1st choice school does not notify students of acceptances until March (no EA or ED).
2nd choice school notifies in December and housing application opens 1 month later. (applying EA for scholarship consideration)
If student is accepted to school #2, would we be able to submit a deposit until we know about school #1? I know doubling up on deposits is unethical but everything at school #2 is first come, first serve (housing assignments, scholarships, etc). It kind of leaves us in a bind. Also, I don’t want it to look bad since we applied EA but wait months to accept.
if you are only talking about submitting a housing deposit, there is no problem with doing so for school #2.
If you decide to go to school # 1, you wont get the housing deposit back from school #2.
It is fine to deposit at School 2 if it is in the student’s best interest. If the student gets into School 1 and that school is preferred then the student should notify School 2 he/she will not be attending (best to do in writing) at the same time he/she puts a deposit in at School 1. That way the student will not be double deposited. The student should expect to lose the deposit at School 2. This happens all the time (ex. when students get into a preferred school off of a waitlist) and is no problem.
Some of the public flagships my kid was admitted to followed a “first come first served” housing list, and you could apply for housing without accepting admission, to “hold” your spot in line. All but $50 of the housing deposit was refundable as long as you notified the school by a certain date (usually May 1) that you are not taking the spot.
So yes, that structure can be found and is pretty do-able.