see though when a more selective school is your top choice and youâre able to afford that school, then ED makes a lot of sense. My friendâs son is a freshman at Stanford who was deferred for ED but then got in after submitting supplemental materials. For him I am guessing if he hadnât done ED then he wouldnât have gotten in, and in his case it was his for sure top choice.
I love EA and being able to hear back sooner. Plus the incentive to get the applications in and done and no more nagging about getting them done LOL!
@Coun2316 By any chance, are the kids you are talking about in private school? Iâve heard results were much tougher for private school kids. A friend from LA says the buzz is that it is in response to the Varsity Blues scandal. Certainly the case in DC.
@j2soso - None of the schools we applied to offered ED and even if they did we would not have gone that route. He would be equally happy at any of the schools on his list so the biggest influence on our decision will be cost.
S has heard from only three schools, all with merit but none a first choice. He applied rolling or EA to six others and still no word, even though others who applied after him have gotten decisions. Is this a bad sign? Is he facing deferrals or rejections? Or does it just take this long sometimes? We were happy that so many had EA options because weâd know early. The waiting is so difficult!
My DD applied ED to a reach school that was her top choice after a lot of research and much weighing of the pros & cons, including the financial implications. She was deferred, and will have to decide how much more effort, or hopes, she will continue to put into pursuing that dream.
On the other hand, she was accepted into all 4 of her EAs, with varying levels of merit aid, all pretty much in accordance to her relative stats (safety-match). They all have strengths and weaknesses, so the decisions are not clear. We are still waiting on answers from 4 of our state schools, which are pretty competitive, but those wonât be out until March. So, although the admission process is pretty much done for us, the waiting and decision-making is still ongoing.
Congratulations to all those who have had good news, and good courage to those who must still endure!
My daughter had always intended to go ED1 to a top 20 school which has been her favorite school since she attended a summer program there, but when she was fortunate enough to become a NMSF she decided that she should consider some of the very good schools out there that offer full or nearly full rides for NMF as opposed to being full pay at the top 20. She still applied RD to the top 20 school and if she gets in she will give it very serious consideration.
@Lemonlee @KaliHoosier - One reason colleges send those âLikelyâ emails/postcards is to remind students who have EDâed to other schools and been accepted, to withdraw from the school about to admit them. Itâs a soft way the colleges protect their stats by weeding out admitted students who will not (can not) attend.
@Happy4u Interesting theory. Makes sense.
Congratulations to your daughter!
Iâm actually surprised to see so many willing to commit to an ED school so early in the game. I suppose it is as @bigmacbeth states in that it depends what stats your kid has and what their chances are of getting into any given school.
In our case, we have some very good, very affordable California schools and OOS schools would need to come close to or beat that tuition.
D20 didnât ED any schools because she is fortunate enough to qualify for a full ride at several OOS public flagships that she likes, so there was no reason to commit ourselves to potentially $70,000 a year debt at another school.
We have friends whose daughter EDâd to Wash U, and they fully expected her to get some merit.
She got zero, and they are now struggling to afford her tuition. We didnât want to end up in that position, esp with 2 in college for the next 3 years and another behind them.
But I am envious of the people who were able to ED and are done. That would be a great feeling!
D20 has been accepted to 5 schools, still waiting on 3. Good merit from all accepted schools so far. She has been accepted to the honors colleges that have announced, but still waiting on the ones who announce later.
I think it will be Feb before she has all her info to start making a decision.
We are also chasing merit for S20. We are full pay (with two more kids going to college in the next 4 years) so we didnât want to ED commit to an expensive school. Luckily D20 has the stats for merit and doesnât have his heart set on any one school. He applied to 7 schools and would be happy to attend any of them for his undergrad. He may feel differently for graduate school.
He has already received a nice merit scholarship from his safety. Hopefully good news at the next 6 schools too.
Our rational for applying to a specific ED college was that we thought this one college would be a perfect fit for D20 (one of the best colleges for her major, incredible resources/faculty/facilities, âwork hard, play hardâ attitude, great school spirit/D1 sports, and more collabrative than competitive) so we were willing to make the full pay financial sacrifice to that reach college. I will say if we had not saved up a good chunk of the cost in a college savings plan, we would not have been in the financial position to ED anywhere. For all of her other 12 EA/regular decision applications, cost would have defintely been a factor. For example, she would have only attended Tulane if she got significant merit, etc. At the end of the day, it does not surprise me at all that many families donât ED, itâs a personal decision that each family needs to consider for their child.
@1stTimeThruMom - the ED rejections are from public school kids - but upper middle class, white suburban public school kids, and the Browns and Stanfords and not looking for more of those.
@j2soso - No ED for my D20 because we donât want to get stuck paying full price when we know she will have good options with merit aid. Maybe not at her dream school, but she also knows that itâs like winning the lottery to get in there anyway. I am way more concerned with her being happy and finding the right fit than chasing the big name.
@Coun2316 - I saw a lot of EA/ED rejections where I teach, at an upper middle class public school. Are you seeing that that is a trend nationwide?
D20 applied ED to the first school she ever visited because it was a clear favorite and the measuring stick she used for evaluating every other school she visited. It is very competitive and pretty much a reach. They offer no merit but meet 100% of need and recently announced a no loan initiative to cover the federal loans. We ran the NPC and myIntuition several times and were happy with the results. We saved a fair amount in a 529 and live very modestly. The acceptance came with the FA award letter and it was right inline with the estimates. D was clear it was her first choice, we suspected we could afford our portion and we wanted her to get the best chance for the FA. We were still nervous because so many people said an unhooked, white female with financial need wouldnât really be considered in ED. We were pleasantly surprised and feel so fortunate for this opportunity. I can truly sympathize with those who have a large financial gap or donât get in. D worked very hard but we were lucky and we know it.
@helpingmom40 There isnât even always a financial gap that enters into the decision whether or not to ED. In our case, we chose not to pay up to (or over) our EFC since we knew there were so many great colleges that would cost less. We could have done so, but chose to set our budget to a number far less than our EFC that just felt ârightâ to us, for several reasons.
As @socaldad2002 aptly stated, itâs a personal decision (and not purely financial) that each family needs to consider for their child.