It’s critical to understand that the first financial aid award that a college delivers often doesn’t have to be the only offer. This is especially true since the enrollment management arms of many colleges use sophisticated algorithms in the hopes of answering this question:

What is the smallest amount of a financial aid or merit award that we can offer a student that the family would accept.

How to successfully appeal for more financial aid

Here are 11 things you should consider when appealing an award:

1. You don’t have to have a good reason to appeal.

Conventional wisdom suggests that you have to possess a solid financial reason to successfully appeal a college award. Those traditional reasons include:

• Loss of a job or hours reduction which may or may not be caused by the pandemic.
• Death of a parent.
• Need to support family members such as elderly parents.
• Change of marital status.
• Expensive medical bills.

Parents who face these financial challenges should definitely appeal a disappointing award, but many, many schools will entertain appeals without a solid financial reason.

You also don’t have to have a good reason to ask for a better merit award!

2. Chances of a successful financial aid  or merit award appeal will improve if the college needs more students.

Chances of success with an appeal for more need-based  or merit aid can depend on how the college is faring with its freshmen deposits. If the freshmen deposits are coming in too slow, a college can be much more willing to sweeten an offer.

In fact, some schools will make up a new scholarship and tell accepted student that the admission office just “discovered” that the teenager was also eligible for an additional scholarship.

A former president of a Midwestern University once told me that his college would routinely give an accepted student an extra $2,000 or $3,000 a year if it looked like this would seal the deal. He recalled one instance when the school gave a child an extra $2,000 a year when the parent said the teenager’s aunt was an alum.

This behavior is especially true when applying to colleges and universities that must work harder to attract students. Schools in that category would include those that wish their U.S. News & World Report rankings were higher and their acceptance rate was lower. This describes most schools!

See the following post of mine that discusses money implications for reach, target and safety schools.

Reach, target and safety schools. Don’t slip when creating a smart college list

3. How desirable is the student?

Whether a university will hike the amount of need-based financial aid or boost a merit scholarship can depend on how much the school wants a student. A college will be more likely to spurn an appeal if an accepted applicant was on the bubble in terms of admission.

4. Be careful when you negotiate.

While negotiating for a better award, parents don’t want to antagonize the admission staffers by using the word negotiate. Parents also don’t want to come on strong. Remember, admission staffers have the power to dispense better awards. Treat them as gingerly as a police officer who is on the verge of writing you a ticket.

5. Appealing for merit aid won’t always work.

Sometimes parents are surprised when their smart children get into elite schools, but don’t receive a merit award. As I’ve discussed previously in my blog and my course, The College Cost Lab, eite universities typically give little or no merit scholarships. They don’t have to since the parents of rich students are willing to pay full price for brand names.

If your child got into an Ivy League school, for instance, there would be no point in appealing for a merit award because these institutions don’t provide them.

6. You can appeal after the deposit deadline.

Schools don’t like to admit this, but some of them continue to market to students even after the official admission season is over. Parents might be able to obtain a better price from a school that is forced to continue recruiting students into the late spring and summer. Many colleges are recruiting into the summer which makes the traditional May 1 deposit deadline a quaint artifact.

7. Ask about how your home equity impacts your award.

Most colleges don’t include home equity in their aid calculations, but the majority of institutions that use the CSS Profile do. Parents can appeal the school’s use of their home equity and at the very least ask the college to limit its impact.

8. Back up your appeal with details.

Parents should be as detailed as possible when requesting greater awards. If a household has high medical bills, for instance, offer to show copies. If hours have been cut, provide a letter from the employer that backs up the statement.

9. Share competing offers.

If a teenager has better offers from schools, show them to the college the child wants to attend. Ask in advance if this would matter and find out who to scan the offers to.
I had a friend do this when her teenager’s No. 1 choice—California Lutheran University—made an offer that was lower than the other universities that included Linfield College, Dominican University and University of the Pacific. She shared the other awards with Cal Lutheran and the university matched the best award.

10. Be proactive.

If the financial aid application won’t adequately represent your financial situation, you should speak up before receiving an award. Contact the school after your child has applied, but before you receive the award. Some advisors recommend withholding this information until a financial package is given, but I disagree. I think it’s better to present the extenuating circumstances upfront when there are more financial aid dollars in a college’s kitty.

11. Use TuitionFit.

When looking at award letters, definitely check out TuitionFit. TuitionFit is an invaluable tool  that has helped thousands of parents and teenagers decide whether individual awards are the best possible and, if desired, quickly recalibrate their college search for better financial fits.

TuitionFit lets you see what kind of awards high school seniors are receiving this year from schools your child applied to and also what kind of awards students, with similar academic and financial backgrounds are getting.

Here is a post that I wrote on TuitionFit last year:  TuitionFit: How to find better college awards in minutes 

The post 11 Ways to Appeal for More Financial Aid or Merit Aid appeared first on The College Solution.

I have always found it depressing and frustrating that few parents and teenagers know what the differences are between a college and university. And the differences are substantial.

Americans use the terms college and university interchangeably, but these two types of higher-education institutions are quite different.

Families who understand how colleges and universities differ are more likely to throw a wider net when looking at higher-ed options. And this can lead to finding better academic fits and spending less money on a bachelor’s degree.

With that in mind, I’m sharing with you the nation’s three major types of higher-ed institutions. Understanding the different categories of schools that exist can help families find more appropriate fits and also locate institutions that offer better price points.

In addition, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different types of institutions can also reduce the likelihood of students ultimately transferring.

It’s a scandal that roughly a third of students at four-year private and public institutions end up transferring to another school. Transferring is disruptive and also typically boosts the price of college since inevitably some academic credits won’t transfer which leads to delayed graduations.

Three main types of higher-education institutions

Here are the three major categories of higher-ed institutions:

• Research universities
• Master’s level universities
• Liberal arts colleges

Research Universities

1. Research universities tend to be the most popular schools with teenagers. Among public universities, they are typically the best known and most sought-after schools in their state.

Here are examples of research universities:

• All the Ivy League institutions
• Carnegie Mellon University
• New York University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Ohio State University
• Purdue University
• Rutgers University
• Southern Methodist University
• Tulane University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Florida
• University of Southern California
• University of Wisconsin
• Vanderbilt University

2. Research universities are usually large campuses. The nation’s biggest research universities are Texas A&M (73,000 students) and University of Central Florida (70,000 students).

Students are drawn to these campuses, in part, because of the large size which often brings with them Division I sports (most notably football and basketball) and lots of clubs, cultural events and activities. The size also allows these universities to offer a huge selection of academic majors.

3. Families often don’t appreciate what the mission of these schools is. Here are the top priorities of private and state research universities:

No. 1 priority: Conducting professor research and bringing in research grant dollars to support these efforts. Professors are hired for their research record and not for any teaching ability.

No. 2 priority: Educating graduate students.

At research universities, which are known for attracting top professors (researchers) in their fields, graduate education is the second priority.

This leaves undergraduate education as the third institutional priority. At these universities, graduate students often do most of the teaching of the undergraduates while many classes that are taught by tenured professors take place in lecture halls.

4. Because there can be little, if any, meaningful contact with professors on the tenure track, it can be challenging for undergrads to find a mentor or obtain a recommendation for graduate or professional school.

5. It’s important to understand that the educational experience a student receives at a research university, as well as a master’s level university or liberal arts college, will depend largely on a student’s academic major. At research universities, students with less popular majors could have more contact with professors.

6. It’s equally important to understand that no university or college is uniformly great, average or mediocre. The quality of the institution can vary dramatically among the academic departments. A university, for instance, could have a fabulous business school, but a lousy biology program. Consequently, it’s important to evaluate academic departments when researching colleges and universities.

7. One way to make an undergraduate experience at a research university more personalized is to participate in the school’s honor college or honors programs. At some honor colleges, students can enjoy at least some small classes and may have access to professor mentors and better housing. The quality of the honors programs, as well as admission eligibility, can vary significantly so families need to do their research.

You can learn a lot more about honors colleges by reading the following article on the website of College Transitions, which is one of my favorite collegiate resources:

Best Honors Colleges and Honors Programs

Liberal Arts Colleges

1. Among the three main types of schools, liberal arts colleges are the smallest. They often have student bodies between 1,000 and 2,500 students. State public liberal arts colleges are larger with campus populations closer to 5,000, but that’s still much smaller than most state universities.

Most liberal arts colleges are private, but public ones exist too. You can find a list of the latter schools at the website of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.

Here are examples of public liberal arts colleges:

• New College of Florida
• Purchase College—SUNY
• Ramapo College of New Jersey
• St. Mary’s College of Maryland
• Truman State University
• University of North Carolina, Asheville
• University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
• University of Virginia—Wise
United States Military Academy
• United States Naval Academy

Here are examples of private liberal arts colleges:

• Beloit College (my son’s alma mater)
• Claremont McKenna College
• Colgate University
• Colorado College
• Grinnell College
• Lake Forest College
• Middlebury College
• Rhodes College
• Scripps College
• Washington and Lee University
• Williams Colleges

2. The number one priority at liberal arts colleges is undergraduate teaching. These schools rarely have any graduate programs so professors actually teach.
It’s far easier to connect with professors at liberal arts colleges since they are accessible and opportunities for mentorships will be more plentiful and it will often be easier to get guidance and recommendations for graduate school.

This reality might be why liberal arts colleges dominate the list of the higher-ed institutions that produce the greatest percentage of grads who end up earning PhD’s. Here is a chart with the top schools.

3. As the name suggests, liberal arts colleges offer bachelor’s degrees in the liberal arts such as English, history, biology, economics, mathematics and chemistry. While some of these colleges offer business degrees due to their popularity, these schools typically avoid vocational degrees such as journalism, nursing, engineering and allied health majors.

4. One of the most attractive features of liberal arts colleges is that they are small. Classes are small. Some schools even boast that there isn’t a single lecture hall on their campus.

Small classes lead to more interactive learning and often provide more opportunities to earn good grades. That’s because smaller classes can allow for credit for class participation and more frequent grading for quizzes, as well as tests. In contrast, at big universities with large classes, there might only be a mid-term and final for grading.

5. The smaller size of liberal arts colleges is a huge nonstarter for some students who have attended bigger high schools and want what they assume will be a more exciting campus atmosphere with more students. In addition, some students will dismiss these colleges because they don’t offer their majors.

Master’s Level Universities

Here are things you need to know regarding master’s level universities, which are also referred to as regional universities:

1. Master’s level universities are so named because there are usually few if any PhD programs at the schools. Instead, the graduate programs typically focus on master’s degrees.

Many of the regional state schools were founded in the 19th century as colleges dedicated to educating school teachers but long ago they broadened their offerings. These schools offer the traditional liberal arts subjects such as biology, psychology and economics, as well as career-oriented degrees such as business, engineering, nursing, criminology and allied health fields.

2. Most students who attend four-year state schools attend master’s level universities.  Lots of private institutions also fall into this category including many Catholic and Christian universities. Here are examples:

• Abilene Christian University
• Bentley University
• Butler University
• Creighton University
• Drake University
• Elon University
• Gonzaga University
• Ithaca University
• University of Dallas
• University of Portland

Here are examples of state regional universities:

• California Polytechnic State University
• College of New Jersey
• CUNY—Hunter College
• James Madison University
• Northern Illinois University
• Salisbury University
• San Francisco State University
• SUNY-Geneseo
• The Citadel
• University of Michigan—Dearborn
• Western Washington University

In my opinion, evaluating master’s degree universities, whether public or private, will be trickier than the other two categories.

Here’s why: As you’ve learned, the primary mission of research intense universities is research and graduate education with undergrads being the third priority. In contrast, liberal arts colleges are dedicated to undergraduates. But at master’s level universities, the commitment to undergrad education versus research varies. Trying to get some sense of where a particular institution resides on this continuum can be challenging, but worth the effort.

3. A resource to learn what institutions fall into this category is U.S. News. Check out it’s “Regional University” category that is divided into four geographic areas. You can find a list of liberal arts colleges by looking at U.S. News’ “National Liberal Arts Colleges” listings.

It’s important not to put stock in the actual ranking that U.S. News gives each school, but instead use the lists to generate ideas for further research!

Need math help?

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The post Do you know the differences between a college and a university? appeared first on The College Solution.

At plenty of colleges, applying early action can also boost admission odds.

Students and parents, who are interested in applying early decision or early action, need to know the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy. Here are things to consider:

Applying Early Decision Definition

1. Early Decision refers to the admission practice of allowing students to send in their applications and receive an admission verdict before teenagers who use the regular admission process.

2. The deadline for early decision applications can be November 15 or even earlier. In contrast, the application deadline for regular admission can be in January or later.

3. When students apply early decision to a college, they promise that they will attend if the institution accepts them. Colleges want you to believe that an ED acceptance is absolutely binding, but it can’t be.

4. Most colleges and universities do not offer an ED option, but it’s a popular enrollment tool for more sought-after private colleges and universities.

5. In the 1990s, the University of Pennsylvania was the first school to offer early decision applications. Penn had too often been an also-ran for students aiming for Ivy League institutions so it rolled out the ED option to become more competitive.

Advantages of Applying Early Decision

1. Students who apply early enjoy greater admission odds at many schools because institutions want to improve their admission yield by locking up a portion of their class early. Doing so reduces the institutional stress regarding filling freshmen slots. The admission advantage can be considerable.

A fantastic resource for early decision, early action and regular decision acceptance rates is the website of College Transitions, which is a nationwide college consulting firm that has a depository of all sorts of handy college statistics and advice.

Here is a sampling from College Transitions of ED and regular decision (RD) admission statistics:

2. Students who apply early decision will be notified before other applicants of the school’s admission decision. Students will typically find out before the Christmas break whether they have been accepted or rejected. The admission verdict on some ED applicants, however, can be deferred to the regular decision cycle.

3. Getting an ED acceptance can be a boon for students who can quit the admission rat race after successfully applying to just one school.

4. Early decision can be an attractive option for students who are absolutely in love with an ED school and know that this is the college for them.

5. As more students treat applying to popular colleges as some sort of lottery, schools have worried about maintaining control of their admissions process. Consequently, a notable number of sought-after schools are using ED more heavily. This trend has only grown since the pandemic struck. This trend primarily favors affluent students who are the ones mostly taking advantage of the ED route.

6. While families focus on the acceptance rate of ED applicants, it’s also important to know what percentage of a class was filled early. If a large percentage of freshmen are accepted via ED there won’t be many seats left during the regular round.

7. When money is an issue, families must absolutely use a college’s net price calculator before deciding to apply early decision!

Sampling of Colleges that rely heavily on Early Decision Admits

From College Transitions, here are some examples of popular colleges where a high percentage of their freshmen class were accepted via ED:

6. Students also have the option of Early Decision II. A growing number of schools offer a second ED round with the application deadline often on January 1. You could try this route if you didn’t get into your first ED school.

It’s also a way to boost admission chances if a student applied Early Action to other schools and isn’t excited about his/her choices. ED II could also be a smart option for students who need time to make their ED application stronger with first semester senior-year grades, test scores and additional accomplishments.

Sampling of Colleges Offering Early Decision II:

• American University
• Bates Colleges
• Bennington College
• Bowdoin College
• Brandeis University
• Bryant University
• Bryn Mawr College
• Bucknell University
• Carleton College
• Case Western Reserve
• Claremont McKenna College
• Colby College
• Colgate University
• College of Wooster
• Colorado College
• Connecticut College
• Davidson College
• Denison University
• Dickinson College
• Emory University
• Franklin & Marshall College
• George Washington University
• Gettysburg College
• Grinnell College
• Hamilton College
• Harvey Mudd College
• Haverford College
• Hobart and William Smith College
• Johns Hopkins University
• Kenyon College
• Lafayette College
• Lehigh University
• Macalester College
• Middlebury College
• Mount Holyoke College
• New York University
• Northeastern University
• Oberlin College
• Occidental College
• Pitzer College
• Pomona College
• Reed College
• Rhodes College
• St. Olaf College
• Tulane University
• University of Miami
• Washington University St. Louis
• Vanderbilt University

Disadvantages of Applying Early Decision

1. Applying early decision can be financially dangerous for students who need financial assistance. That’s because ED students must promise that they will attend the school regardless of what kind of need-based financial aid the school might provide. Not surprisingly, the chief complaint about ED is that it favors wealthy families who can cover the cost regardless of any help from the institution.

While students who apply early decision to a college must promise to attend the school, as a practical matter, a college can’t force an accepted student to attend. A family, however, should make every effort to talk with the admission/financial aid office if a financial aid award is inadequate. If you can’t swing it financially, you can walk away from an early decision acceptance.

2. Students who apply ED could also reduce their chances for merit scholarships, which are awarded regardless of financial need. Institutions won’t publicly admit to this, but it would only be natural for schools to give smaller merit awards or none at all to students who have committed to attending their institutions regardless of the price.

3. The ED route can be a poor choice for students who need grades from the first semester of senior year and/or better SAT/ACT scores to make them look more attractive to admission offices.

4. ED applicants, who lock in their choice early, can miss out on schools that offer better opportunities. A school that seems wonderful in October might not be the one an ED applicant likes in December or January when it’s too late.

5. While ED usually provides an admission advantage, it’s not guaranteed. At a minority of schools, the advantage can be quite small or nonexistent. For instance, at St. Joseph’s University, the ED acceptance rate was recently 69% versus 61% for regular decision. At Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, 42% of students applying early decision got acceptances, but 42% of the applicants waiting until the regular decision round were accepted. At St. Mary’s College , the ED acceptance rate is lower than the regular one (73%% vs. 82%).

You should use the College Transitions link to see what the the most recent ED and EA stats are for colleges and universities.

6. Favorable ED admission odds can be somewhat misleading. That’s because students applying ED can be stronger candidates than teenagers who apply later. Schools also tend to use the ED application process to accept recruited athletes, legacy applicants and others with a special skill.

7. The pandemic, which ushered in test-optional policies for the vast majority of state and private colleges, was a catalyst for many more students to apply ED.

Without having to submit test scores, ambitious students aimed for institutions that they normally wouldn’t have a chance of getting into. Early decision applications for MIT, for instance, jumped 62% after the school temporarily stopped requiring standardized test scores. At Yale and the University of Virginia, the increase was 38% while at Dartmouth and Rice, the ED applications rose 29% after the schools became test-optional.

More competition often led to higher rejection rates for the early birds at the most sought-after schools. The acceptance rates dropped even lower at the most highly rejective colleges.

8. With most schools keeping their test-optional policies, the increased popularity of ED for the most popular schools is continuing.

The post Applying Early Decision: Advantages and Disadvantages appeared first on The College Solution.

Luckily, a handful of resources, which rely on federal data, can help you pinpoint the ROI for not only specific colleges, but also academic majors within particular schools.

Return on Investment (ROI) for Colleges and College Majors

Today, I’m going to share three college ROI resources that could be invaluable to your family:

• Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce
• Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
• Third Way

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce

Using the latest federal data, the Georgetown center ranked 4,500 two-year and four-year colleges and universities by return on investment.

Georgetown looked at an institution’s net present value at five different time intervals from 10 years after graduation up to 40 years after graduation.

The center defines net price value (NPV) as how much a sum of money in the future is valued today. This metric includes costs, future earnings and the length of time it would take to invest and earn a specific amount of money over a fixed horizon.

What is cool about this tool is you can use it to filter in a variety of ways including looking at two and four-year schools in a particular state, as well as state and/or private institutions nationally. You can also pick the time interval you want, the rank for that time period and filter by highest and lowest performing institutions in that time period.

As an example, here is a screenshot of a search I did for state universities nationally that provided the highest NPV for 40-years post-graduation.

You can also search by institutional categories such as liberal arts colleges, doctoral universities and master’s level universities. Within those categories you can drill down even more. For instance, in the doctoral university category, you can select “very high research,” “high research,” and “doctoral/professional universities.”

The rankings also includes a metric that measures the share of students at an institution whose earnings 10 years after enrollment are higher than those of workers with a high school diploma as their highest level of education.

An average of 60 percent of college students across institutions earn more than a high school graduate after 10 years. However, at 1,233 post-secondary institutions (30 percent), more than half of their graduates 10 years after enrollment are earning less than a high school graduate!

Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity: Academic Major ROI

While Georgetown provides an institutional level view of ROI, it is also critical to explore what the economic return is for individual academic disciplines.

Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, which is a think tank that is referred to as FREOPP, calculated the estimated earnings and lifetime ROI for nearly 30,000 bachelor’s degree programs.

You can discover the financial value of individual degree programs within an institution. To make the calculations, the researchers looked at earnings at ages 25 and 45.

One thing you will discover when checking on academic programs are the huge earnings differences within an institution for individual majors. It’s important for families to understand that a highly ranked school will definitely not insure high earnings for students from all majors.

At Berkeley, for example, the lifetime ROI for business majors and chemical engineers is $1,529,287 and $1,069,675 respectively. Compare that to the ROI for anthropology and classical/ancient studies at Berkeley which are a negative $57,987 and negative $238,293 respectively.

Here’s an example from a private university:

At New York University, an institution with a history of awful need-based aid and nearly non-existent merit aid, the lifetime ROI for finance majors and real estate majors is $1.9 million and $1.3 million respectively. Let’s contrast that with the alarming lifetime ROI of NYU dance majors (negative $571,110) and music majors (negative $610,941).

I used this ROI tool when I was giving advice to a friend’s daughter earlier this year, who was considering majoring in theater arts at San Diego State. The parents of this young woman have few financial resources and so there will be little-to-no safety net when she gets out of college. She was shocked when I showed her the ROI for drama/theater arts majors at SDSU. It’s a negative $240,611!

That sobering realization prompted her to look at more practical majors considering her financial situation.

Using San Diego State as an example, here is a screen shot that illustrates how wildly different the ROI can be for different majors within an institution:

In a separate study, FREOPP.org has also calculated the ROI for 17,000 associate degrees and certificates.

In addition, FREOPP has calculated the ROI for 14,000 master’s, PhD and professional degrees. Too many individuals enroll in graduate programs for the wrong reasons, including not knowing what else to do, and they suffer financially because of it.

According to FREOPP,  the median master’s degree has a net ROI of $83,000. But some master’s degrees are worth over $1 million, while 40 percent (!!) have no net financial value at all.

Third Way

Third Way, another think tank, takes a crack at department level earnings and earnings by type of higher-ed institution, such as liberal arts colleges, doctoral universities, master’s level universities and specialty schools. It does so by measuring what it calls the Price-to-Earnings Premium (PEP) calculated as the time it takes students to recoup their post-secondary educational costs based on the earnings premium that the typical student obtains by attending an institution of higher education.

The data from the U.S. Department of Education allowed the data crunchers to dig below the surface at institutions across the country to explore what kind of ROI the typical student received from his/her specific college program. Comparing the earnings premium that students obtained relative to the price they paid to earn their credential allowed Third Way to calculate the PEP that individual majors within individual institution produce for their graduates.

In two charts you might find interesting, you’ll see the highest percentage of graduates who recouped their educational costs within five years. You’ll also see the majors that did the worst.

The worst performing major was drama/theatre arts and stagecraft where 72.5% of graduates had yet to experience any return on their college investment after five years!

Bottom Line:

When money is an issue, and it almost always is, it is important for parents and students to look at the potential ROI of specific majors.

Families shouldn’t just look at the beginning salaries but instead take a longer look. For instance, the Georgetown data, in particular, shows, that students attending some liberal arts colleges that tend to have lower starting salaries do enjoy considerable salary boosts later in their careers.

What the new resources do show is that the academic major selection is often critically important for an individual’s future financial health.

A Free Math Tutoring Session

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The post Check the Return on Investment (ROI) for Colleges and Academic Majors appeared first on The College Solution.

With college sticker prices continuing to climb, it’s an important question to ask because the financial aid and merit award policies at schools will vary widely. Not knowing how to research the generosity or stinginess of individual colleges can cost you tens of thousands of dollars extra or much more.

The website that I recommend using when researching the generosity of individual schools is CollegeData.com.

Using CollegeData

CollegeData.com, a free resource that I’ve been using for years, is a valuable website to bookmark when on the hunt for affordable schools.

(I used to also recommend the College Board website for financial research, but when the site was remodeled, some valuable statistics for schools were eliminated. What’s more, the College Board now prominently displays average net prices that, in plenty of cases, are misleading.)

On CollegeData, you can discover what the average need-based and institutional merit scholarships that a specific school offers, as well as what percentage of students receive each type.

Getting Started on CollegeData

Here are the steps to take on CollegeData’s website to generate financial statistics for a school:

On the home page, type in the name of an institution:

You will be brought to the school’s profile where you can discover a great deal about an institution including admissions statistics, majors and campus life.

For this example, we are interested in the aid statistics so we will click the Financials hyperlink. I am using Stanford University as an example of one of the highly rejective universities that provides excellent need-based aid.

What you will see at the top of the financial section is Stanford’s cost of attendance. Most families don’t pay full price for college, but it’s a good starting point as we dive deeper.

 Next scroll down to the school’s Profile of Financial Aid.

Here is a screenshot of what you will find for Stanford freshmen:

This section on freshmen aid will give you a good idea of how generous a school will be.

You will first notice that only 61.1% of freshmen applied for financial aid even though the cost of attendance is more than $78,000. That shows that a large percentage of the freshmen class are so wealthy that they didn’t even bother to apply for assistance.

Of those who applied for aid, 80.4% were qualified to receive aid and 100% of that group received financial assistance.

Check Stats for Need Fully Met and Average Percent of Need Met

One of the statistics that I find most relevant is this one: Need Fully Met.

Ninety-five percent of Stanford students who needed financial assistance (as determined by a financial-aid methodology) had their full need met. That’s excellent (although 100% would have been better) and only a few dozen colleges and universities in the nation can make the same claim.

Also excellent is Stanford’s Average Percent of Need Met, which is 100%. So just about everybody who had a demonstrated financial need got their full need met.

What it means to get your full need met

Here’s an explanation of what meeting full need means:

Let’s say a Stanford freshman’s Expected Family Contribution (EFC) was $35,000 with the school’s cost of attendance at $78,218. The student’s demonstrated need would be $43,218. Stanford’s statistics suggests it would meet that need.

Note: If you don’t know what an EFC is, please read my blog post on the subject:

Expected Family Contribution: 10 Things to Know

Looking for grants in financial aid packages

The gold standard is for a school to provide that assistance entirely or almost entirely via free money – grants. When calculating what percentage of need it meets, a school is only supposed to include the Subsidized Direct Loan since it has a perk that other loans don’t have. The interest on subsidized loan is covered by the federal government when the student is in school and for a period after graduation.

Almost all schools put the full Direct Loan into a freshman’s package, which is $5,500, but Stanford is part of a small no-loan group of rich private institutions that do not. The self-help in the Stanford package would be for a federal work-study job.

Some schools, however, calculate their average need met by including the Subsidized and Unsubsidized Direct Loan, as well as the federal PLUS Loan for parents. That is a dishonest move.

In Stanford’s case, nearly all the assistance comes from need-based gifts ($56,989), which is great. Meanwhile the average amount of need-based self-help (loans and work-study) is quite low at $1,696 because, as mentioned, Stanford admirably doesn’t meet need with loans.

Check for Merit Awards

For your affluent clients, the most important information will come under the Merit-Based Gift section. If a school gives merit scholarships to students without financial need, this is where you’d find it.

Stanford gives a small amount (3.2%) of merit aid to students with financial need. I suspect that would be students who got their full need met via Stanford, but also had some outside private scholarships.

The next line – Not Reported – is what is relevant to high-income students. When it says, not reported, it means the institution does not provide merit scholarships to students with no financial need, as determined by the school’s aid formula. I am puzzled why it’s never noted with a zero.

Looking at Stanford’s statistics, you can see that this is a very generous school for students who have need, but a full-price university for high-income students whose EFC exceeds the cost of attendance.

Check freshmen stats with undergraduate stats

CollegeData also provides the same statistics for all undergraduates at a college. By looking at these stats, you can see if the award packages are front-loaded. That means the awards are much better in the freshman year than subsequent ones.

In Stanford’s case, the aid policy didn’t change. The average percentage of need met was the same and the awards were very close.

You will see under the Merit-Based Gift section, that a few undergraduates (18), with no financial need, received merit aid averaging $14,855. At some point, Stanford was giving out a tiny number of these merit awards, which it stopped.

It is worth using CollegeData to see if an institution is front-loading awards. One egregious example of front loading that illustrates this phenomenon comes from American University in Washington, DC.

For freshmen, American University says its average percentage of need met was 92% and that 48.5% of freshmen had their need fully met.

In contrast, for all undergraduates, the average percent of need met drops significantly to 75% and those having their full need met was just 22%.

New York University: Financial aid and merit scholarships

Now let’s look at the statistics for New York University, which is an example of an institution that is known for offering poor financial aid packages, as well as meager merit awards.

This school meets a low percentage of financial need (67%) and only 12.2% of freshmen recently got their full need met, which is truly dreadful.

Actually, for many of NYU’s accepted applicants, the percentage of need met would be even lower. Why? Because the 67% figure only reflects the  students who ultimately enrolled at NYU and didn’t include students whose award packages were so awful that they enrolled elsewhere.

In addition to being stingy with need-based aid, NYU also is terrible with merit scholarships. Among freshmen who had no financial need, just 4.2% of freshmen received a merit award that averaged just $6,180 for a school that costs $81,000.

NYU clearly doesn’t have to give good need-based aid or merit awards because so many teenagers want to attend the school because its located in New York City.

Beloit College: Financial Aid and Merit Scholarships

I selected Beloit College, my son’s alma mater, to illustrate a school that provides students with very good need-based aid for students who need financial help, despite not being a highly rejective school, as well as extremely high merit awards for affluent students.

Unlike universities located in cities on the East and West coasts, schools like Beloit have to try harder to attract students because they aren’t in urban areas. In Beloit’s case, that means better financial aid than most schools and amazing merit awards.

While the majority of freshmen didn’t get their full need met at 33.3% (the vast majority of schools don’t), Beloit meets a very high percentage of need at 97%. This high percentage is usually only seen at highly selective schools that provide excellent financial aid but little to no institutional merit scholarships.

For affluent families, who won’t qualify for need-based aid, the average merit award at Beloit is huge at $40,533!

Bargains can be found at many liberal arts colleges and master’s level universities in the Midwest and South and interior West. The merit awards, in particular, can be better and the sticker price of these schools can be $10,000 to $20,000 lower than popular coastal schools.

Bottom Line:

When money is an issue, it’s critical that families evaluate the aid practices of potential colleges and universities and CollegeData is a good tool to help.

The post CollegeData:  Evaluating A College’s Financial Aid and Merit Scholarships appeared first on The College Solution.

Families, however, are at a disadvantage when they look at these college awards. They typically have no idea if the offer of financial aid or a merit scholarship is a good one.

Families don’t know if teenagers with similar financial circumstances and academic profiles received better awards from the same schools.  Knowing this inside information would provide them with better leverage if they appealed their awards. Of course, many families don’t even know they can appeal awards even though many should!

Here’s another disadvantage that families face:

Students only know about the awards from colleges and universities where they applied. Teenagers might have received fabulous offers from other schools, but they weren’t in their funnel.

TuitionFit:  A clever way to find better college offers

Families, however, don’t have to remain at such a dramatic disadvantage when making what is often one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.

A valuable tool exists that can help parents and teenagers decide whether individual awards are the best possible and, if desired, quickly recalibrate their college search for better financial fits.

The resource is TuitionFit, which can be a game changer for students and families who need to find a college that fits their price range.

In a recent webinar, I talked with Mark Salisbury, the creator of TuitionFit and a long-time college administrator/insider, about how his free resource can help families.

In our conversation, we also talked at length about the state of college admissions in 2022 and beyond and how to use that knowledge to capture better deals.

Check out the recording of my webinar below:

How TuitionFit Works

High school seniors or parents upload financial aid award letters that they’ve received onto TuitionFit’s website.

They also provide basic information such as test scores and high school grade point average and their financial need that is represented by a child’s Expected Family Contribution (EFC). An EFC represents what a household would be expected to pay, at a minimum, for one year of college.

TuitionFit redacts all of the private information on each letter and organizes them by a student’s academic stats and financial need to create a “Kelley Blue Book” of true college prices.

Students who share one or more of their own award letters will get to see all of the real prices (and corresponding financial aid offers) for free that were shared by other students and families with a similar financial need and merit profile.

With this online platform, you can compare the prices your son or daughter has received with the prices that similar students are getting offered by colleges and universities all over the country in real-time. In doing this, you could discover college candidates that never previously crossed your radar.

You can use TuitionFit to instantly identify those colleges and universities that are already offering students like yours a price that fits your budget.

In addition, if you want to try to negotiate a better price with a school that has already accepted your son or daughter (usually a smart idea), now you have information and leverage that can be helpful in gaining a better price. Just don’t use the word “negotiate.”

Using TuitionFit scoop after admission deadlines

Don’t worry about being too late for admission deadlines! It’s important to remember that many colleges are open to getting applications into the summer. And that’s true even if they aren’t publicizing this fact! Many colleges quietly do this because they are still trying to fill their freshmen slots.

What if you don’t have an award letter(s) to share?

If your child isn’t a high school senior and doesn’t have offers to share yet, there are two options, but in neither case does the user see prices offered to current seniors.

TuitionFit for high school counselors, educational consultants and non-profits

The post TuitionFit: How to find better college award offers in minutes appeared first on The College Solution.

Families often slip badly on this extremely important yet tricky task of pulling together a solid college list. If a teenager creates a problematic list, parents can easily pay too much money for college.

One of the key issues when creating a solid college list is to understand the definition of these terms:

• Reach
• Target
• Safety

High school counselors commonly recommend that students apply to all three types of schools. This, however, can be a more costly move in many cases.

First, let’s break down what each is.

Reach schools

Definition:

Reach schools represent colleges and universities where students have a low chance of gaining admission.

The most well-known of the reach schools are the elite institutions. These include the most highly ranked research institutions such as the Ivy League members and others in this category that are gathered at the top of U,S. News & World Report’s rankings in the national university category. They include such schools as MIT, University of Chicago, Stanford, Caltech, Duke, Georgetown and Emory.

Other schools in this category include the most highly ranked liberal arts colleges. They include institutions such as Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona, Claremont McKenna and Swarthmore colleges.

These are institutions where it’s nearly impossible to gain admittance without a hook and even then, rejection is the most common outcome. These schools should be considered a reach school by just about everyone. And that includes students who earn perfect SAT or ACT scores and graduate as high school valedictorians.

Other reach schools

Under the right circumstances, most colleges can be reach schools. Students, whose academic statistics put them into the lower 25% of accepted applicants in the most recent completed admission season, would be applying to a reach school.

Example:

Let’s say a student has a 1100 SAT and a 3.1 GPA. This student would be applying to a reach school if the middle 50% of accepted students at this institution had an SAT range of 1110 to 1260 or higher. In this example, the top 25% of accepted students would have had an SAT score above 1260.

It’s easy to find standardized score figures. I used to recommend heading to the College Board’s website to obtain these statistics, but I don’t anymore because when the College Board, which is a membership organization for higher-ed institutions, overhauled its college profiles, it stopped sharing some important admission and financial figures.

Now I recommend using CollegeData.com, which, unlike the College Board, doesn’t have to placate colleges and universities that would prefer that certain information be withheld from families.

You may have to register (for free) with CollegeData to get full access to the site, but I’ve never once been contacted by CollegeData in the many years that I’ve been happily using the site.

On the CollegeData’s website, type in the name of a school and once the institution’s profile is pulled up, click on the Admissions link.

50% Range for SAT and ACT scores

Below is an example of what you will find for an individual school. At the top of each graph, you’ll see the middle range of SAT test scores in math and “evidence-based reading and writing” (EBRW) and the 50% range for ACT scores. I didn’t include it, but there are also charts for ACT’s math and reading scores.

In the graphics, you’ll also see a further breakdown in how the students performed with these tests.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that most schools became test-optional after the Covid pandemic struck and have remained so. Many students are not submitting test scores so the published scores are going to be artificially higher as a result. After all, teenagers with lousy scores aren’t going to want to share them with colleges.

It would be helpful to know what percentage of students submitted test scores at an institution. Go ahead and ask a test-optional school that question. Unless a school is test-blind, which means they will NOT accept anyone’s scores, not submitting scores can, in some cases, hurt chances for admission and for merit awards.  I suspect it could also hurt need-based chances, but no school would likely ever admit that.

On the CollegeData site, you will also see the breakdown of GPAs below for an individual college:

In this example, the chances of gaining admission without at least a 3.25 GPA is quite low.

Reach school implications

Here is why applying to a reach school can be a poor move.

Students in the reach pool will likely be gapped. When gapping occurs, the school accepts the student, but the financial aid award is so low that the applicant will usually go to a different school or take on scary debt to attend.

In some cases, the gap between what a family can afford and what the school offers can be tens of thousands of dollars. In other cases, the student may receive no financial assistance.

Obviously, it would represent a huge financial hardship for a student who needs financial assistance to get gapped by a reach school. That’s why reach schools can be especially hazardous for applicants who need a lot of financial aid.

Meanwhile, students, who get accepted to a reach school and don’t qualify for need-based aid, are far more likely to receive a smaller merit scholarship or none at all.

Appreciating this reality, my son didn’t apply to any reach schools. He applied to liberal arts colleges where he was in the upper range of applicants. Not surprisingly then, Ben received good merit scholarships from the eight schools where he applied. Consequently, Ben enjoyed the luxury of picking the college that he really wanted to attend, which was Beloit College in Wisconsin.

There is also a hazard to applying to elite schools, which as I’ve suggested represents a reach for 99.99% of teenagers. High-income students who beat the odds and do get into one of these schools will almost never get a merit scholarship.

So high-income students, who aim for the most elite schools (a growing trend is to call them highly rejective colleges), will pay full price. For some parents, paying $325,000 for a bachelor’s degree won’t matter. To them, the bragging rights and the perceived career advantage are worth every penny.

Plenty of high-income families, however, would balk at paying this exorbitant amount or simply don’t have the cash. This would be especially true if there are two or more children in the household or children have aspirations of going to graduate/medical/law school and having mom and dad pay.

Target schools

Definition:

These schools represent institutions where the applicant’s test scores and GPA are within that middle 50% range that I discussed above. In other words, many students on the campus had academic profiles as high schoolers that were similar to today’s applicant.

Target school implications

It is possible for a school, if it is test optional, to be a target for a student even if the applicant’s SAT or ACT score is lower than the published 50% range. This is true for reach schools too. Test-optional schools don’t require students to submit standardized test scores, but once again families need to make sure that withholding test scores won’t jeopardize a chance for an institutional merit scholarship.

If applying to a target school without submitting scores, the student’s grade point average should be in the 50% range or preferably higher. If the GPA isn’t high enough then the school would drop to a reach.

Keep in mind that target schools typically aren’t going to be as generous to accepted students who sit in the 50% range. When money is an issue, this should be an important factor.

Colleges routinely give their best packages to student who are in the top 25% of applicants or higher.  Most students, however, don’t pay full price.

Safety schools

Definition:

With safety schools, the applicant is in the top 25% applicants. Remember that at highly selective schools there is no guarantee that an applicant will get accepted. Students shouldn’t assume a school is a safety if the institution has a high rejection rate.

Luckily, most schools accept the vast majority of their applicants. Because of this reality, a student doesn’t have to be in the top 25% of applicants for a school to be considered a safety choice. In fact, every year UCLA oversees a survey of freshmen at four-year public and private colleges across the country and every year, roughly 75% of students say they got into their first choice school.

Safety schools also include open enrollment state colleges which accept just about everyone.

It’s not hard to get into most colleges, what is usually harder is paying for it!

Safety school implications

Safety schools are going to be the most likely to provide the best merit scholarships because institutions crave students who have the highest academic credentials in their pool of applicants.

What it takes to qualify as a safety, will depend upon the school. At a competitive college, a student with a 3.4 and a 1240 could be a great applicant. At another school, to be a top candidate would require a 1450 SAT and a 3.8 unweighted GPA.

A safety school should not only be an institution where the student has an excellent chance to be admitted, but it should also be a financial safety where the price is reasonable or the child has an excellent chance of getting a price discount from the college.

Bottom line on selecting reach, target and safety colleges

1. You can’t assume that just because a student has great academic credentials, that they will receive a top award. As a general rule, that is true, but you also have to look at the school.

Brand-name schools on the East and West coasts, for instance, don’t have to give as many scholarships nor as many generous ones, because they get plenty of wealthy applicants who will pay full price.

To illustrate, let’s look at Villanova University, a popular East Coast Catholic school in Philadelphia that educates a low percentage of low-income students but a high percentage of wealthy students. At Villanova, just 63 (3.7%) of freshmen received a merit scholarship and the average amount was $18,712. That won’t dent the price much when you consider that Villanova’s cost of attendance is nearly $76,000.

In contrast, schools located in less desirable parts of the country (ie. not East or West Coast cities) will typically give better awards and to more applicants.

2. Because financial aid and merit awards are tied to what kind of schools a student is applying to (reach, target, safety), it is critical that a parents use each college’s net price calculator to get a head-up on what the net price of the institution would be.

By doing so, parents could limit a child’s expectation before he or she applies to individual schools.

3. Finally, when money is an issue, it’s critical to look at the financial implications of applying to reach, target and safety schools.

The post Reach, target and safety schools: Don’t slip when creating a smart college list appeared first on The College Solution.

After moving money into a 529 account, many savers can quickly turn around and withdraw the cash to pay for their child’s college tuition and other qualified expenses.

Here’s why you would want to make this 529 move:

In most states, you can claim a state tax deduction – or even better a tax credit – for money deposited into a 529 account. And that’s true even if the money stays there for just hours.

The tax savings functions like a discount on tuition at your marginal state income tax rate.

This strategy is designed for parents who will be making withdrawals to pay for their college or are currently pulling money out of their 529 accounts.

Capturing 529 tax benefit in three dozen states

Recently, 34 states and the District of Columbia were offering a tax deduction or tax credit for 529 contributions. Getting a tax credit is especially valuable because the credit will reduce the overall tax bill dollar for dollar.

Except for four of these states, there is no prohibition from making a contribution to a 529 account and then immediately taking a qualified withdrawal to pay for college expenses.

Taking advantage of this tax loophole is an excellent way to capture a discount on what you must pay for college. It’s a no brainer.

These are the four states that recently required a certain holding period before 529 contributions can be eligible for a state income tax benefit:

• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Montana
• Wisconsin

While 34 states offer a tax benefit for contributions, six states don’t offer any tax break:

• California
• Delaware
• Hawaii
• Kentucky
• New Jersey
• North Carolina

That brings us up to 40 states. The remaining 10 don’t have a state income tax so there is no state tax benefit to capture.

The post Quick way to capture a 529 tax break when a student is in college appeared first on The College Solution.

Before explaining the change, it’s important to understand what the situation is right now.

Currently, parents are supposed to share on the FAFSA if grandparents, aunts and uncles, godparents, friends or others outside the immediate family have kicked in money to pay for college costs. This financial assistance is considered the child’s untaxed income.

The FAFSA assesses a child’s untaxed income at up to 50%, which is a steep price.

The FAFSA has never penalized a student if grandparents or others have simply saved for a child’s future college years. Instead it has only been an issue when outsiders pulled money out and paid for college expenses.

New way the FAFSA will treat grandparent help

The new FAFSA overhaul will not consider whether grandparents or other well-wishers have helped defray college costs. The FAFSA will stop asking this question starting with the application for the 2023-2024 school year.

This change might seem like a long way off, but it’s impact will actually be felt this year.

That’s because the FAFSA depends on two-year (prior-prior) tax information. The 2023-2024 FAFSA can be filled out as early as Oct. 1, 2022 and will depend largely on information from 2021. And the 2023-2024 FAFSA, which normally would want to know about college payments from grandparents will no longer ask the question.

What this means is that grandparents and other outsiders who help out with college costs in 2021 will not hurt aid chances via the FAFSA. In reality, grandparent help in 2020 was the last year that this assistance would need to be reported. Grandparent help in 2020 will need to be reported on the 2022-2023 FAFSA, which was available beginning Oct. 1, 2021.

The federal government is removing the question about outside help with college costs as part of its move to simplify the federal financial aid application. As part of the makeover, the government got rid of some questions that few people answered including this one.

Grandparent and the CSS Profile

While the FAFSA eliminated the question about outside financial help, the CSS Profile, at least at this point, is not changing its policy. It will continue to ask about outside assistance.

Roughly 200 colleges and universities, nearly all private, use the CSS Profile to determine how much institutional aid a student should get. These schools only use the FAFSA to determine state and federal aid.

While relatively few institutions use the CSS Profile, these schools include the most desirable private colleges and universities. Within the ranks of these schools are those that dispense the best need-based financial aid.

Unfortunately, the welcome FAFSA change will not be a consolation to families interested in Profile institutions.

Avoiding the CSS Profile grandparent penalty

Parents, whose children will be applying to Profile schools, will have to continue to take steps necessary to avoid outside help jeopardizing need-based aid chances.

Here is a sure-fire strategy to do just that:

Because parents are using two-year-old tax information, grandparents can safely start helping with college costs at Profile schools in the second semester of the child’s sophomore year after the family has filed for financial aid for the upcoming junior year.

The post How grandparents can help with college costs without hurting financial aid chances appeared first on The College Solution.

Here is more to consider before you apply early decision or early action to college:

1. While students who apply early decision to a college must promise to attend the school, as a practical matter, a college can’t force an accepted student to attend.

A family, however, should make every effort to talk with the admission/financial aid office if a financial aid award is inadequate. If you can’t swing it financially, you can walk away from an early decision acceptance.

2. Consider Early Decision II. A growing number of schools offer a second ED round with the application deadline often on January 1.

You could try this route if you didn’t get into your first ED school.

It’s also a way to boost your admission chances if you applied Early Action to other schools and aren’t excited about your choices. ED II could also be a smart option if you need time to make your ED application stronger with first semester senior-year grades, test scores and additional accomplishments.

Here are some of the colleges that offer ED II:

• American University
• Bates Colleges
• Bennington College
• Bowdoin College
• Brandeis University
• Bryant University
• Bryn Mawr College
• Bucknell University
• Carleton College
• Case Western Reserve
• Claremont McKenna College
• Colby College
• Colgate University
• College of Wooster
• Colorado College
• Connecticut College
• Davidson College
• Denison University
• Dickinson College
• Emory University
• Franklin & Marshall College
• George Washington University
• Gettysburg College
• Grinnell College
• Hamilton College
• Harvey Mudd College
• Haverford College
• Hobart and William Smith College
• Johns Hopkins University
• Kenyon College
• Lafayette College
• Lehigh University
• Macalester College
• Middlebury College
• Mount Holyoke College
• New York University
• Northeastern University
• Oberlin College
• Occidental College
• Pitzer College
• Pomona College
• Reed College
• Rhodes College
• St. Olaf College
• Tulane University
• University of Miami
• Washington University St. Louis
• Vanderbilt University

You can find a longer list of colleges offering ED II at the website of College Transitions, a highly regarded college consulting firm based in Georgia.

3. If money is an issue, it’s critically important that parents use a school’s net price calculator before allowing their child to apply early decision.

A net price calculator will provide a personal estimate of what a school will cost after any grants and scholarships from the institution itself are deducted from the price tag along with any applicable state and federal grants.

Early Decision Example

To illustrate the sort of decisions that families must make when contemplating an ED application, I’m sharing the situation of a mom, who asked me if her son should apply early decision since he would need financial support.

A mom’s email about an early decision choice:

Have you ever encountered a school that has an early decision program where a student could opt out of an acceptance if the financial award was not enough?

I am wondering about Harvey Mudd College in particular – my son’s number one choice – but our finances are limited. Might they put something in writing to let him apply early decision with an opportunity to review the financial award granted before accepting their offer?

My early decision advice to the mom:

I would not apply Early Decision to Harvey Mudd (an excellent engineering/liberal arts college), or any other school, if the institution’s net price calculator suggests that the cost will be prohibitive. Many ED schools offer good net price calculators that will provide a family with a solid estimate of what an institution will cost them.

I told the mom that it was quite likely that this elite college would come through with an excellent financial aid package. Harvey Mudd is one of a few dozen schools in the nation that meet 100% of a student’s demonstrated financial need.

For families who need a great deal of financial assistance, I don’t think it’s a risk to apply to elite schools that offer excellent financial aid packages. If a college has pledged to meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need of all its students — or very close to that — I believe it’s safe to apply.

And sure enough, when the mom used Harvey Mudd’s net price calculator, it estimated that the price would be just $15,000 for her son’s freshman year. At the time, the cost of attendance at this prestigious school, which is located in Claremont, CA, was more than $70,000 (now it’s $80,000). Attending Harvey Mudd at this price would be a tremendous bargain.

Without using a net price calculator, many families would never even consider applying to such an expensive school.

Here is one more consideration:  The acceptance rates for early decision and regular decision at Harvey Mudd are similar (19% v. 14%) so applying early wouldn’t provide much of an admission advantage

Applying early action to college

If applying ED isn’t appropriate, early action is an option that provides more flexibility. There are two types of early action:

• Restrictive early action or single choice early action
• Nonrestrictive early action

Restrictive early action option

Rather than offering early decision, some highly selective schools offer restrictive early action that is more flexible.

Typically REA schools require that students not apply ED or EA to any other private institution, but they can apply to public institutions. Students who are accepted through restrictive early action are not obligated to attend the school.

With complaints that ED favors rich students, some elite schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale offer this type of early action.

Nonrestrictive early action

Most EA schools offer nonrestrictive early action.  With this option, students are free to apply to as many early action schools as they’d like. And they are not obligated to attend any of them.

Examples of Early Action Acceptance Rates

                                                                          EA                    RD

• Drexel University                                    92%                    65%
• Creighton University                             87%                    56%
• Kalamazoo College                                 87%                    66%
• Colorado State University                    86%                    70%
• Ohio State University                            64%                    35%
• Trinity University                                   63%                    28%
• Santa Clara University                          61%                     37%
• Fordham University                               54%                    40%
• Case Western University                       32%                     23%
• U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill       28%                      12%
• University of Notre Dame                     26%                     12%
• Colorado College                                     19%                       5%
• Princeton University                              14%                       5%
• Harvard University                                 13%                       3%

The post Applying early decision and early action, part II appeared first on The College Solution.