My DD changed her mind on her ED school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ED absolutely discriminates against low income and donut-hole families - ie, vast majority of families applying - who are cost conscious.

IMHO, ED is just a way for well-off people to "pay to play." It reminds me of the old laws that allowed the well-to-do to avoid military drafts by paying a fine.

This is FALSE.

The NPC will tell you exactly what you will pay before you apply. If the award comes out different than the NPC, you are released from your commitment. So if you can afford it, apply, if not, don't.

If you are seeking merit aid, no college that will give yo merit aid will require ED to improve chance of admission.

What you have typed is FALSE.

However the NPC is quite often ridiculous for middle income families. It's middle income families that loose out with ED. NPC may say a family of 4 making $150K with 1 in college is expected to pay ~$35K. If said family lives in a high cost of living area (like DCUM or LA/SF/Seattle/NY), most families cannot afford to pay $35K per year for college and keep a roof over their heads (and fund their retirement, which parents should not stop to pay for college). So for many families, the NPC is an unrealistic number which means they can't apply ED because they need merit on top of any FA in order to afford to live and pay for college. So they apply RD/EA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ED is such a scam. It's to give a leg-up to full pay rich kids and legacies. That's the sole reason for ED's existence. I guarantee that many competitive universities will soon be fill 75%+ of the incoming class with only ED's.

I hate it and wish it was banished.

While that is part of the end results (giving full pay a leg up), ED is really for the schools to maximize yield. Look at how many schools have added ED2 in the past 5 years. That's so they can catch all of the kids who don't get into their ED. Most "top schools" fill over 50% of their incoming class with ED. Some schools with EA even use their ED2 to poll students/encourage students who were deferred to RD to switch to ED2---basically saying if you switch you will get in---the college is worried about their yield.

However, ultimately any school that costs ~$75-80K will ultimately end up with a significant percent of full pay students, even if they didn't have ED---unless they have an endowment to give more grants to all students, there will be many families that cannot afford the 75K/year and will be forced to go elsewhere

I love all of you complaining about the full pay kids. Do you think all of these other kids would get the kind of aid they get without some people paying the full price. Get over it. Be glad somebody can afford it so that others can attend as well.

Not complaining at all! We are full pay, but I certainly wasn't when I applied to college. I was at the other end of the spectrum.