My S has not decided where he will go and is starting to narrow down the list but will not hear from all schools until April 1st. Housing is tight in some of his choices and preference is given by date of housing application received. We feel in order to get a reasonable shot at good housing, we need to submit the housing contracts sooner than later. Some of the universities also require the student to accept admission before filing a housing contract.
My question: is it okay to accept more than one university’s offer of admission in order to file the housing contract. If we notify the university in writing (mail or e-mail) by May 1st we are refunded most of our admission fee so cost is not too high. Just don’t want to mess up our admissions if this is not okay.
It is perfectly OK to accept more than one to guarantee housing at this point. However, it is formally considered to be Not OK to hold more than one past May 1st.
So, go ahead and make as many deposits as you see fit, just make sure that your son drops the ones he doesn’t want as soon as he does finalize his decision.
It is not permissible to accept offers of admission at two schools at same time. If either school finds out they can rescind your admission. I would not do this.
How would other universities find out if he accepts any admissions? Are they free to make this public as he accepts? Since he is still waiting on some admissions, he would not want another university to find out he has accepted an admission offer and thereby jeopardize a potential forthcoming offer.
Its unlikely, but possible. Sometimes the university’s regional admission officer communicates with the high school guidance counselor about who is accepted or denied. If you accept to two schools and the guidance office finds out either at time of acceptance or after your withdrawal of your acceptance it could create problems. But aside from that, acceptance of an offer of admission creates a legally enforceable contract. Your acceptance deprives another student of a spot in the class and affects others who are deferred or waitlisted. My daughter will wait until she is certain before accepting.
This is common among the midwest publics my son was accepted to – you needed to put in a housing deposit in order to secure a place in line, and if you did not wind up attending and notified them by the required date, you got most of it back, losing typically $50-$75 a school. I think we deposited housing at Indiana and Iowa before he heard from his first choice school.
Read the fine print carefully, and keep track of deadlines. While this is not the way housing at LACs and many privates work, at flagships where typically it is mostly just freshman who live on campus, it is more common.
The other thing you can do is accept one right now…but if he is accepted to another more desired school rescind the first one and then accept the second.
Not at rolling admission schools with guaranteed acceptance for anyone who meet certain criteria. No such thing as being waitlisted or deferred to a later round of limited admissions. These schools do not limit the number of admissions so no one has a spot that keeps anyone else out. And as far as I can tell, our hs counselors never have contact with admissions at these schools. They don’t need the counselor to give recommendations or a school report, in some cases they don’t even require a transcript for admission (self-reporting is accepted with the caveat that admission will be rescinded if not accurate). Our hs counselors are always begging the students to let them know where the student has applied and where the student is planning to attend.
And if they give you a date by which you get most of the deposit refunded, then they are offering a way out of the “legally binding contract” that is acceptable to them before that date.
I agree with @Midwestmomofboys that this is common among midwest public schools as well as several in the west. I also agree with reading everything carefully. The one private school to which my D applied to and was admitted EA a couple years ago made it clear on the enrollment acceptance card that your enrollment commitment to them meant you were committed nowhere else at the time.
I agree with guinea girl and happy mom. I would rather have paid the deposit than risk our children’s not getting dorm or apartment housing.
On our dd’s choices we held 2 spots.
For our son, we had to deposit one housing contract because the deadline for housing was very early at one of our son’s schools. As soon as he decided, we canceled that contract but we did lose the $200.