<p>Rebel, I am not targeting you, by the way, for this ED discussion. Clearly, it worked for you as it usually does. For the record, I would have loved to have gotten ED for any of my kids and been done with the process. We don’t qualify for financial aid, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. Not a personal vendetta at all. I just hate any process that puts those already at a disadvantage even more in a tortuous positon. I have stated what should be done to level that playing field.</p>
<p>Which comes to a whole other can of worms. People with NO financial need use that fail safe clause too. Apply ED to get the edge at a school, and if you change your mind and are accepted, just say you didn’t get the money you wanted. Can’t afford it. Never mind that you make close to a half million in income. Oh, and to draw the time line further to get your other EA and rolling accepances and buy more time, string out the aid negotiation and filling out the aid estimate form. Schools close for break so you have that time anyways, and for the ED 2s you can stretch it out to most RD decisions. You can play a lot of games with this if you want to,because the schools are not equipped to handle this aspect. ED has become a whole other thing that it was meant to be.</p>
<p>For those who are truly needy, and get a weak package, you don’t just say no, by the way, as you probalby know, Rebel. You contact the school, and explain the situation, and they have to have a financial aid officer make the time to look over the package, and the two of you sit down and go over it and maybe other documents are needed. All of this right before holiday break, I might add. And they are G-O-N-E ove that two or more weeks, many time which stretches this whole danged thing into the new year when quite frankly, admissions is no longer interested in you so much and neither is FA. They are going into the crux of their existance, the RD application crunch and they are not really focused on niggling with some ED applicant who is trying to get his aid package reassesses. It can work well and quickly, and you can be put on the back burner, ignored or forgotten and kept in limbo. Plus you are basically in the position of begging for money which make you feel really good, and your kid too. Your GC wants to know what’s going on, and they really hate it when ED goes wrong because it does affect their future transactions with the school when too many ED kids back out. THis is a carnival for those deliberately running the clock, and a nightmare for those who really need the money and who hate, hate, hate having to go through a process like this with a kid in his senior year, your beloved kid held hostage in all of this. He’s having a great holiday season with his parents trying to get more money out of financial aid or his ED is dead. </p>
<p>I personally know 2 ED situation now where they will run out the clock and get the early consideration for a school and still see if other schools will take them. It’s not about the money, but part of the strategy. With an ED leg up, a reach school could be a match, but a higher reach school still a reach, so you ED the first school and get them in the bag, hold them off until the #1 choice which would have been an ED waste since the chances would have still been small, comes up with some decision. Nice, isn’t it? What people who are savvy about this process do, in an area where selective school acceptances have become a big deal is appalling. We are talking about people who are skilled at negotiatiing huge business deals–this college thing is a piece of cake, and every little piece of it can be used to an advantage. And I am not even going into some of the more extreme abuses I have seen of this. While those with financial aid go through the torture to get that little edge and give up a possibility of more money. If I were to keep ED, I would insist on a prior year FAFSA with an EFC of X, to be permitted to compare offers. EFC has to be calcuated and received by school by a certain date or that is not an option. Yeah, there will be loopholes, but it will help a lot of those who are being held hostage due to financial aid and who the ones at the highest risk of losing out on ED. Believe me, it wasn’t that QB at Penn with the 1100 SAT that sweats ED.</p>