<p>^It's not fair to blame the system. A student in that situation could've and SHOULD have done their research before applying early.</p>
<p>It's fair to be critical of a system that is inherently flawed and designed to in reality benefit the schools and not students. And if you don't think ED is more designed to benefit schools than students, then why don't all schools simply offer EA instead? Don't you think that EA is more equitable? Let's not lose sight of who really benefits financially from ED.</p>
<p>And in the hypothetical I gave, the decision to apply ED was made in good faith based on all publically available information. It was the school that did not disclose the limitations and weaknesses of a critical part of the program even when describing the program at information sessions. So you can't blame the student for not engaging in due diligence when applying. (By the way, all the facts of the hypothetical are from an actual situation except that the student did not apply ED for reasons that have nothing to do with the hypothetical. If the student had applied ED, there's no way the critical info would have floated to the surface until it was "too late".)</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's fair to be critical of a system that is inherently flawed and designed to in reality benefit the schools and not students. And if you don't think ED is more designed to benefit schools than students, then why don't all schools simply offer EA instead? Don't you think that EA is more equitable? Let's not lose sight of who really benefits financially from ED.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Michael,</p>
<p>I totally agree with this statement and the point you made about students growing from september to june of senior year. Students really are on the downside of the power dynamic when it comes to the nature of ED. In the past ED was an option for students who absolutely knew that school "A" was the school they wanted to attend , and had done their due diligence regarding financial aid and wanted to be one and done in the admissions process. Sometimes I think that students forget that ED is a family decision and even the most savvy student should not venture into this alone.</p>
<p>In recent years ED has morphed in to a strategey because admissions has become so competitive and there are so many student applying to "top" colleges, where student may not be totally committed to attending School "A" but believe that if they don't apply ED, that they will not have a chance of being admitted.</p>
<p>With Harvard, Princeton, UVA and a few others have doing away with their early plans this should make this a very interesting admissions cycle.</p>
<p>You have provided some really interesting insight to the discussion. I know you posted that you have not found any case law that you are speaking as a professional litigator, but as a parent, do you think that many parents would think that it was feasible to spend the time or the money (while possibly keeping their child's education on hold) to sue a school? And this is just a stretch, if they won the suit, would they be able to recover the monies spent at another college? Would a student really want to attend a school that they had to sue in order to gain admissions? So many questions....</p>
<p>All I got to say is my friend applied ED to a top school, and went somewhere else citing financial reasons. Now that school has issued a lawsuit against my friend because their FAFSA indicated there was no financial reasons that could have prevented them from affording the school. </p>
<p>Don't apply ED unless you can afford it and 100% want to go there if you get in.</p>
<p>"Now that school has issued a lawsuit against my friend"</p>
<p>I, for one, would like to see some proof of this....</p>
<p>I can't give you any proof, as I'm looking out for my friend's best interests. You have my word though that this school has called her and told her that they will be filing a lawsuit if she does not enroll there.</p>
<p>"they will be filing"</p>
<p>-This is different from what you said.... A threat and an actual law suit are two (largely) different things. I don't believe this story.</p>
<p>sybbie 719 - I think the discussion has gotten kind of convoluted. I was talking about two lawsuit scenarios: 1) where school "A" sued the student for not attending ED (which I think would be a frivolous action) and 2) where the student sued school "A" for intentionally disrupting the student's RD acceptance at school "B" by telling school "B" that the student had backed out of ED at school "A". I think it would legally be much more problematic for the student to sue school "B" if it withdrew it's offer of admission based on the student having applied to school "A" ED. I also agree that in practical terms for the reasons you mentioned and others that the student would not be acting in his best interests to sue school "B". By the way, in the "hypothetical" I gave about the Musical Theatre student, after ED decisions came out, the head of the program, who was a big draw, also announced that he was retiring and as of the date of RD decisions, no replacement (to my knowledge) had been announced. Another legitimate reason, in my view, for a student to back out of an ED acceptance. I also agree that parents should be actively involved in any decision to apply ED. Regardless of any legal issues, it is a serious commitment with all sorts of ramifications that require parental input.</p>
<p>A2wolves6 - I would be very interested to learn if a suit is actually filed. It is not an uncommon tactic to threaten suit to attempt to coerce compliance or to even have a lawyer send a letter threatening suit even where the party has no real intent to do so. Happens all the time. (At my firm, none of the lawyers engage in this tactic. We don't make threats, we advise of our intentions and usually enclose a copy of the complaint with the letter so the other side knows we are serious and can review what we intend to file.) In your friend's situation, it sounds like all she has received is some type of communication from the school itself. If your friend believes she had good cause not to honor the ED, she should retain a lawyer to tell the school to pound sand. As I've stated in my earlier posts, what are the school's damages? Were they unable to fill a spot in the freshman class - I doubt it! Only a school that is not thinking rationally would proceed when confronted with a strong rejection of their demands.</p>
<p>My friend did get a lawyer, it's an awkward situation. I don't talk to my friend about this situation enough to know if the suit is filed, or if there is just a threat. I know that a lawyer has been obtained, and that the institution has contacted my friend and said that "We'll see you in the fall, or we will take you to court". I'm not certain what exactly is going on, I'm guessing they want the money my friend owes from not going.</p>
<p>Interesting. If the school actually files suit, they will be opening a can of worms. Even if they can get past the issue of whether there is a valid claim that can be asserted as a matter of law, the school must still prove damages or meet the equitable criteria for injunctive relief which includes irreparable harm. That will open up the school's entire acceptance policy and procedure as well as all sorts of info on who applied, who was accepted, who was wait listed, did the school try to mitigate its damages by offering the spot to someone else etc to the discovery process. Your friend's lawyer could have a field day with this and the school could find itself on the defensive trying to avoid disclosure of all sorts of information. Be interesting to see if the school feels so strongly about vindicating a "principle" when its records and procedures for the entire admissions process suddenly become matters of public record and media scrutiny.</p>
<p><em>won't comment on the law stuff, because hey, I don't know anything about it!</em></p>
<p>However…</p>
<p>
[quote]
And in the hypothetical I gave, the decision to apply ED was made in good faith based on all publicly available information. It was the school that did not disclose the limitations and weaknesses of a critical part of the program even when describing the program at information sessions. So you can't blame the student for not engaging in due diligence when applying.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'd disagree with this. I think most people know that schools do not focus on their faults when marketing. This was information she could have gotten by, say staying overnight and talking to students interested in the same things as her…and honestly, IMO staying overnight at your top choices is basically a necessity before applying ED. One should at LEAST hang around the school talking to other students. And she could have contacted teachers in those programs too (I've found teachers tend to be honest, and my discussions with creative writing teachers was one of the things that made me chose Wesleyan over Brown ED). THAT'S diligence. If one does not have the time or money to visit one's top choices before applying (during the school year, not during a summer program), then one shouldn't apply ED (because otherwise you might just get the situation of someone stepping foot on campus and hating it/later finding out a program isn't what they'd hoped). So, yes, the system may be flawed/there to help the school, but the system is what it is, and students KNOW that they can't back out of ED except for financial aid reasons, so honestly, the student in your hypothetical dug her own grave by not talking to students and even teachers at that school sooner.</p>
<p>Weskid - You're engaging in a lot of assumptions. Obviously, because it's a hypothetical, one can always play with the facts to slant an outcome. However, in this case it's a hypothetical only because the student did not apply ED. All of the other facts are real. They also include the following. During the summer program, classes were taught for the most part by the full time professors from the regular academic year. Upper classmen in musical theatre served as T/A's. There was a ton of dialogue about all aspects of the BFA program over the course of a program that ran 5 days a week, 10 hours a day for 6 weeks. Never a hint about what was later learned. (Not implying anything nefarious, just that it was not affirmatively disclosed, even when the voice program was dicussed, and there was no reason for the student to reasonably anticipate a MT/Voice Major conflict and therefore ask follow up questions.) As to spending an "overnight", for BFA musical theatre applicants there is a tremendous burden of needing to prepare for, schedule and attend auditions for as many as 8 -12 schools (many of which have different requirements), all of which require traveling and overnight stays. All of this has to be done within a few months duration based on the audition schedule of the schools while the student is also preparing for community and school shows. Because there is a 3-5% acceptance rate in these programs, you can't neglect preparing for and attending auditions at the RD schools while awaiting an ED decision. Simply put, it's a whole different application scenario from other programs with an exponentially greater time commitment than applications to most other programs. And at the audition for this school, dialogue with existing students did not disclose the conflict. But put all of that aside. What about the head of the department, who was a major draw, suddenly announcing his retirement? No amount of "due diligence" can anticipate that until it happens. </p>
<p>But let's not get bogged down in the specifics of this particular "hypothetical". All of this, while true and accurate, is simply illustrative of the underlying reality that compelling circumstances can arise that were not known in advance nor reasonably anticipated that can justify pulling out of an ED acceptance. And if such circumstances do arise, there is no legitimate reason that student should not be able to do so without putting at risk admission to other colleges.</p>
<p>A2Wolves6: I'm personally glad that some school is pursing someone for breaking an ED agreement, and I hope the court sides with the school if the suit is followed. It's morally wrong to sign an agreement saying you will go somewhere, then go somewhere else. If a school doesn't pursue people for breaking the agreement, then people will break it. It's not fair to those of us who play by the rules, agreeing to what we sign.</p>
<p>ED is designed for people who know where they want to go. You give up your freedom of choice for a greater chance of acceptance. You say to the school, "Admit me, and I'll go there!" not "Admit me, and I'll consider going there." It poses an advantage to schools, because they can get a guaranteed attendance out of a student if they admit him/her, versus a possible attendance out of admitting an RD candidate.</p>
<p>In my personal opinion, ED is great. Not only do the schools get a guaranteed attendance, but a student is forced to think about where he/she really wants to go; instead of applying to 30 colleges, the student is forced to select 1(maybe 2 or 3 with EA added in). </p>
<p>ED should not be something taken lightly. A student should apply to a school expecting to go. Financial reasons should not even be an issue, since almost every top tier school grants 100% of demonstrated need through ED. Therefore, a student should apply knowing full well that he/she will be expected to pay 100% of the EFC.</p>
<p>
[quote]
my friend applied ED to a top school, and went somewhere else citing financial reasons. Now that school has issued a lawsuit against my friend because their FAFSA indicated there was no financial reasons that could have prevented them from affording the school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Did the school provide a specific number for the financial aid, or an estimate to be revised later (as is the practice at the schools whose ED policies I looked up)? If it's an estimate, what would prevent the student from rejecting, with impunity, any financial offer worse than the estimated number?</p>
<p>Also, given that different schools use different institutional methodology to compute financial aid, how would the school prove that the (estimated) financial aid is adequate, i.e. not worse than what some other schools that the candidate had applied to, might provide?</p>
<p>p.s. -- broken link to some CC thread in post #73.</p>
<p>^Basically, a college will say there's no financial reason that a student/their family couldn't pay out of pocket some of tuition and take out loans for the rest. It's not necessarily a reasonable expectation, but it's what colleges do.</p>
<p>It is naive to think that EFC represents what all families can in reality afford to pay. I conducted a little experiment and filled out FAFSA forms to get an indication of what the EFC would be based on assumed various income levels that would normally be considered "middle class". To my surprise, the calculated EFC more times than not outstripped the ability of the "family" to pay from current income after taking into account the expenses submitted with the form.</p>
<p>And I stick with my original contention that ED is a ploy that colleges cleverly market to parents and students with all sorts of rationales justifying the "benefits" to students. In reality, ED serves the interests of schools far more than it serves students. The schools lock in a source of a revenue stream, increase and stabilize their yield rates, and bolster their image of selectivity. I've yet to hear one cogent advantage for a student that ED provides which EA doesn't and with ED a student looses the ability to leverage schools against each other to get the best financial package. At the cost levels of a college education, who does this benefit, the student or the college.</p>
<p>It's a long and ambiguous story (perhaps because an interested person is reporting most of the "facts"), but try this: </p>
<p>2 quirky thoughts came to my mind reading this thread.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Why the HELL would you violate an ED acceptance? Early Decision means you love the school so much, that it's your unquestionable #1 choice. You can deal with the financial side and whatnot, because you love the school that much. ED should not be "to boost your chances" or based on "conditionals". That's LYING<a href="similiar%20to%20lying%20about%20your%20ethnicity%20or%20ECs">/b</a>, it reflects badly on both **YOU, your FAMILY, and your SCHOOL for developing you to have that type of mindset, and it's flat out CHEATING OTHER KIDS OUT because another kid who genuinely wanted to attend on those stated conditions were ousted because of YOU. Selfish pig.</p></li>
<li><p>Why the HELL is KK defending his point so viciously? Against what MOST of the people on this thread have said. Is someone really going to print out critical LEGAL DOCUMENTS to post on the internet to appease a 20 YEAR OLD? Seriously...when so many people echo the same message over and over, you just presume it to be true.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>it's sad that ED is just something to boost your chance of admittance now. for someone like me, who started looking for colleges early, and knows their top choice school, fits into their midranges and stats, doesn't expect much aid anyway, and just wants to get the whole process over with, it's a great thing. however, it does NOT fit the needs of most students, and should NEVER be used as a game. don't preach about the evils of what happens if you dont want to go to a school you got into ED. just don't apply under it. let us who will benefit from it do it, and let's all live happily ever after. =]</p>