Can my son change his mind after he accepts an offer?

My son is considering 2 universities and has been accepted to both. One of them will not let you get to the financial aid or scholarship applications until you accept your acceptance offer. If he accepts it and then gets more money from the second school can he withdrawal his acceptance to the first one?

Yes, you can withdraw your acceptance. You will most likely lose whatever deposit they require you to put down.

Personally, I’d tell the first school to shove it. If they won’t give you information without making you ‘pay for admissions’, it is likely they will be difficult to deal with in the future.

I have never heard of this. They won’t help you with financial aid or let you know what to expect?

That’s very strange. Are you sure about this? Which college is it?

Is school one early decision?

If not…I would be very frank with them. Tell them you cannot make a matriculation decision until you know your net costs…and politely ask when the financial aid package will be given to you.

That is… suspect.

Considering that most schools (if not all) want a deposit when confirming your spot, I would never do that without knowing your financial aid offer first. Would you ever buy a house, car, etc, without knowing exactly how much you’d have to pay for it?

The college is, frankly, a bit sleezy, if what the OP described is accurate.

Part of making a decision about which college to attend is knowing what the the cost will be. All reputable colleges know this. Unless I am missing something, you don’t need to make up your mind until May 1, so you have time to compare the colleges and financials.

My daughter was accepted to several colleges and we had no idea how much money was going to be offered from all of them right away. Some of the aid packages came early, but we didn’t get all of the scholarship/financial aid offers until after April. My daughter did not decide until the last week in April. So you should be able to sit on the acceptances you have right now unless they are ones with early decision deadlines.

@thumper1 even ED schools are required to give you financial info before accepting. It’s in the agreement that you sign that you don’t have to accept until you have the financial info.

If what OP relayed is correct, it could be much worse than not having a FA award ready at the time of acceptance. They cannot even begin to apply for FA, including, merit until the son accepts. Unless the deposit is fully refundable and the acceptance conditional until the FA is finally determined, this is entirely sleazy. On the other hand, if the deposit is refundable and acceptance conditional, I can understand a school not wanting to spend the time processing and evaluating FA until the applicant takes a “next” step, albeit a fully reversible one.

All schools that we were serious about for two kids worked with us to get a closer estimate for fa/merit etc. Never heard of having your hands tied like this. Just wonder what college this is or if the OP just misunderstood?

You can only have one enrollment at a time. Colleges do this so as to psychologically “anchor” the decision in your mind…so you can accept their offer…see what you get…and then later decline the offer. Look at the fine print…you may not get any deposit you put down back.

This is what the NACAC has to say about how colleges should act:
https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/advocacy-and-ethics/statement-of-principles-of-good-practice/spgpfinal_approvedsept2017.pdf

My daughter had applied and was accepted to CUNY Baruch. She was told financial aid offers would come out in May but housing deposit had to be in by May 1st. Between not knowing if it was affordable and not being a top choice it was ruled out. I know it was not a school on the common app.