Admitted by CMU. Should I pay the binding deposit or wait for waitlist decisions?

I am an international applicant for Fall 2020.

I am admitted by CMU now. It requires me to response to the offer by 1 May. It is the best choice among all colleges I got into. However, I am waitlisted by Notre Dame and UVA, and I would go to either of them over CMU. Now CMU says if I pay the deposit, I cannot “post an enrollment deposit at any other institution other than Carnegie Mellon.”

What may happen if I pay the deposit and do not go to CMU? What should I do?

If you want to be certain you attend college in the fall you will have to deposit somewhere by the deadline date. For CMU that is currently May 1, but could change (many schools have extended their deposit deadlines to June 1).

In your case, you could wait until April 30 to deposit for CMU. That gives more time for Notre Dame and UVA to go to their waitlists (which may or may not happen before their deposit deadlines which are both also May 1, as of right now).

On April 30 if CMU is your only, or best, option you will have to put down your deposit.

If you get off a waitlist at a preferred school after depositing at CMU, you would put down a deposit at the new school, and communicate to CMU that you will no longer be attending. You will likely lose the CMU deposit.

Here is a link that shows which schools have changed their deposit deadlines: https://www.nacacnet.org/news–publications/newsroom/college-admission-status-coronavirus/

Good luck.

Just to clarify: these schools don’t let you submit multiple deposits EXCEPT if you’re on the waitlist somewhere and get in and then want to go there over the place you’ve already sent a deposit to. That’s totally OK and they all include that exception afaik. It’s standard practice.

That said, you lose your first deposit. So no harm in waiting as long as possible.