Would it be acceptable to tentatively confirm acceptance on one school and defer enrollment; for the sole reason of waiting for another school’s admission decision ? There are no deposits involved, and so I’m not expecting any cancellation fees. This is for an online program btw.
Even without a deposit, they likely have rules about accepting an offer to attend. Read up on that, and the ethics should become clear.
Is the problem that the first program has an acceptance deadline before you get the other school’s decision?
I tried looking into that too, but unfortunately could not find any. I tried searching using “cancellation”, “acceptance”, “admissions”. What made my situation tricky was my belated discovery of another university offering a comparable program at a more affordable cost, without much difference in academic quality (both accredited institutions). And this happened after being offered admission by the university I first applied to. And so, this got me re-thinking about my situation…
Generally, this is considered unethical. What you would do is ask the first program whether you can have a little more time to think it over and decide, while informing school 2 that you have an acceptance and you’d like to know if they had an idea of when you might hear back about your admission.