A friend of mine just informed me today that they applied to both Princeton and Harvard REA, in addition to whatever other schools offered it.
Obviously, you can’t do this. They know this, but said that there’s no way anyone can check it, so there won’t be any consequences. Is this true?
The kid’s counselor is an idiot if true – could have lasting ramifications to the school.
That’s the other thing; they checked with their counselor to make sure they wouldn’t get caught, and I guess the counselor also ok’d it? I have the same one; lovely lady who wrote me a fantastic rec letter, my guess is that she doesn’t know there are different types of EA.
I am worried about how it may affect my friend’s decision. Though, I am surprised they were willing to partake in this and just disregard the rules. I’ve heard stories of kids being rejected for (legally) applying to all of the Ivies, so I know the colleges “talk”. Or there has to be a search engine of some kind? It doesn’t seem as though it would just go under the radar…
Bump
Pretty sure they’re going to find out.
Yea, colleges do talk. If this comes out they could get in very serious trouble. Definitely rejections.
I don’t want to sound like a jerk but this isn’t the type of person you should be friends with. They are hurting other people’s chances, they basically broke a contract, and more importantly they are placing the school in real danger in regards to future years with the Ivies.
This probably would lead to rejections from the schools he applied to. While REA is not a binding contract to attend the school, it is a binding agreement to only apply to one school REA (with public universities and early deadlines for scholarships being the exception). Since EA decisions come out so soon, I’m not sure what there is to do.
@TheGrayOne I was shocked to hear this, and then even more shocked by how flippantly they responded to my horrified “You can’t do that”. If this reflects poorly on the school, that’s a serious shame. My school sends plenty of kids to Ivies every year (I know three already off the top of my head who were accepted ED), and if one kid ruins that, that’s so wrong. Hopefully this doesn’t also tank the guidance counselor’s reputation…
It is unfortunate and I agree it’s not fair, but it’s a consequence of having a counselor who didn’t stop something like this.
@yonceonhismouth btw I love your username lmao
That’s horrible, but how would the schools find out? Do they really crosscheck each other’s applicants or something? I always thought it was more of a moral code they expected applicants to follow when it comes to only applying to one ED/REA school, I didn’t know they could actually find out.
@bssurly With ED/EA applicants, there is a way to cross check (I don’t know the specifics though).
The Ivy + admissions consortium meets regularly to discuss best practices. I doubt anyone could nail down how they might communicate with each other to ensure no ED/REA cheaters but I find it hard to believe that with that much wisdom in the room, they don’t have some mechanism to crotch kick applicants like the OP is discussing.
Here’s a simple method: each school redacts out the names of the applicants and uploads a list of SSANs to a master database. Any duplicates immediately get flagged and the schools get alerted. Bam.
Heck, it would take two minutes to assemble an excel spreadsheet to perform this task.
And if one school or counselor would be flagged multiple times, either a severe phone call would go out (if the school is otherwise worth redeeming) or that school simply gets blacklisted if the colleges don’t give a crap to correct the idiot GC/school.
@T26E4 “crotch kick” Like that term :))
Let’s hope my school is worth redeeming; although I will say that as someone who would never pull something like this it sucks that I could be penalized…
But then again, I guess being hurt by other people’s selfishness is just a part of this whole “adulthood” package…
Update: Friend was deferred from Harvard. So I guess they didn’t find out afterall?