Early Decision & Pulling Applications once accepted

Applying to College
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<p>cheese - you comment that the lesson you have learned is to not post. I would submit that this is the wrong moral to take from this episode. Hopefully you have learned from the wisdom of others. As T62E4 comments, most of the posters here are adults and parents. If you would prefer to get your peers’ perspectives (and likely more sympathy), I would suggest posting in the High School Life forum.</p>

<p>You do not comment specifically on whether you will withdraw your other applications. I hope you abide by your ED commitment, regardless of other considerations. Perhaps it is not too late to request you ED application be changed to RD (contact the Admissions Office) so that your curiosity can be satisfied and you can keep your word.</p>

<p>Finally, I hope you realize that the words you chose in your posting do convey a certain vanity and arrogance. As posters, we do not know you personally, we only know the words that you include here. You are not being attacked, rather our perception of the attitude conveyed by your words is the target of our criticism.</p>

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<p>One of the benefits of asking strangers is that they won’t spare your feelings just because they’re your friends.</p>

<p>You asked whether it was OK to fudge on your agreement with your ED college because you’re curious to know what would happen with your other applications. You got honest and informed answers–answers that truly weren’t all that judgmental or snarky–and you took them personally because they weren’t the answer you wanted to hear. You blamed the messenger because you didn’t like the message.</p>

<p>Now this is something that everybody does sometimes–including me–just as sometimes everybody feels tempted to renege on an agreement for a selfish reason. But if you want to believe that in this case it’s OK to renege, or that in this case the board was mean to you, you’re kidding yourself.</p>

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<p>Without commenting on the OP’s motives, I think the answer is self-evident: of course you need to withdraw all other college applications immediately if you’re admitted ED, because that’s what you promised to do when you signed the ED Agreement.</p>

<p>The language of that agreement couldn’t be plainer:</p>

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<p>When you sign the Early Decision Agreement, you are attesting that you have read and understand your responsibilities under the agreement, and consenting that your ED institution may share the nature of the agreement and your ED status with other schools. Your GC must also sign, attesting that s/he has advised you to abide by your ED commitment. It’s a done deal. If you violate the agreement, there could be serious consequences:</p>

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<li><p>Your ED offer could be withdrawn.</p></li>
<li><p>Your ED school could notify other schools to which you have applied, and they could deny you admission or rescind offers already made on grounds that you violated your ED agreement with another school.</p></li>
<li><p>Your HS and your GC could be in hot water with your ED school, creating problems for other applicants from your HS in the present and/or future years.</p></li>
<li><p>Your GC would be fully entitled to conclude you are a dishonorable person who reneges on solemn promises, and so state in supplemental information supplied to colleges to which you are currently applying or to which you may apply in the future, as well as to prospective employers, FBI agents doing background checks for federal jobs requiring security clearances, and so on. </p></li>
<li><p>You absolutely are harming other applicants to your non-ED schools. Every school has a target number of admits, based on its expected yield and the target size of its freshman class. If you break your ED agreement and do not withdraw from, and are subsequently accepted at, a school you have no intention of attending, you are taking up a spot on that school’s “admit” list and denying that spot to another applicant who gets bumped to the waitlist. As we all know, being waitlisted is not the same as being admitted; at most selective schools, one’s chances of being admitted from the waitlist are almost vanishingly small. That applicant’s options look very different at that point, and s/he may very well accept another offer of admission at a third school, in turn potentially denying a spot there to yet another applicant, and so on. Lives are changed, all for no good reason.</p></li>
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<p>Beyond the potential consequences, there’s an even better reason to honor your ED Agreement: it’s the only right and honorable thing to do. This is not a silly game; it’s a serious commitment that you presumably made in good faith and conscious as to its implications. If you didn’t really intend to honor that commitment, you should not have made it. If you didn’t understand what you were agreeing to at the time, you also obviously shouldn’t have agreed to it (and you effectively misrepresented yourself in signing a form saying you had read and understood the agreement). In either case, you should immediately withdraw your ED application, or ask that it be converted to RD; otherwise, you are applying ED under false pretenses, and that is not an honorable thing to do.</p>

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<p>I know a girl who was accepted ED. She did not w/draw her other apps b/c she too was curious . She received a “shame on you letter we know you w ere accepted ED elsewhere” so we will not be reviewing your application …from a college she expected to get in b /c she was big legacy . The parents were miffed apparently they did not think the ED contract was a big deal. :(</p>

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<p>One last comment: Based upon a comment you made about a radio station, I assume we share a certain philosophical bent. Therefore, abide by one of its simplest teachings: Be a man a woman of your word. Let your Yes be Yes and your No be No.</p>

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<p>Cheese – if you’re still checking in.</p>

<p>If you should be accepted ED at your dream school on Dec. 15, the first thing you should do on (on Dec 17) is tell your guidance counsellor (who will congratulate you!!). Then ask him or her about the procedure for withdrawing applications.</p>

<p>Also, think that your GC also signs an ED agreement and that s/he may feel it necessary to tell the other schools. Some follow through on this and others don’t.</p>

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<p>“I spent a good amount of money and time on each of these schools, and I don’t think it hurts to just see if I got in. In no way am I taking any one else’s spot since there is a waiting list and I would be pulling my app immediately after the decision. I am perfectly content with pulling my apps as soon as I get the decision from my ED school, but it doesn’t hurt anyone for me to see what the decisions from the other schools are. Thanks for your time.”</p>

<p>It wastes people’s time – those who are reviewing your app in good faith. How would you feel if you wasted your time doing work that would never be used? </p>

<p>Do you cancel reservations at places when you’ve decided to eat elsewhere?</p>

<p>The right thing to do is notify these other institutions promptly if / when you have been accepted ED, amd thank them for their time and consideration. There’s no ambiguity.</p>

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<p>“I spent a good amount of money and time on each of these schools, and I don’t think it hurts to just see if I got in. In no way am I taking any one else’s spot since there is a waiting list and I would be pulling my app immediately after the decision. I am perfectly content with pulling my apps as soon as I get the decision from my ED school, but it doesn’t hurt anyone for me to see what the decisions from the other schools are. Thanks for your time.”</p>

<p>It does hurt others, in ways you might not realize. Fisrt, you are in fact taking someone else’s “spot” if you have already committed to an ED school. The student who will eventually be given that spot will first be waitlisted - and is likely to accept an offer from another school, at least provisionally while he waits to see if he gets off the waitlist. You talk about the money you are spending, but what about that student who puts a deposit down on that other school? That deposit may be more than the cost of all of your applications.</p>

<p>Then there is the process of how the waitlist works. Your acceptance can shift the whole makeup of the class. If you were, for example, an oboe player, and the orchestra needs an oboe player, that might have played a part in your acceptance. Had you pulled your application, a different oboe player might have been accepted. That oboe player won’t necessarily get in off the waitlist when you eventually tell them you’re not coming. It has a cascading effect when looking at the makeup of the entire class.</p>

<p>If you feel a need to know about acceptance at other schools, you shouldn’t use the ED process. That is why there is a difference between Early Decision and Early Action - and why a handful of schools use Single Choice Early Action. By sending an ED application you are saying you without a doubt want to go to that school - so why is it important to know about other schools? The only one that matters is the one you got into! If it’s so important to know if you “could have” gotten into another school, then don’t use ED.</p>