Credit...Robert Neubecker

Is Applying to College Via Early Decision a Good Idea? Here’s What Your Income Has to Do With It.

Early decision isn’t just for the rich, as long as people with lower incomes can get accurate price quotes before agreeing to attend if they get in.

18 Dec 2025, 10:02 by https://www.nytimes.com/by/ron-lieber · NY Times

So much of what is wrong with the college application process comes down to this: You often don’t know what a school will ask you to pay until you get in.

While the people running colleges didn’t build this flawed system, they’re not doing enough to fix it.

It’s time to ask them to try harder. And early decision — where you agree to attend if you get in (but only if you can afford it) — is a wedge you can use to make the request.

Some of you have children who will soon apply in the second early decision rounds, after receiving not-so-great news in recent days from the first round. Others are already huddled with their high school juniors thinking about next year.

All of you can help by asking a few pointed questions. They will differ based on your income, but no one should sit out the early decision rounds without asking them, even — especially — if money is a big consideration in your decision.

High-Income Families

If you can afford to pay the list price and you think the value is there, apply early and avail yourself of the better admissions odds, if any. You may well be subsidizing other families at schools that lack an extra-large endowment, so thank you.

You can do everyone else a favor if you’re touring schools that offer merit aid, which often goes to above-average students regardless of their incomes. Ask — in a public forum — whether the schools make similar amounts available for both early decision applicants and students admitted later.

Tulane is clear on its website about the fact that early decision applicants shouldn’t expect many merit scholarships. Many other schools aren’t, and if enough people ask out loud, those schools might eventually just answer on their own sites.

Lower-Income Families

If your household income is under $100,000, you may be scared off by high list prices in general. Don’t be. Most expensive schools with early decision offer plenty of aid that reflects your financial need, and you can’t get it if you don’t at least apply.

Early decision does add complexity, though. The difference between paying $1,000 and $8,000 a year may be so great to your family that you believe you must get many competing offers — and not the lone one that would come with an early decision acceptance.

Danny Tejada applied early decision to Skidmore, got in with a generous aid package and graduated with no debt. Now, he’s a college counselor at BASIS Independent Manhattan, a school in New York City.

His advice to low-income students is this: Seek out the schools that promise to meet the full need that you demonstrate when you fill out the FAFSA and the more detailed CSS Profile financial aid forms.

“Low-income people who get in tend to get great packages at these schools,” he said. Only two of the students he counseled have backed out of early decision agreements because the aid wasn’t good enough, and both were middle income.

The Muddled Middle

So you’re a more middle-income family, however you define that. The tuition discounting system — whether it’s need-based or merit aid — feels like a black box. And whatever your aid forms suggest about your ability to pay, you’re not able to write $100,000 checks to private colleges each year.

Is early decision not for you?

I don’t know. Here’s why: Early decision is not a monolith, because neither is need-based financial aid. A school may admit people without regard for whether they need aid but then not meet that need. Or it may do the inverse — meet the need but not be a so-called need-blind school, where the admissions department makes decisions without looking at whether a student will need financial help.

And consider the financial aid formulas. Some schools will look at the equity you have in your home, if you own one and have any, and want a piece of it. Others may take differing views on what a long-estranged parent should contribute or what a family farm is worth. And then there’s that merit aid issue: Do early decision candidates get any? If so, how much on average?

You don’t know, either. But you can ask, and you should — at any and every college, before you apply early decision.

Every school has a so-called net price calculator. This is supposed to give you a sense of what a college may ask you to pay if you get in. Sometimes the calculators are inaccurate, but they are generally better than nothing.

They are also an excellent tool for setting an agenda when it comes time to ask a college some questions.

When Suzanne Spencer’s daughter was considering an early decision application to a small college in New England that is both need blind for U.S. citizens and meets the full need of applicants, Ms. Spencer filled out the calculator and liked the results.

But she took another crucial step: She reached out to the college to make sure she hadn’t made any mistakes.

“I didn’t know if I was using the right box on the right tax form,” said Ms. Spencer, who is using only part of her last name here and did not want me to identify the college so she could maintain her family’s financial privacy. “The financial aid officer and I went over the calculator results line by line.”

Her daughter got in, and the aid package came within $500 of what the calculator had predicted.

As much as you may think that admissions and financial aid officers work in opposition to you, the field is full of people who see their role as helping families make their dreams come true.

“This is deeply felt to us,” said Christy M. Pratt, a former director of undergraduate admissions at Notre Dame, who is now an executive search consultant at WittKiefer. “People do this work because they love helping students find a good match.”

Get them on the phone and ask them anything about need-based or merit aid. That should reduce the odds of an unpleasant financial surprise.

Early Decision Is Not Binding

I’ve said it before (so has the National Association for College Admission Counseling), and I’ll say it again: If you get an early decision acceptance but the price is too high, you don’t have to go to that school.

In October, my colleague Kailyn Rhone broke the news that Tulane was penalizing students from four high schools because people in the previous class had violated the early decision agreement without what Tulane deemed a good enough reason.

Tulane’s actions were harsh. But consider this: The school also said goodbye to about 10 percent of the people who got in early decision last year because they said they couldn’t afford the price. And Tulane’s message about releasing the families from the early decision agreement that they had signed before applying was fascinating.

“We did so even though we met their demonstrated financial need. Because we recognize that meeting one’s financial need may still not be enough for some families who need to compare financial aid offers, we released these students from the Early Decision Agreement with no penalty or consequence,” Shawn Abbott, Tulane’s vice president of enrollment, wrote in a note to counselors for high school students that he sent in the wake of our article.

So again: Early decision is not binding. Colleges just don’t like to talk about it, lest they lose the control that comes from admitting large numbers of people who think that they have to go if they get in.

Still, conduct yourself ethically. Fill out the net price calculator. Call your first-choice school and confirm the calculator’s results. Seek a pledge that the college will stand by those results if you apply early decision and get in.