If a student backs out of an ED admission, do HS counselors:
a. Track whether an auto-reject pattern at that college occurs the next year or few?
b. Warn future classes of students that some colleges are spiteful and vindictive and will auto-reject them because a student in the past backed out of an ED admission, and name the specific colleges that past students have backed out of ED admission to?
Around here, the school counsellors are proactive regarding this. They have very serious discussions with students and parents BEFORE ED applications are sent.
They make it clear that if there are any doubts, including financial, that ED should not be the option.
But clearly not all counselors are doing that. Are really any examples of auto-reject after ED withdrawal? I can’t imagine that one kid backing out of ED would trigger that. Perhaps a couple a year for a few years would cause schools to do this.
I’d be shocked if my hs counselor even knew we applied ED.
Also any school that would blame one student for the actions of another simply because they went to the same school is not one I would want to attend. That’s bizarre.
The GC was a rubber stamp. Here, sign this. Thank you. That’s all. How would she have even known what we decided to do? To me, It’s as ridiculous of a question as suggesting that the bank teller knows what I did with the money I withdrew.
Sometimes the GC does know these things. When D was a senior she and other students who had accepted an an ED offer were hauled into the GC’s office when it was learned that a student had not withdrawn other offers (it was not D).
I also know someone who had an offer rescinded for the same thing. It happens.
@Pizzagirl At a lot of schools, especially smaller ones, the counselor is very involved and would certainly know what’s going on. In some cases, the counselor gets a heads up on who is being admitted before the students find out.
I believe GCs are notified ED/EA decisions, especially ED because GCs need to sign the ED agreement. GCs are also gatekeepers on where to send out RD transcripts.
I don’t think GCs will say a school maybe vindictive or anything negative about a school. They may say “In the last few years very few students have been admitted to College X.” Most GCs won’t say anything unless they are 100% certain. They need to be very PC. It is why some families hire private counselors, so they could get a more “honest advise” on where they should apply.
I think that the GCs at the more tony prep schools and maybe at the best NE publics track these things because it’s part of their culture.
I think that the rest of the GCs, in the words of Pizzagirl, act like tellers.
It’s sad that a guidance counselor would feel no compulsion to encourage ethical behavior. Early decision works to a great extent on all participants acting in good faith. The guidance counselor should be protecting the morally conscious kids who decide (1) NOT to apply early decision because only 90% sure of that school and (2) to be bound by their early decision agreement even though they have second thoughts. I think at my kids’ hs the GC would not participate in other college applications for a kid who reneged on early decision for no good reason.
@Thumper–I thought it’s been established that backing out because of insufficient aid was not considered wrong. It’s too bad that your school is still advising students with lower incomes to forego ED.
As far as GC’s, my S’s didn’t sign the agreement. It was just a checkmark on the app. (I don’t think we did , either.) Granted that was 10+ years ago, but at the time I remember hearing that same warning: well, the GC has to sign, everyone has to sign, it’s a big signing deal!!! But it wasn’t.
IIRC the counselor has to sign the contract when submitting their forms for that student. They are not unaware. Possibly at big schools with some staff person signing off for the counselor, but most counsellors know, or should know, the rules.
In my S’s case, there was no “contract.” There was nothing requiring GC’s signature.
From collegeboard:
IIRC, and this was many years ago, my DS#1’s school clearly had a place that he and we and the counselor had to sign when submitting his ED application. He did, she did, we did and he complied with the acceptance.
Not every school uses (or used) the Common App.
S’s did not. It sort of annoys me that you imply I am making this up.
We signed the agreement too as did the GC. This was a local public HS, not a small school, not a private prep school.
If you are speaking to me, garland, no one is claiming or in any way implying you made anything up. I just posted Collegeboard’s description of the policy (which says the common app AND some application forms) And for what it’s worth, my DS did not apply on the common app. He used the school’s app, and yes, he was required to sign the paragraph confirming his, and our, understanding of the rules. Can’t recall if it was an electronic signature or if we had to print it out and sign (it was a long time ago) but we did have to all acknowledge the policy. Just sharing our experience, as did you.
This year, my S did EA through CApp. He and GC signed acknowledging, I acknowledged through online checkbox. No signing “wet ink”.
At his school, I think the bias is from the GCs when the colleges reject kids they think they should have taken more than anything else:). It is almost personal to them bc they know the kids!
“It’s sad that a guidance counselor would feel no compulsion to encourage ethical behavior. Early decision works to a great extent on all participants acting in good faith. The guidance counselor should be protecting the morally conscious kids who decide (1) NOT to apply early decision because only 90% sure of that school and (2) to be bound by their early decision agreement even though they have second thoughts.”
I think the GCs are too busy trying to get financial aid so kids can attend college in the first place, as well as dealing with the kid who is now being placed in a foster home or the truant who needs to be dealt with or the kid whose mother died and now needs to ease back into school. My kids’ school district was generally affluent upper middle class suburban but it would be a pipe dream to suggest that the GCs had the bandwidth to “manage” the kids applying ED other than to rubberstamp the documents. Kids like my kids were “self-running” from the GC point of view; she wasn’t going to make more work for herself by “managing” them.
@Pizzagirl At a lot of schools, especially smaller ones, the counselor is very involved and would certainly know what’s going on. In some cases, the counselor gets a heads up on who is being admitted before the students find out."
There are 30,000 hs in the U.S. I doubt more than, oh, maybe 1,000 have counsellors who “get heads up.” Once you’ve gotten past the elite boarding and day schools, magnet / specialized schools, and then every city’s requisite handful of affluent suburban high schools, you are kidding yourself that the remaining 29,000 can do much more than rubberstamp. In most schools GCs are handling all student issues, not just college related ones.