<p>But its not about opinion vossron. It’s clearly Black & White. No gray area. Either it is permissible to break Early Decision or it is impermissible. I don’t see where one’s opinion would come into this. </p>
<p>Quick note: Early Decision agreements are contracts. Do you know what happens when you sign a lease to rent a home and refuse to pay or back out of paying? yahh.</p>
<p>To put this conversation to bed, here are some quotes and links:</p>
<p>“Early Decision information is shared among many schools,”</p>
<p>"It is not impossible to break an Early Decision contract, but the consequences can be extreme. "</p>
<p>You keep presenting the same argument, that breaking ED is in someway unethical so ought not to be attempted. That is a very narrow position to take; ethics are by nature subjective and wholly dependant upon the individual. A good case could be made to say that capitalism is unethical, yet it is vigorously embraced by most people. Ethics do not dictate our every decision, especially one such as this, which in the grand scheme of things is very trivial indeed.</p>
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<p>How many seventeen year olds do you know who’ve committed to renting a house? None I imagine, because most people at that age are not sufficiently mature to make a decision like that. So why then are you advocating that such a person, who is not even old enough to drink alcohol in the US, be able to make such a decision and be forced to endure the consequences, even if it’s contrary to everything they want</p>
<p>one thing i will add to this debate - why if they are not contracts must a student be ‘released’ from the commitment. a student must asked to be released, he/she cannot just say well i wont go to columbia because i don’t feel like it. the point is that someone shouldn’t be applying ED if they think they wouldn’t want to attend - whether it is to a US school or otherwise.</p>
<p>sure you can do whatever you want in the end - but ultimately vossron hits it, it is just poor form to apply to a school ED, be admitted and not attend. why? you took up a spot that could have gone to another applicant. think of all the sweating deferred kids who are on here right now and how selfish it is to apply to a school you do not plan to attend based on the ‘honor’ of it. </p>
<p>that and columbia could share your name with schools and you could if you do not follow the commitment or do not ask to be released from it have your admission be rescinded by all schools involved.</p>
<p>“a student must asked to be released, he/she cannot just say well i wont go to columbia because i don’t feel like it.”</p>
<p>Where financial aid is concerned, Columbia is a common app school, and there is nothing in the common app agreement about asking for a release. Indeed, schools already have all the family’s financial data they need, so there’s no basis for the school to approve or deny the release. And now imagine that a school somehow did NOT approve the release, the student is somehow compelled to attend, and would then be expelled when the bill cannot be paid. Imagine the horrible publicity if a school pulled this.</p>
<p>um, what? well do you have experience with this situation? i just don’t get why you jump to conclusions.</p>
<p>of course the university will release a student if they ask to be released. but the student has to ask, and there has to be a good faith attempt by both the university and the family to see what they could do to talk about what are the stumbling blocks. a student can’t assume they are released from their commitment if they aren’t going to message the university.</p>
<p>but we often point to the issue of financial aid, and that doesn’t seem so problematic to me because most students who apply for finaid usually know the risks and they are good at fighting the finaid office for more money and so they aren’t usually those that try and cheat the system. it is the more sinister practitioners of ED agreement nullifying that are really problematic. the point is that a student can’t (and i know some students have done this) pretend that all is fine, submit your deposit for ED, but keep applications open elsewhere with full desire to attend another school if admitted.</p>
<p>this scenario happened to a close friend of mine, he then had his admission rescinded by both the ED school he rejected and the RD school he deposited, it was after may 1, and he was SOL and had to take a year off and not attend any school.</p>
<p>Who said anything about the OP (or anybody else) applying to Columbia with the intent of not accepting their offer, should they receive one. It’s a simple situation; the OP receives offers from two universities and changes his mind as to which he prefers. I can understand that rejecting an ED offer might feel like a slap in the face to other applicants, but I don’t imagine they’d feel any better were he to attend Columbia and not want to be there. Ultimately people have to do what is right for them, and if that means rejecting ED then so be it.
<p>Okay yeah what I wrote before was a bit extreme, so, cool, let’s take joso’s much needed advice and stop this thread so i don’t keep getting emails. :D</p>
<p>there’s really no sense in continuing this argument; as i said previously, the ED enrollment deadline has long since passed lol. PUT THIS TO REST</p>
<p>The things apparently educated people come up with on this board continues to astonish me. I’m not prepared to have a discussion on the rights and wrongs of breaking promises, I’m not a philosopher and it isn’t relevant. All I will say is that I am a pragmatist, and if my happiness depends upon breaking a promise (which neither hurts nor affects anybody else) such as ED, then I will not hesitate to do so.</p>
<p>I gather by your desperate attempts at insulting me that you have nothing else to say on the matter. I trust that your total lack of argument and reason is enough to convince other readers of this thread of the merits of what I’ve said.</p>
<p>When my son was accepted ED to Columbia, there was no opportunity to “decline” the offer. The offer made by my son to Columbia, i.e., to attend if accepted, was accepted by Columbia the moment they notified him of his admission. The contract was created. Columbia’s instruction to him was to provide the deposit by the deadline, not to “accept” or “decline” the contract that had already been created.</p>
<p>In legal parlance, the difference between ED and RD is that the offer in ED comes from the applicant, and the offer in RD comes from the school. Once the offer is accepted, regardless of which party makes the offer, the contract is made. The primary condition precedent to the obligation of the ED student to perform the contract (i.e., attend Columbia) is that Columbia provide enough financial assistance to permit the student to pay the freight while a student. If that condition fails, the student is permitted to cancel or void the contract through a negotiation with the university. (Other implicit conditions that I assume would permit the voiding of the contract include a drastic change in the home situation, such as the death of the parent(s), health issues for the student, drastic non-performance by the student in high school post-admission, etc.) Otherwise, the student is expected to perform the contract.</p>
<p>The word “contract” was never used in the correspondence my son received from Columbia. I doubt the word is ever used in the world of college correspondence. The word is never used when one sits down in a barber’s chair either, although it is acknowledged that the act of sitting in that chair is an “offer,” and when the barber steps up to the chair with scissors, the offer is accepted. Performance by the barber is achieved when the customer has finished leaving hair on the floor. Performance by the coiffed one is achieved by paying the two bits.</p>
<p>I think that’s because ED is an honor-system agreement, not a contract. A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties with mutual obligations. The remedy at law for breach of contract is “damages” or monetary compensation.</p>
<p>Another remedy for breach of contract is specific performance. In this case, specific performance requires each party to honor his/her or its obligations under the contract. Columbia must allow the student to attend, and the student must attend.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what an “honor-system agreement” is, but it sounds suspiciously like a contract. Sitting down in the barber’s chair is also an “honor-system agreement.”</p>
<p>I sort of hate being a legal weenie, but all of my learning from my first year of law school 30 years ago at a law school downtown keeps flooding my mind…</p>
<p>“this scenario happened to a close friend of mine, he then had his admission rescinded by both the ED school he rejected and the RD school he deposited, it was after may 1, and he was SOL and had to take a year off and not attend any school.”</p>
<p>Glad to see that the system works. Unfortunately, if Dionysus is correct that Oxford, as a foreign university, will simply ignore the OP’s egregious breach of contract with Columbia, it seems the OP may get away with it.</p>
<p>I believe the ‘ED Agreement’ only requires the ‘international student’ to make a commitment to their First Choice school in the US that they will enroll. </p>
<p>It does not restrict the student from applying to other schools outside outside of the US for the main reason that there is no guarantee that each and every international student will get an US Student Visa to study in the US. Visas has been rejected for many students in recent times for various reasons. No international student can afford to jeopardize his admission offer from other top schools in UK and other countries.</p>
<p>CCers should understand that it is not unethical or illegal for an international student to keep offers from both Oxford and Columbia and make a decision to enroll at a later stage.</p>