I don’t think letting the RD apps ride out hurts anyone. Schools accept more students than they expect to say yes, and they have waitlists for on the cusp students. Sometimes students change their minds, too. D2 was pretty sure she would attend her prestigious EA acceptance school, until accepted student visits, when she figured out it wasn’t all that. She went time of her RD schools.
@intparent I agree with you… exception being if a student is admitted Early Decision, in which case they have agreed to promptly withdraw all other applications since they are bound to attend the ED school. In that case they shouldn’t wait just out of curiosity or for fun to see where else they get in.
@ChicagoSportsFn Thanks, you too. It’s too bad this even warrants a debate.
Yes, there is a whole thread this year on students not taking their ED commitments seriously – but the poster above mentioned EA specifically.
I NEVER said that OP wasn’t making a true statement or trying to mislead when he told his deferred ED school he would go if he got in. He wouldn’t have applied ED to the school unless he truly loved that school and wanted to go . What I have continually said is teens/students change their mind(a lot) so when a student writes to their deferred ED school shortly after getting that painful deferment in the ED process “that they love the school and would go if they got in”, I truly believe they(OP) meant that at the time he wrote that email. But, many students particularly deferred ED students and most likely OP, start getting a reality check pretty quickly that being deferred at most schools means they are not likely to get good news in the RD round and thus need to start falling in love with other schools. I am truly signing off this thread now as it serves no purpose anymore to MAKE OP feel badly.
The purpose is not to make OP feel badly, but to answer the simple question posed by the OP: “Would it be acceptable/okay to email them saying that WashU is my first choice and that I would love to attend if admitted?” The answer to that question is “no,” that would be unethical IF you are sending an identical message to another school (even if that other school deferred him/her). This has nothing to do with changing minds or falling in love with other schools - it’s simply that you can’t have two first choices, and you can’t go to two schools if both admit you. If the OP truly has changed his/her mind, and WashU is now first choice - which means he/she would go there even if Northwestern admitted him/her in RD - then by all means tell WashU that… but it certainly sounds like that’s not what’s going on here. And if it’s not, there are ways to express interest and let a college know that they are a top choice without putting it on the line and saying “if you let me in, I will come.” If you say something that definitive, you should mean it.
asked for a fee waiver how do i know if they gave it to me?
This and a lot of other things reek of unethical behavior in the application process. To list a few:
- Getting paid counselor advice apart from the school GC
- Getting someone to review/modify the essays or sometimes even email communications, as the OP seems to have done.
- Legacy recommendations, though the recommender may never have met the student in person. Trust me, it happens and works.
- Inflating the app by un-verifiable claims
- and many more…
All of this reflects the support system a student has and can afford… and not necessarily the student themselves. At the root, it reflects the lack of standards in the school system that makes it difficult for the Universities to decide.
To add… none of this has anything to do with WashU and hopefully this discussion can be moved (moderator?) to another common forum…