Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Miscellaneous | December 4, 2025
This has nothing to do with our regular coverage, but my son is deep in the college admissions season. He’s received some acceptances and is still awaiting a few decisions, and I’ve personally become consumed by the entire process. I need a place to unload all this newfound knowledge and talk through it, and here we are.
When I applied to college, I was a poor kid who knew nothing and applied only to my flagship state school, helped along by the parents of friends. By the time I applied to law school, I had figured some things out. I learned that schools do value first-generation students from low-income backgrounds, and I was able to turn that into a scholarship that covered most of my tuition. What I didn’t understand then was that the scholarship essentially equaled the cost of tuition and housing minus the maximum amount of loans I was legally allowed to take out. In other words, this amazing scholarship they gave me disguised the $80,000 in loans that I’d be paying off for the next two decades until Uncle Joe Biden forgave them.
Now that I’m a parent, I understand the system all too well. For my students, the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is the entire ballgame when it comes to cost. Private colleges crank up the sticker price — typically between $70,000 and $90,000 a year — while state schools remain the outliers (there’s no kid luckier than a kid who lives in a state with a great state school). Wealthy families pay full freight. Low-income families pay whatever they can, often limited to the federal loan amount — $5,500 for a freshman plus $3500 in work study — and then there are the donut-hole families.
That’s where we sit. Colleges look at how much you can possibly afford if you slash every discretionary expense, never take another vacation, and maybe take out a second mortgage. Then they add $10,000 (to account for the student loan and work-study) and call the result your EFC. If a family’s EFC is $30,000 and the college costs $90,000, the school may offer $60,000 in “merit” aid or “institutional” aid, depending on the type of school, but it’s basically the same principle, different label.
The point is: The family is likely paying $30,000 plus $10,000 if it’s one tier of school, or minus $10,000 if it’s the next tier down — and that school is competing with the tier above it for the same student.
Here’s the catch, and it’s something that didn’t exist when I applied to college: Early Decision. ED allows students to apply early — usually November 1 or 15 — and receive a decision usually in December. You can apply ED to only one school, and if accepted, the decision is binding. You must withdraw all other applications and attend, as long as the financial package is within range of your EFC.
It feels like a win-win. Applicants get an early answer and might be done with the process by mid-December, and acceptance rates are typically 2x, 3x, or even 11x higher for ED applicants. Colleges, meanwhile, lock in a huge percentage of their class and prevent those students from shopping around for better offers.
But there are a lot of wrinkles that donut-hole and low-income families learn fast. ED heavily benefits affluent students who don’t need to worry about comparing financial aid packages. Lower-income students often avoid ED because they can’t risk being stuck with a price they can’t manage, even though colleges swear the aid packages are the same whether you apply ED or Regular Decision.
To me, the most insidious thing about ED is how it obliterates the Regular Decision process at top schools. Here’s an example (from a piece in the NY Times last week): When I was in law school at Boston University, my significant other at the time had transferred from Northeastern. Back then, Northeastern was a solid but unspectacular school with a novel trimester system that built in internships. I don’t know its acceptance rate then, but I’d guess around 70 to 80 percent.
It was outside the top 150 in U.S. News rankings. Now it sits at #46 — a huge shock when we started researching colleges for my son. What happened?
Two major ranking factors are Yield — the percentage of accepted students who enroll — and acceptance rate. Northeastern’s acceptance rate for the class of 2029 is 5.6 percent. WHAT? That’s close to Duke’s 4.8 percent and identical to Dartmouth’s. How is Northeastern as hard to get into as Dartmouth?
Here’s how: Northeastern admits a large share of its class through ED, where Yield is essentially 100 percent. The acceptance rate for ED applicants is 43 percent. But because those students fill so many seats, the acceptance rate for Regular Decision applicants drops to 4 percent. There’s a reason why Northeastern markets to so many kids after the ED Deadline: The more applicants, the lower the acceptance rate. You’re a statistic.
In other words: For most students who want to go to Northeastern, it’s Early Decision or bust. If your family has money, fine — you can accept whatever aid they offer. If you’re in the donut hole, fine — you may be overvaluing a Northeastern degree, but you love your kid, so you’ll take out loans, a second mortgage, or shake down Granny. But if you’re a poor kid terrified of the financial burden, you avoid ED and end up in the Regular Decision pool, where your odds are 11 times worse. You’re screwed.
But it’s great for Northeastern. ED boosts yield, lowers the acceptance rate, attracts stronger applicants and more money, improves faculty and facilities, and creates a stronger institution overall. Becoming a better institution is self-fulfilling.
There’s now a lawsuit challenging ED agreements. The argument is strong: that ED is anti-competitive, that it reduces incentives for colleges to offer competitive aid, prevents students from comparing offers, and violates antitrust laws. I have friends who refuse to apply ED because they want to compare aid packages. Financially, that’s smart. The problem is that Regular Decision becomes far more competitive precisely because so much of the class is filled through ED.
Think of it this way: College Apex has 500 freshman seats. Six hundred students apply ED, and 250 are accepted — a 50 percent acceptance rate. Then, 5,000 students compete for the remaining 250 seats. Far fewer of those applicants will ever get the chance to compare offers because only 5 percent of those students will end up attending.
If you’re a poor kid, you avoid ED because you can’t risk the commitment, so you get thrown into a brutally competitive RD pool. If you’re a donut-hole family, you apply ED and accept a package you can barely afford, or you’re rejected and dropped into that same fierce competition. And if you’re wealthy? Apply whenever to wherever. Colleges want — and increasingly need — your money.
I do have some sympathy for the colleges and universities, too, especially now. Federal funding is being yanked, and the number of international students applying (many of whom are full-fee) has plummeted. Smaller colleges are shutting down or merging with other schools. Faculty and staff are being laid off. They’re just trying to survive, too.
It’s a boondoggle. And yet the more I learn, the more I mostly admire the exhausted Admissions Officers who make the system run. They work 70-hour weeks during application season, reading 1,500 essays, weighing each student’s story, trauma, need, and “fit,” and then sending thousands of decisions that will ultimately shape how insecure kids view themselves. Most AOs burn out after two or three years, and I understand why. It’s a brutal job. They rarely get thanks for championing a student into a school, but they will get angry letters from parents when their kid is rejected.
Anyway, to those of you in the same boat right now: Best of luck.
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