<p>From an earlier thread:</p>
<p>
The parents are not part of the ED agreement, either. Like the guidance counselor, the parent is just a signatory. The [Common Application Early Decision agreement, also used by the school under discussion in this thread] does not mention the parents or the GC at all, only the applicant and the college. As with the GC, no rights or obligations are created for the parent and no consideration is exchanged.</p>
<p>The ED contract does not obligate a parent to make the “parent contribution” calculated in an ED financial aid package, even if that effectively prevents the applicant from fulfilling the bargain. The parent and the applicant may reach different conclusions as to whether the financial aid package is acceptable, and this is another circumstance where the college has no legal or moral grounds to enforce the agreement.</p>
<p>As to “taking another applicant’s spot” by violating ED, that doesn’t happen for the same reason that a regular-decision acceptee who declines an offer of admission hasn’t taken anyone’s place. The college has a good idea of the ED yield, which is never quite 100 percent, so they can (and presumably do) adjust the number of ED admits upward slightly to meet any targets they may have.
</p>
<p>See discussion at:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/687623-withdrawing-ed.html[/url] ”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/687623-withdrawing-ed.html</a></p> ;
<p>and notice in particular the concession (from a lawyer, who had been arguing the opposite) that for the reasons given above, the Guidance Counselor is not a party to the ED agreement, despite having signed it. There is possibly some room to argue about this in the case of the parents, but I think it would require novel legal theories the testing of which presents a giant downside risk for colleges: huge costs, small chance of winning, substantial chance of an ED-destroying precedent if (as is likely) they lose.</p>
<p>See also:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/864654-girlfriend-accidently-chose-early-decision-2.html#post1064104323[/url] ”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/864654-girlfriend-accidently-chose-early-decision-2.html#post1064104323</a></p> ;