What Families Over $110K Actually Pay at Early Decision Schools — the Number You Sign For (2026)

Early Decision is a financial commitment before it is an admissions strategy. Sign the agreement and, if admitted, you enroll at whatever the school's aid office says you pay — without a competing offer in hand. For families above $110,000 in income, that number is public, and at the binding-round schools it runs from under $26,000 a year to over $60,000.

The number that binds you

Every school reports to the federal government the average net price paid by families in each income band, after grants and scholarships. For the highest band — family income over $110,000 — that figure is, in practice, close to the sticker price at private schools, because need-based aid has mostly phased out and the only remaining discount is merit.

Here is that figure at the 33 schools we track that publish their binding round, most recent year on file:

Under $40,000: Vermont $25,775 · Bowdoin $35,196 · Virginia $35,402 · Johns Hopkins $37,774. (Vermont and Virginia are public; the federal figure is for in-state students. Out-of-state families should expect substantially more.)

$40,000–$50,000: WashU $42,170 · Brown $44,937 · RIT $44,970 · Vanderbilt $45,145 · Skidmore $45,136 · Haverford $45,991 · Hamilton $46,907 · Northeastern $47,696 · Baylor $47,895 · BU $47,504 · Rice $48,466 · Lehigh $48,751 · Northwestern $48,777 · Cornell $49,992.

$50,000–$56,000: Columbia $50,621 · Harvey Mudd $50,665 · CMU $51,480 · Dartmouth $52,036 · USF $52,497 · Lafayette $52,608 · Emory $53,018 · Case Western $53,061 · American $53,673 · Chapman $55,066 · Penn $55,972.

Over $56,000: Tufts $58,570 · Villanova $58,741 · Boston College $60,308 · Santa Clara $60,678.

Why the spread matters more than the sticker

Bowdoin and Boston College are both private schools with sticker prices in the same range. For a family over $110,000, Bowdoin's published net is $35,196 and BC's is $60,308 — a $25,000-a-year difference, $100,000 over four years, at two schools a student might reasonably put on the same list. The sticker does not show it. The income-band figure does.

That spread is what a binding application forfeits the chance to compare. Apply ED to BC and be admitted, and the family pays roughly $60,000 whether or not Bowdoin would have offered $35,000. Apply Regular Decision to both and the family chooses in April with both letters on the table.

Where the top band actually gets help

The four schools under $40,000 are there for different reasons. Vermont and Virginia are publics reporting an in-state figure. Bowdoin and Johns Hopkins are privates whose aid formulas extend well above $110,000 — the federal figure is the evidence. That is not a discount you can negotiate; it is a formula, and the binding round does not change it. The lesson is that "over $110,000" is not one price: at these two schools it is $35,000 to $38,000, and at Boston College or Santa Clara it is $60,000, for the same family.

The merit trap

Above $110,000, need-based aid is thin and the discount that matters is merit. Merit aid is how a school buys a student it wants. The schools that fill the largest share of their class through the binding round — Dartmouth 45%, Penn 35%, Columbia and Vanderbilt 34% — are, with few exceptions, schools that give little or no merit at all. Their net price for the top band is close to sticker in every round.

The schools that do give merit in volume — Baylor with 1,374 merit awards averaging $22,041, RIT with 756 averaging $41,222, Northeastern with 358 averaging $16,112 — run small binding rounds and give it mostly to students they are trying to win. A binding applicant is not a student they need to win. If merit is part of your family's plan, the binding round works against it.

The number the ED agreement does not show you

The Early Decision agreement you, a parent and your counselor sign says nothing about price. It says you will enroll if admitted. The price arrives in the aid letter weeks later, after the promise is made. That ordering is the whole reason to look up the income-band figure now — it is the closest public estimate of what the letter will say, and it is the only number you can compare across schools before you have signed anything.

What to do with this before November 1

1. Look up the top-band net price at each school on your list — it is on the school's federal net-price page and on every PrepToDone school page with the source year.
2. Ask one question about your first choice: would we sign for this number with no other offer in hand? If the answer is yes, the binding round is affordable. If the answer is "probably, unless somewhere else offers more," it is not — apply Early Action or Regular Decision and compare.
3. Remember the number is an average. Your family's actual figure comes from the school's net-price calculator with your own inputs, and the ED agreement carries a release clause if the aid offer makes attendance impossible. That clause is real but narrow: it covers "cannot afford," not "found a better deal."

Where the numbers come from

Net price by income band is from each school's most recent federal IPEDS submission, source year shown on the school's PrepToDone page. Merit award counts and averages are from each school's Common Data Set, section H2A. ED class-share figures are computed from sections C1 and C21. Averages describe the band, not your family.

Put your list in and see, for every school on it, what your income band actually pays and what the school published about its early round — free, without an account. Which school to spend the binding application on is $9.99 through Nov 15 (regular $49), once. Run your list.