If the student really, truly wanted (or needed) a deferral, and if a no on the deferral would have been a deal breaker, then a “thanks but no thanks, I’ve decided not to go to college next fall anywhere” note to the ED institution would have been sufficient. Because the ED institution cannot hold a gun to this student’s head, and require that she attend.
And no, this kid’s acceptance almost certainly did not take a spot away from anyone. Most places admit significantly more students than they have space for because they know full well that not everyone will come.
I do not think that any one is being rude or nasty toward you. I think that people may be challenging your ethics because anything other than declining all of RD acceptances does put your ethics of the process in question. You even acknowledge that you told your daughter that she committed to the school. Now you want your daughter to do something and not have to take ownership, responsibility or accountability for her actions.
Applying ED is an honor bound system that in exchange for an early decision, if admitted you will attend. You your daughter and the school sign off that you agree to abide by the rules to withdraw all applications and not create any new applications. To not do so is not to keep the honor bound commitment and act in a less than honorable way.
It is not you will attend if the school grants you a deferral. I’ll even give you a wink on waiting for the deferral, but once it came through you were suppose to say thanks but no thanks to the other schools no matter when the acceptances came in once she committed to the ED school. It is not a lets see what the other schools I can get into process.
The problem I have with this is i(and a few other parents have with your question ) is that you may be only looking at this process as far as it affects your kid. She will graduate this spring and high school will be a memory because she will have moved on. That guidance counselor and school will have another set of seniors to take through the process.
What you are doing is now saying that your counselor and your high school are flipping off the process and can’t be counted on to keep their commitments. That could be harmful to the next class.
And while she is young and changed her mind, there is no shame in that. However if the school was not her absolute first choice she should have not applied ED.
Someone would have gotten a yes instead of a waitlist at all the RD schools where the OP’s kid was waitlisted. The school might never go to the waitlist, or someone else might have more successfully lobbied to get off that waitlist. In this case, I think the OP’s kid did take something away from someone else by breaking this rule.
Her curiosity has been satisfied. If the outcome has made it harder for her to honor her ED commitment, then that’s the price she has to pay for not pulling the RD apps as soon as you knew that finances would not preclude her accepting the ED offer. She was wrong to let those apps “ride” and you knew that.
All you can do is ask the ED school. If they release her, you’ll have the same dilemma with the new school of having to as for a deferral, and then what will you do if they say no?
She could be making a big mess for herself. Do the deferral year with the plan to go to the ED school when she comes back. If she really still hates that, she can tell the ED school and take another gap year and reply, or maybe another school will let her in in the spring. But be honest with the ED school.
What you really need to do before you talk to any college is ask your daughter’s college counseling office. If it was my kids’ high school they would stand by the ED commitment they signed off on and would not release the final transcript to another school. I would hope her school would be as honorable and forthright.
You say your daughter wanted to “just see” what would happen. But the whole point of ED is that you don’t get to see. You and your daughter signed that agreement, you had to have known the rules. This is not an oopsy daisy, golly gee we made a little mistake. By your own account of the situation it was deliberate and that is why you are getting the response you are getting on this thread
The student let her RD applications ride because she was curious. Unbelievable. I don’t buy the OP’s protestations of innocence. I just went through the ED process this year. Unless this was not a common app school, the OP went through the same process I did. There is no room for uncertainty. The parent signs an agreement that is very clear.
My DS made 3 EA applications in addition to the ED app. When he was accepted to the ED school, he withdrew the other applications both on their websites (when possible) and by email to his admissions reps. The EA schools were going to be releasing decisions within a week or so, and one of them had already started issuing acceptances. At all schools, the withdrawals were effective and he did not receive decisions from any of them. We hoped that, if he was to be accepted anywhere else, his withdrawal led to another student having that joyful moment of reading the acceptance letter.
"I have read CC for a couple of years but have mainly stayed in the basic “colleges and universities” forum which I have found informative and generally positive. "
responses on those threads are mostly from kids who go to those colleges. who are happy to be there!
"I put this question in the parent forum because I thought there were parents who may have had some experience or knew someone in this situation and could shed some light.All you have done is be nasty and rude,attacking and insulting. "
yeah, well welcome to the real world of college admissions. And to the parents forum, where fellow parents who have been through the college admissions meat grinder have since then spent years, and in many cases over a decade, attempting to try to guide the ill informed or completely clueless parents and kids, who really do know nothing about the college application process.
Sorry for the tough love but you crossed the line. You are the adult , yet you are asking for our blessing to cheat. It aint coming. So that others who read this thread in the future wont make the same assumptions that you are making.
You DID know better. You signed a contract. But when RD acceptances arrived, you chose to ignore the agreement that you signed, and now when you dont receive the pleasant, helpful “oh it will be all right” responses you were expecting, your retort is “we dont know what battles other people are fighting”
??
We DO know, because we have been here, trying to help those that deserve the help , for years.
you dont deserve anything other than the responses you received here.
My kid took his best shot at his “dream school” nearly three years ago, applying binding ED. I agonized over whether or not this was a smart decision. The net price calculator was showing a price we could afford, with some sacrifice, but you’re always left to wonder, if he were to be accepted, would we have missed the opportunity to get a better financial aid package somewhere else? We felt it was worth that risk to give him a slightly better chance of being admitted. And he already had letters of acceptance to two rolling admissions safety schools, so we took our best shot. (And I do mean “our” in this case, since I was making a commitment too.)
He was summarily denied admission in December. Oh, well. That’s life. Pick yourself up. Take a day to lick your wounds and move on. Which is what he did. He applied to several other schools bearing a strong resemblance to his first choice, and received some acceptances, some waitlists, and some rejections, from which he was able to choose pretty dispassionately from several good options, including those rolling admissions safety schools, and opting to take the merit money at the lowest ranked school. A great decision for my pocketbook and one that so far, in retrospect, hasn’t hurt him in the least.
Had he been accepted, however, to Dream College, that would have been it. He would have been done and we would be meeting our obligations, and his life would have been on a completely different trajectory, possibly better, possibly worse. The Road Not Traveled. We’ll never know one way or the other. Again, that’s life.
So for anybody with any doubts about the AGREEMENT he, his guidance counselor, and I ALL signed, here is a copy of my portion of the Common App Early Decision Agreement:
Perhaps I’m getting cynical in my old age, but when I read of students like the OP’s daughter, who from my vantage point pretty much “won the jackpot” in the college admissions process, I’m always left to wonder just what it was these elite schools saw in the kid in the first place.
No, not “fair.” That’s where your whole line of reasoning goes wrong.
If she had not been granted the deferral request, then she would have been be obligated to attend the ED school without taking a gap year. A denied deferral is not grounds for getting out of the ED agreement.
I will gladly stand corrected if you copy and paste the section of her ED agreement that says that a denied request for a gap year can negate the ED agreement.
Actually, it did. While it’s true that colleges offer extra acceptances because of yield, a school still has a set number of students they plan to admit. If this kid pulled her application when she should have, another applicant would have been accepted in her place.
I think in one of the threads the OP said it was an EDII application and the OP’s kiddo is planning on taking a year off before starting college so I can imagine a sorta scenario where eveything happened within a couple weeks. if the D is really disinclined to attend the EDII college then the admission can be cancelled and the D can reapply wherever in the fall. Chances are if she is accepted this year to so many, she will be accepted to most if not all the next year. Even more so if the D works and/or does something worthwhile during that year between high school and starting college. Frankly, if the D needs a year off before starting college she should probably have not applied anywhere ED or EDII and just waited to apply until she knew what it was she really wanted to do next year.
"Chances are if she is accepted this year to so many, she will be accepted to most if not all the next year. "
NOT really. Kids who try this maneuver usually dont get good results the 2nd time around and this is why-
IF she wants to try applying to any colleges again, she will need yet another LOR from her HS guidance counselor. Remember that his credibility, and the HS’s name, will likely to be “mud” at the ED college, and he may very well refuse to sign another LOR for her if she tries to reapply to the same RD colleges as before.
I really doubt that he will be willing to write another great LOR for a student who reneged on a prior ED commitment for what turned out to be non financial reasons.
There are consequences for this student for ignoring her ED contract, if she does not end up going to that college.