Rolling Schools/Safeties

robinsuesanders
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:10:26 +0000

Is it okay to apply ED to one school and EA to another, as long as you understand you will withdraw the other apps if accepted to the ED school? My older daughter applied to Pitt which had rolling admissions. And SCEA would rule out these EA options? Or not if it’s called something else, like “priority application”?



My understanding is the following. Others will gladly correct me if I’m wrong ;)

You can only apply to ONE school ED. I think that you can apply EA at other schools since the EA apps are not binding, but you would need to check the web page of the ED school to be absolutely sure of this. SCEA, although not binding, will not allow you to apply anywhere ED and I believe it restricts other EA options as well.

Strictly speaking those “priority applications” are more like rolling applications. They are evaluated as they come in and you get a rather quick decision; the school sends those invites to students who they’re pretty sure will meet their admissions criteria easily and they are trying to entice the students with an early award of merit $ in return. But the priority apps are clearly not binding and the student has until May 1 to decide whether to accept the offer of admission or not.

For ED schools, most of them don’t mind you applying to rolling schools early in the application cycle and they may (or may not) mind you applying EA at other places.
But—if you apply ED, you are supposed to do the following:

1) You cannot accept an EA or rolling offer of admission (even if the offer comes with major, major $$) before the ED school makes its decision.

2) If you get into the ED school, you must accept the ED offer of admission as soon as you receive and can evaluate the FA package from the ED school. Usually the ED school will give you a week or two at most. You are NOT allowed to turn the ED school down because you’ve already been offered things like enough merit scholarship money elsewhere to make a rolling or EA admission more attractive.

3) If you get into the ED school, you must turn down ALL current offers of admission and any scholarship $$ or FA packages those schools have made to you before the ED decision was made.

4) If you get into the ED school, you must formally withdraw your applications (EA, rolling, or RD) to ALL other schools that have not yet made an admission decision.

As for trying to get your D more interested in the Ivies instead of the top LACs, I’m not sure that that’s the best idea if she really wants a small LAC. [It’s like trying to force a square peg into a round hole in my opinion.] The tippy-top LACs such as Williams, Swarthmore, and Amherst are almost as good with FA as the ivies, I believe. If your current EFC is about $15K with only one in college, then any school that meets full need with only Stafford loans is likely be affordable: Remember that as long as both kids are in college that FAFSA EFC is divided equally between the two kids. Although each school will determine its EFC in its own peculiar way, those tippy-top LACs with healthy endowments are likely spilt the EFC pretty equally too.

And for safeties, if your D is really a LAC-type kid, looking at the LACs a bit farther down the USNWR list that offer both merit and meet full need (or come close to it) may give her a nice EA admit with enough money as an early season “safety”