We applied to OHS for high school, and just received an e-mail that they will notify applicants on March 3rd. Unfortunately, all the other highschools we applied to don’t release until March 10th. AFAIK, OHS only gives 10 days to make a decision.
Some questions:
Do students have to decide on OHS enrollment level (one course/part-time/full-time) by the 10 day deadline?
If you accept full-time, but then change your mind, are you on the hook for the full tuition? What if you want to change from full time to one-course only?
It’s a lot of pressure to effectively have only a weekend to make a decision with all the options, with no way to ask the other schools some questions one didn’t dare to ask before admission decisions…
3 + 10 is more than 10. You’ll know your options after M10 and don’t need to make a decision prior. You should have applied as a specific type of student (full-time/one course/etc) to answer your first question, did you not? Their contract will tell you all sorts of things like whether it is a non-refundable deposit, when tuition is due, and whether you would be responsible for it if you back out after the deposit (highly doubtful but not entirely impossible I guess). You could always call and ask anonymously. They are certainly aware of M10.
For the time being, ask, are there schools that will send decisions on M10 higher on your want list than Stanford OHS? Maybe if you have a preliminary list you can decide on M10 if you even need to continue to entertain the idea of enrolling in Stanford OHS (should you actually get an acceptance there, too). But if you don’t get accepted to Stanford OHS, there is nothing to worry about. If you do get accepted, then on M10 get another acceptance to XYZ, which you prefer more, then no need to worry about that earlier deadline either.
The OHS website says that the enrollment status indicated on the application is not binding.
I am fairly sure that, once accepted, students can change their enrollment status up until the time that course selection for the next semester occurs, which I think (but am not certain ) is in May or June. That is true for future years as well.
However, sometimes students who are enrolled as single course students are not able to register for the single-course that they want (due to time constraints or it is full) and although they can switch to a different course, I am not certain if they can get a refund if they cannot find any single-course that they wish to enroll in.
My DD14 was in this predicament. She was a PT student at OHS in 8th grade and got accepted to Exeter and Hotchkiss, but the OHS wanted their deposit. We contacted the registration department at OHS and they only gave us an extension of 3 weeks. Hopefully, you will get to go to one or two revisit days before making a choice.