<p>@ucbalumnus (#98): ". . . it would have policies that attach penalties to the EC cheaters . . . "</p>
<p>FYI, I have repeatedly read that such polices exist and, in fact, they (not secondary school “black listing”) are the primary punitive approach. Specifically, there may be INFORMAL sharing of ED/EA cheaters’ names (and other identification information) among some most-selective LACs and National Research Universities. Obviously, this would not apply when an ED admittee is excused, due to legitimate circumstances (e.g., a family death that invalidates all financial planning – and the NPC’s estimates – proximate to the student’s early acceptance). However, when a senior clearly plays ED/EA “games,” he may discover other peer institutions are unwilling to accept him, regardless of his qualifications, as a concomitant consequence of his earlier ED/EA disingenuousness.</p>
<p>I might be missing some key complexity here, but I don’t understand why this is such a problem to track, at least for the schools that accept the Common Application and/or high schools using Naviance. I don’t have the numbers, but have to think that it covers a significant percentage of the applications. </p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that the software could be written in a day, but my car can recognize pedestrians and cyclists and apply the brakes before I hit them, so the software to say that a student can’t send an EA application to Harvard and Yale doesn’t seem especially tough by comparison.</p>
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An acknowledgement can be added to to the ED application that says, “I have run the NPC and this is the expected aid amt $____.”</p>
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<p>??? someone could just write in a very high expectation.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus That won’t work. A person can run the NPC using phony numbers (leaving out assets or some income or ???), then save the results. </p>
<p>If someone wants to game the system and keep options open, they’re not going to provide/save accurate NPC info if that is going to be used later on. </p>
<p>And, anyone can open another CSS Profile acct, put in real info to get a real estimation, and the school would have no way to link that. </p>
<p>See case (2) in #99. If the NPC inputs do not match the actual financial aid application, then the “insufficient financial aid” exception is not allowed.</p>
Our GC made sure we were were aware of the ED being binding (which we were fully aware of), but I agree with @corinthian, my D did the same this as your D.
On the other hand, should the schools be held to a closer standard when it comes to upholding their part of an SCEA/REA agreement? Given that many of these schools defer rather than decide, they are not holding up their end of the contract either.
@grandscheme How is a college that decides to defer students not upholding their part of the bargain? Sure, it’s annoying if college X defers 80% of EA applicants. But caveat emptor.
And deferral isn’t action? You’d have only ED and RD and no EA? Sorry but many schools find that to hurt their ability to admit great kids from need Fin Aid.
No, “deferral” isn’t “action” or “decision”…it’s by definition, the opposite of that.
And when schools are deferring almost everyone that they didn’t admit, that seems pretty ridiculous, at least in the cases where students made real sacrifices (REA and ED) to participate.