<p>My D attends a school where you must pay your non-refundable enrollment deposit before you can make your mostly refundable housing deposit. And while freshmen are guaranteed housing (and in fact required to live on campus), the timing of your housing deposit most definitely impacts the housing you get. Heck, housing selection occurs before the May 1 national decision date.</p>
<p>We made the enrollment and housing deposits in October, months before D got some of her decisions. But I told her that while I was more than willing to make one housing deposit, she at least had to choose among the schools she’d been accepted to at that point, because I wasn’t making more than one. Fortunately the next “housing deposit date” for a school still in the running wasn’t until March 1, and D was forced to make her final decision then, because we were not making more than one housing deposit. It was also fortunate that D had heard from all of her schools by then - if she was waiting for schools that didn’t send out decisions until April 1 it would have been very difficult. The best news was that she ended up choosing the school where she’d made the deposits in October, so we weren’t out any money and she got excellent housing.</p>
<p>I can see the difficulty of needing to make deposits with incomplete information, but I can also see the problems schools face with needing to plan for housing. I’m sure I’d be less understanding of the schools’ position if our situation hadn’t worked out for the best.</p>