<p>Someone just posted this on another thread; I still after four years on CC do not know the answer to this:</p>
<p>If one is a Spring admit (USC, Miami, etc) they send a deposit on May 1 with an understanding they will attend in January (spring)</p>
<p>They are permitted to take courses anywhere they want for the fall; there are no restrictions on this....</p>
<p>They have to then send a deposit to the college they will be attending in the fall......</p>
<p>Does this violate the "double deposit" issue? and what happens if school #1 moves them to fall? I guess it's like getting off of a waitlist.....</p>
<p>Unfortunately, school #2 assumes the student is staying at least through freshman year (because they are not made aware of the spring admit); but I guess schools lose kids all the time?</p>
<p>I think it is unethical to matriculate at school A as an ostensible full-time, 4-year student when you KNOW you will be entering school B in the spring. It is NOT like getting in off a waitlist because you are in fact already in.</p>
<p>Find something else to do. Get a job. Volunteer. Take classes at another school that doesn’t require that you be admitted as a full time student to do so.</p>
<p>Ok…I’ll play devil’s advocate here…totally uninvolved…</p>
<p>Student has a GT to Cornell for sophomore year and attends Binghamton for freshman year (thousands have done this)…totally legal; done all the time…</p>
<p>Why is this different? Is it because Cornell does not “require” a deposit while Spring admit schools do?..seems like a minor point </p>
<p>edit: thanks TNE; not all schools have this restriction though</p>
<p>I don’t see a problem with this and I don’t consider it double depositing. As to Consolation’s concern about School A - I feel colleges factor this in - a certain number of freshmen begin in the fall and do not return for the spring - whether due to this particular issue or for another reason. Furthermore, I have seen cases where the student attended School A for the fall and loved it - and decided NOT to relocate to School B for the spring as originally planned - so you just never know.</p>
<p>How would a college “factor this in”? Only a small number of colleges offer spring admissions to their incoming class. So how are they going to pick up more students that second semester? They might know it is going to happen, but they don’t have too many ways to make up that revenue.</p>
<p>And taking a slot for the fall at another 4 year institution probabaly blocks some other freshman who really wants to spend their 4 years at School A. I think it stinks… if it were my kid, I’d have them go the community college route or a gap semester of some kind.</p>
<p>My daughter is a spring admit and going to a college for the fall that also practices spring admissions so they theoretically have someone to take her place. But I think she doesn’t have to deposit for the spring school until the fall, so only her fall school deposit is in.</p>
<p>Why is this unethical? I just don’t see it. What am I missing? </p>
<p>The person was a leftover, a secondary consideration and then they were offered the consolation prize of being able to delay their life for an extra 5 months to attend your esteemed institution. </p>
<p>Would it be unethical for them to then decide they liked their fall school and never matriculate at the spring school? By not admitting the student for fall, doesn’t the spring school bear the risk that the student will fall in love with the fall school? I think that’s reasonable too. I don’t think the student is acting in bad faith at all. The student would stay if the fall school turned out to be perfect. </p>
<p>Is it unethical to admit a student for a particular major and then have the student not get into the classes they need for the major? I think yes, but it happens all the time. </p>
<p>Sending two deposits for fall KNOWING that you will renege on one of them is unethical. </p>
<p>In this case though, there can be an additional 9 months of personal growth from (May 1-Feb 1) that can change the equation. I think the fall school has a better than fighting chance of keeping the student. I think the spring school understands that risk. It’s all sounds fair game to me.</p>
<p>intparent - what I meant by “factor this in” is that every college loses a certain number of students in the spring - they hate it and drop out - finances are a problem and they drop out - or they transfer, etc. So - in the grand scheme of things - losing a few freshmen who are going to a school that admitted them for the spring - I just don’t think it is a huge number of students. Frankly - colleges create this hassle for each other simply by offering spring admit as an option. They offer it because they know they will lose some students after the fall semester and have those spots available to fill. Just like the waitlist game - there is a trickle down effect. I see this whole issue as something colleges create and therefore - it is their headache to deal with. Students could not manufacture this School A for the fall, School B for the spring scenario unless colleges made it possible.</p>
<p>As far at the GT to Cornell goes, (officially called a Transfer Option) … Cornell requires nothing more than a return form to put the option in play, and then requires a transfer application (the lite version), plus a transcript and mid-term report from the other institution. </p>
<p>The student is required to take a full course load at his freshman year school and earn a specified GPA with no grade below another specified level. The stats I am familiar with are 3.0 and C, although it’s quite possible that different schools have different requirements. </p>
<p>A community college, or Bing, or any accredited institution is acceptable. Often students are advised to pick a freshman year school that would fit for four years “just in case.” And that can end up backfiring on Cornell if they really hoped to enroll that student for sophomore year. Not that I would have any idea about that or anything.</p>
<p>The only time I would have qualms about this is if the student knows he will do the spring admit - 100% sure - and takes a space at a college for fall where the admissions office has taken pains to craft a class, and it’s a very small class. That would seem like he might be taking a place from another student who sincerely planned on staying. I don’t see anything wrong with enrolling at a large state U as one of thousands of freshmen. And I don’t see a problem even with enrolling at a smallish school if it is one the student is open to staying at. As noted above, kids leave all the time for a variety of reasons.</p>
My college knows that some students won’t return for the spring for one reason or another. They make up for it by encouraging juniors to study abroad in the fall rather than the spring semester.</p>
<p>One of our neighbors was a spring admit at Clemson. She was <em>required</em> to take classes in the fall elsewhere because they wanted to see those grades. She deposited at a state school and Clemson, went to the state school expecting to transfer south in the spring, and never left.</p>
<p>I’m sure some of these spring admit schools realize that kids will wind up not coming because they get settled into their fall school and decide to make a go of it.</p>
<p>I don’t know how they can require grades, many colleges don’t post official grades till mid January for fall and by that time the student would already have to be at the spring college.</p>
<p>b@r!um (your user id reads like a password, by the way :)), I don’t think that offsets the loss in revenue. Even though D’s school lobbies hard to get more students to study abroad in the fall, they still have more in the spring (I actually think that is why many colleges have spring admits, to fill those dorm rooms/classroom seats that are not vacant in the fall because students are mostly on campus). So the college that is left behind in the spring (college A) DOES take a revenue hit that they have no way to make up (unless they start their own spring admit process…).</p>
<p>If your child is accepted spring semester to USC, for example (that is where my child is starting this fall, but we were thinking that he might get a spring admit, so I have thought about this issue before)but wants to take courses of comparable academic level in the fall so as not to get behind, the only choice really seems to be to enroll in another four-year college. Community college courses are great, and I have taken several, but they not usually taught at the level of a USC engineering class. It would seem unfair to not allow a kid, who is seeking to stay on par with his/her peers, to limit him/her to a community college. Kids drop out of four-year colleges everyday - It is very common. And, the reverse is probably very true that students register for the fall at a four-year college and then decide not to go to their other school for spring semester. I just don’t see the moral dilemma here at all. With colleges getting 30,000 and 40,000 applications a year, as we saw this year, they should be able to manage their numbers and expect some fallout. If not, they are poorly run. No contract, that I know of, exists that requires a kid to pay an enrollment deposit and then stay at that college for four years.</p>