“If the finances at the ED college don’t work out, this puts the student/applicant at a very unfair disadvantage, especially if the financial package really isn’t all that great.”
I think this is the crux of it being possibly anti-competitive. If you can only choose from one college, that college has the potential to engage in predatory pricing by coming up with a different EFC and lower FA package because, again, it has locked in the student and his or her family. Even if you can back out of ED because of FA, if that happens after all the RD deadlines or you have withdrawn you apps, you could be in financial trouble. If the other colleges know you’re in ED, they will reject you even if you continue the app (not withdraw). If that’s where the DOJ is headed and it thinks these colleges are colluding and are a defacto cartel, it would get very interesting.
Does that happen? Any evidence of such? Since very few back out, it seems to me that colleges do provide reasonable aid in the vast majority of cases. additionally, the process is timed so that a) it doesn’t happen after RD deadlines have passed and b) one doesn’t need to withdraw apps before determining if FA is sufficient. Let’s not create false assumptions about how ED works.
It happens. My D and I know a student who was admitted ED to Northwestern, and you would think she would have been thrilled with that acceptance as well. But she also applied EA to UChicago, got in, and used the excuse of insufficient financial aid to back out of ED commitment.
That’s pretty scummy (unless UChicago had a meaningfully better financial aid package, in which case it’s borderline to a little scummy). I do believe it happens sometimes. I just wonder whether it actually happens enough to worry about, or whether officials like Fretwell are just saber-rattling to make certain it stays at ultra-low levels.
What would really be interesting would be if, like Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program, the information exchange didn’t really exist, but the colleges wanted ED applicants to believe it existed to deter them from cheating on the program. Assuming – as I don’t, at least not yet – that there would be an antitrust issue with exchanging the identities of students admitted ED, would there be an antitrust issue with pretending to exchange identities without really doing it?
When this is all said and done, I’m wondering who was the kid that has a parent working at the Justice Dept. that didnt get to go to the school they wanted
Carleton College is among the institutions asked by the Justice Department to retain information/communications regarding early-admission decisions. View the link to a Carletonian student-newspaper article:
What I found interesting was that the Justice Dept. did not ask Carleton College to produce information, just to preserve it. Suggests that they are still trying to formulate a theory/approach/possible charges.
Also, requiring institutions to preserve & protect records regarding ED practices could be an interesting strategy to persuade schools to drop ED or certain ED practices without making any formal charges.
The practice of sharing information among 30 or so colleges was revealed early on by an Amherst College administrator. In fact, it is part of the article referenced in the original post in this thread.
I doubt DOJ is angling to eliminate ED, and is just interested in the arguably collusive enforcement mechanism. But it wouldn’t be a bad thing imho if ED cheating became rampant (unlikely) so that the ED schools were forced to fall back to something else – probably SCEA – as an alternative.
Seems to me that SCEA is pretty easy to police at the application stage through the HS guidance counselors. I have not heard stories of cheating in the form of kids making two ED/SCEA applications for example. Seems more convoluted to have to police the withdrawal of the non-ED applications (which apps were valid and permissible applications when made prior to the ED results).
Duke and Penn would still get very high yields on their SCEA offers, but they wouldn’t be quite as high as what they get from ED now. Which means their admit rates would have to rise a bit. Which I think would de-escalate the entire system a bit.
Folks could argue that the overall system would have to absorb more applications with SCEA. Because you’d now get more apps from the successful ED kids who can now play the field for other high end admittances. But my hunch is that those apps would be out-numbered by a reduction in the apps being made by the other kids who wind up playing the extremely low RD odds after an unsuccessful ED attempt.
But you’d have to run the experiment to know for sure what the actual impact would be. I wonder if double choice early action would be an even better way to calm the system down.
I hope that the DoJ is interested in ensuring full disclosures and preventing any secret sharing of information. All of that is good.
However, I am a bit concerned that the same people who claim that the government has no place interfering in businesses now that seem very interested in telling private educational institutions how they can operate.
I’d be happy if the DOJ just told these schools to stop sharing list and information about any of its admitted students. The number of applicants backing out of ED contracts is probably statistically insignificant. If Fretwell and the others can’t run an ED process without the sharing of lists, maybe they should consider ending ED. They won’t because ED is a great tool for these schools.
The idea that retribution against a given HS kid, for someone else’s backing out of an ED acceptance, for whatever reason, really really bothers me. If my ED application is rejected merely because I came from the same high school where someone last year (or three years ago or whenever) backed out, then how would I as an applicant even know this ahead of time, so that I could try my single bullet anywhere else? This seems to be punishing the wrong person.
@frozencustard - I agree with your remedy - tell the schools they cannot share information. It would be nice if they made some of these schools refund all of those application fees, but I won’t hold my breath.
@3puppies where I come down on this is that if something is illegal, the school cannot make it legal merely by getting the applicant and parents to provide a release. A contract that allows for illegal acts is not valid, despite what some on this discussion thread would have us believe. These schools and Fretwell of Amherst were on notice from the DOJ about sharing information. They can argue now that they believed their behavior was acceptable and perhaps that and their cooperation here will get them only a slap on the wrist, but they need to be told to stop this.
All these 30 colleges need to do is to get out of the ED business if they don’t like it. It’s that simple. We know that they won’t do it because, on the whole, this is how they like to fill up a very large percentage of each class. Every school wants people who are motivated to attend that school and that is another big advantage to the schools of the ED process. Do they really want the very limited number of kids who back out either because finances don’t work or because those kids have a change of heart? I would hope that’s a rhetorical question. However, sometimes people involved in management on the administrative side cannot see the forest for the trees. In any case, now certain schools are on notice. My guess is that they are stilling exchanging lists and won’t stop doing so until the DOJ tells them to stop.
I know one family that rescinded their ED for financial reasons. In this case, it had nothing to do with the school being less generous than they might have been for an RD applicant. The parents simply had an unrealistic expectation of the kind of merit aid given out by that particular, highly selective school. The student ended up at a far less prestigious school at a much lower cost. It was hugely disappointing to the student and absolutely not something done on a whim or as a ploy to attend a different prestigious school.
Its easy in retrospect to blame the parents, but remember that most families are not on CC. They don’t know how to use the common data set or even how to make good use of the net cost calculators. Its easy to make a mistake like that. I would hate to think that a school would reach out to punish that student or her high school. I have very little problem with ED in general, but there needs to be an effective escape hatch for students who truly miscalculate their needs.
