Your opinion on EARLY DECISION

cptofthehouse
Mon, 30 Jun 2014 21:05:05 +0000

My suggestion is to give the NPCs a whirl for the schools on your lists, Duke included and see if you are eligible at all, or even close to qualifying for financial aid. If you are not, and if you absolutely know that the costs of those schools are out of range, applying to those with no merit awards is not a good idea unless you think there is a slim chance some money will fall out of the sky for you. As far as Duke goes, there is a teeny chance that this will happen because Duke does have some Merit Awards, as opposed to, say, Georgetown or Harvard or any other schools that have none at all. But the chances are very small of getting those awards, and you won’t know until after the ED commitment date if accepted whether you get the award. So with such a onerous stipulation, no, you are not an ED candidate for Duke or any school that does not give out merit awards with their ED acceptances.