My DS was accepted ED to his (obviously) top choice school. We were all thrilled - until we found out that he did not get ANY grant money, despite the fact that our EFC is about half the cost of attending. We appealed to the financial aid office, to no avail. Their decision relates to our having a 1/3 share of a small business, even though it does not generate much income. We are trying to find ways to make this work (applying for a home equity line of credit), but won’t know if it goes through until after the ED2 deadline for his second choice school. The net price calculator for the second school includes information related to owning a small business (the one for the first choice school did not), which makes me optimistic that he would get more aid from the second school (it also has a much bigger endowment). The deadline for committing to the first choice school is also after the ED2 deadline for his second choice.
My question is, can he apply ED to the second school pending resolution of the financial concerns? If we work out way to pay for his first choice, he would withdraw his application to the second school. If we don’t, he would decline the offer of admission to the first choice school. His high school guidance counselor said he can apply ED2 as long as he withdraws from one of the schools by the deadline for committing to the first school, but I am still worried.
You cannot apply to another ED school while you have a pending ED acceptance.
But he can apply regular decision…and since your finances involve that business…this might be a better idea anyway…apply to the rest of his schools RD, so that you can compare offers (assuming he withdraws from the ED admission).
How much is the difference? Is it $2000…or $20,000?
No, he cannot file ED2. Either get released from the ED school or apply RD. Speak with your counselor to ensure that they will release their part of the application materials. Some do not unless they get confirmation from the ED 1b school
@thumper1 do you know if it matters that he was accepted but that financial aid is the issue? Obviously ED2 would give him a better shot at getting in to his 2nd choice than RD.
The difference between the EFC as indicated by the FAFSA and what the school is offering (INCLUDING loans and a merit scholarship) is $27,000.
You cannot have two ED applications submitted at one time. I’d be surprised (and quite frankly would question the ethics) if a guidance counselor would sign off an ED2 application knowing that the ED1 acceptance is still outstanding.
At this point, your kid has a pending ED acceptance. He cannot apply to ANY other ED schools until he is released from that acceptance.
Where my kids went to HS and where I worked, the school counselors would NOT release ED materials to more than one school. Even if one was ED 1 and the other ED2.
You have a questionable financial situation with your business. What makes you think the ED2 school won’t consider the value of your business?
Your kid CAN apply regular decision to any number of schools…and really…that is what he should do…unless you wish to decline the ED1 offer.
What you are trying to do is called gaming the system. You are trying to see if ED2 school will be less costly than ED 1 school.
Listen to @sybbie719 who is very right. And if you don’t believe HER…ask your school conpusnelor on Monday if she will release materials for a second ED application…while your first is still pending.
You already appealed this ED1 financial aid award to NO avail. So…is the ED 1school affordable…or not.
If yes…accept the offer. If NO, decline…and then you can submit your ED2 application.
But again I say…why are you doing ED anything when you have this business issue. You would be FAR better off being able to compare net costs amongst multiple schools in the RD round.
@sybbie719 his school already sent in the application materials, including the ED form. They said it’s ok to do since we are not getting any offer for aid, as long as he withdraws one or the other by the commitment deadline. We haven’t submitted ours though (nor has he submitted his app yet), since we’re nervous about it.
The only thing the FAFSA does is determine your eligibility for Federal aid. Your FAFSA EFC usually is the minimum you will have to pay… The majority of FAFSA only schools do not meet 100% demonstrated need so there is a big chance that you will be paying more than your FAFSA EFC.
Many schools use the CSS profile or their own financial aid forms whe it comes to distributing their own institutional aid. This will usually be a more in-depth look at your finances, including home equity, your share in the small business, no matter how much it makes.
If the school did not think that you were eligible for any need based aid, you are taking about borrowing approximately 250K or more to send child number one to college knowing you have more kids to put through college
IMHO, the last thing you need to do is try tp apply ED anywhere else. You need to make sure that your son has some truly affordable options without raiding your home equity. If your ED2 school uses the FAFSA/CSS profile or their own forms, there is a strong possibility that you will end up with a second unaffordable choice
And don’t compound the mistake by assuming that the ED2 school will view your business holdings in a different way…even IF that NPC has businesses on it.
If it’s a school that uses the Profile…there are a LOT of tickers on that form. It’s not JUST the value of your business…but it’s also deductions you might be taking.
If it’s a FAFSA only school…and it’s NOT University of Chicago…that ED2 school doesn’t guarantee to meet full need for all.
Please explain why your kiddo isn’t applying to a wide range of regular decisions schools.
I appreciate your responses. I do want to clarify, though, that we are not “gaming the system”. We realize the FAFSA is not the final authority on what we would likely pay, and we were fully expecting to pay more than the EFC. However, we have another son who is a senior in college and attends a school that also uses the CSS profile and we pay much less there than we are being told we will have to pay at the new school. We have had the business the entire time. So when my younger son applied ED, we were expecting that the costs would be in line with what we have paid previously and that he would attend.
My son has very clear priorities in terms of the schools he wants to attend, so it seemed to make sense to apply ED to his first choice, and ED2 to his second choice. It’s my understanding that RD and ED applicants are supposed to receive the same aid, so there seemed no harm in his applying ED. As I said, we had reason to believe we would receive some aid…and if we had, we’d have put down the deposit already. Now we are re-thinking the ED2, as indicated by my OP.
Remember each school decides how they are going to allocate their money. I would not expect a school that has a $400 million endowment to give me the same aid package that Harvard with its $32Billion endowment to give. Maybe son #1 school is a richer school than S2’s school(s).
My D was accepted to 7 CSS profile meet 100% demonstrated need top school (including an Ivy and top LACs) who all received the exact same information. Our packages differed by 20k from the best to worse package. Some schools gave loans, others were no loan options. Some has student contributions of $2000, while others had $4000 student contributions and work study awards that were all over the place .
The Ivy who had the largest endowment of the schools that sh was accepted to did not give the best financial aid package. However we used a head to head peer school to request a financial review (the overall best offer wasn’t a peer school, so there really would have not been any leverage in presenting their package).
It doesn’t matter what your first son is paying. Even colleges that meet full need for all have different formulas for computing need based institutional aid…and awards can vary by tens of thousands of dollars for full need school to full need school.
You have a LOT more leverage in terms of your financial aid offers if you can present an offer from a peer school and ask for reconsideration. You CANNOT do this with two ED offers.
But with RD offers…you can perhaps have a school of choice review your aid relative to another received package.
For ED…you apply with the understanding that you can decline the offer if the aid is not sufficient. You already appealed and they said NO. If you are looking for private bank loans, this shouldn’t take two days of time.
Perhaps someone else can comment about the sharing of ED applicants in terms of duplications. There has been some discussion here that applying to two ED schools can put you at risk of losing BOTH acceptances…and any aid awarded,
Hoping someone else can comment.
And really…I am still not clear why this student isn’t casting a BROAD net in the regular decision round.
@sybbie719 You’ve explained exactly why we think the financial aid offer may be different at different schools - and perhaps better at the second choice. Although we realize it may not be.
@thumper1 My son has known what he wants to study in college since the 6th grade. He wants to go to a good school for that field of study. There are only a few schools that fit that bill. We think ED2 would likely increase the chance of his being able to attend to one of them.
So if you want to go ed 2, your son needs to be released from ED1… are you ready to let it go, because it can no longer be an option for ED 2. When you email the school asking to be released copy in your GC so the ED1 school can respond back to the both of you about the release freeing him for ED2