early admission question

If by "early admission" you are referring to "Early Decision", whereby
the applicant is saying that if admitted they will attend: If the cost
after financial aid is not acceptable, one cannot be forced to attend.
Early decision is more of an honor-bound situation than a legal one.

On the other hand, some schools offer "early action" where if one
applies early enough the school will respond with an admission decision
earlier, but there is no commitment that the student will attend or make
a decision before the usual May 1 response date.

The major down-side to early decision is that by the time you learn the
financial circumstances it may be a bit late for applying to some of the
other possible schools. It also means that teen-agers, who are notorious
for changing their minds, have to decide several months earlier than
through the normal process.

Most early decision schools are looking to cherry-pick the best students
in that process, so if you don't think your daughters grades are all
that great then it may just be a waste of time anyway.


Steven B. Blank
College Financial Aid Consultants
29 Ives Hill Court
Cheshire, CT 06410
(203)250-7761


DK said the following on 9/6/2007 10:42 PM:
> I am trying to understand how the early admission rules
> work with regard to financial aid.
>
> Say, one gets admitted to a fancy-shmancy expensive
> private school as an early admission applicant. At the same
> time, one has zero money of his/her own and one's family
> refuses to pay more than, say, 10K/year. If one fails to
> find financial aid to cover the expenses, is that person
> legally free to walk away from the early admission
> agreement?
>
> The reason I am asking is that my daughter is >90%
> guaranteed admittance to a very good public school.
> She wants to apply to few private schools but knows
> we can't afford them and that her formal papers are
> not that stellar to guarantee sweeping financial aid.
> She is trying to understand if using early admission
> under these circumstances make any sense whatsoever.
> I would like to understand that as well.
>
> Some private schools are good but not 5-10X better!
>
> Thanks,
>
> DK