Unless they cannot afford the school (with whatever FA is offered), they are signing a binding contract to accept an ED acceptance. And hopefully this year the FAFSA mess will be straightened out so they will be able to get correct information about FA in a timely fashion. And Tulane is a profile school so they may calculate “demonstrated need” with their criteria. So must respectfully disagree with the above post. ED is unwise if they need significant aid, unless they will qualify for the no loan assistance.
** eta I just listened to the tik tok mentioned above. They make it very clear that merit aid is lower for ED students. Need based aid is of course consistent across all application types, but a student should run the NPC to see if they can afford the school (they cannot bank on merit $). This is VERY important to see if it’s unwise to apply ED. They recommend EA for students who cannot be sure.