Poking around the intrawebs and thought I'd ask here as well.....

My son has been admitted to several state schools. He isn't sure where he wants to go yet and said he wants to wait and see the financial aid offers form each school.

Would there be a benefit or drawback to him going ahead and accepting admission to some or all of these schools? Do we have to place a deposit when we do? Will it increase of decrease the financial aid offer?

None of the college's websites discuss what happens if you accept admission and then back out.

(p.s. - he is #4 in a graduating class of about 500 at a D/FW area suburban high school - in lots of extracurricular activities and leadership stuff).

TIA

I love you all

OK - so I've kept poking around and it looks like there is a deposit at most schools - $200 at t.u. for instance. Is that pretty typical?

Do you fall into a "need" tax bracket that would allow him grants? If not, he is looking primarily at loans. FA has changed a bit since I worked in it, but there are federal limits on how much you can receive in loans each semester. The amount he will be offered from each school will depend on the cost of their tuition, how much the family said they could pay. And the additional need that needs to be met. Some of this need may be met through student employment, or PLUS Loans (parent loans), as I assume your child is a dependent (it is ridiculously hard to be considered independent for financial aid).

Every school has a deadline for when they need to accept their admission. Some schools may not process financial aid applications until admission has been accepted (it is a time consuming process, and if you back out, that is money that could have been given to someone else). Remember, schools are alloted x amount of money to distribute through financial aid each year. If your child is awarded money in financial aid, then doesn't attend that school, he potentially "took" money away from another student.

While, yes, they can redistribute that money, it typically does not happen until after the semester begins (so students who couldn't afford to go, have already enrolled elsewhere).

To my knowledge, there is no "penalty" for not enrolling other than becoming a statistic and potentially losing a deposit. However, it is kind of a **** move (from someone who worked in both admissions and FA).

Not at all uncommon for people concerned with their kids financial future to accept admission, pay the deposits at several schools and then wait for the scholarship offers to compare. Many kids in that top 1-5% of metro schools can get some pretty big scholarships other places and "not much' from A&M and austin.

I asked academic advisors in several departments I'm friends with and they all said the same thing. I got the same story enough to feel pretty confident at least at A&M there is no blackball list your are placed on if you accept and then don't complete the process. They assured me should someone that did that decide to transfer to A&M later on, it wouldn't hurt them at all or for grad school. Many, many A&M faculty do just what you described in the OP when their student is in that top group of kids but maybe just right outside national merit contention or similar. There obviously is a risk with how much you spend on acceptance deposits vs how much you "might" get offered from different schools.

My daughter even signed up and paid the new student orientation fee at A&M before one of her other primary choices made her an academic scholarship offer she couldn't refuse. Because I work at A&M I told her the right thing to do was call admissions and tell them to cancel your spot at orientation so someone else could have it.

While I do generally agree with you, I don't have much sympathy since TAMU takes forever to let students know about scholarship offers. When I was deciding schools in 2007, I had been informed of scholarship offers from several out of state public and private schools. However, TAMU said I had to accept and then didn't tell me anything till late spring.

Maybe the process has changed, but I have had several friends not select TAMU because they couldn't receive any scholarship information.

Yes, merit based aid will take longer, especially if you were not the first candidate. Again, people accepting, and then backing out leads to some people having delayed offers.