Here’s one way. Two parents each working in demanding jobs putting away $1K per month in a 529 plan for each of two kids from the day they were born. Nothing illegal or ‘criminal’.
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Glad we are avoiding dig whistles and being direct. It is no less despicable to accuse people who work hard, save, achieve or otherwise manage to accumulate material wealth of being criminals then it would be to accuse those that don’t of being lazy complainers.
Neither is appropriate or accurate but your cavalier generalizations are both uninformed and inappropriate.
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Remember where I said above that ED collects two kinds of people?
- Those who can afford the table: the criminally wealthy.
- Those who can’t afford it but are there anyway.
If you’re straining that hard to get to that kind of balance, you can’t afford the table.
Consider: your kid is a nice, smart kid. You’re a hardworking person who makes your money legit. You’ve knocked yourself out for your only kid and amassed $300K (say) by the time the kid hits 17. It’s most of what you’ve got besides your retirement, more or less.
What is the future value of the money if you put $200K of that away for the kid?
What’s it worth when the kid is 30, 40, 50, 60?
If that kid, whom we all agree is nice and smart and can take good advantage of what any school’s got to offer, goes to a school that costs $100K full freight, how does that affect their life afterwards vs. going to $80K/yr school?
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That’s not what @bennty said. They said
There’s a big difference between living frugally for 20 years to save up $300K and being “cavalier” or “shrugging” about spending that amount of money.
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A reading comprehension winnah!
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Sorry, ski, I gotta get to work. You all carry on.
This is what I read and comprehended.
Seems somewhat unambiguous in the message it conveyed or was it just a dog whistle?
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I’d like to read about ED reneging again
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Speaking of reading comprehension, the topic of this thread is:
“Are more students reneging on ED contracts now than in the past?”
It’s not: “Should ED exist?”
or: “What’s a fair price for college?”
or: “Should the American capitalistic system exist?”
or: “Can you save $300k by legal means?”
or any of the other grievances you’ve listed.
Just saying.
Let’s get back on-topic.
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I understand how upsetting it is for those of us who are playing by the rules to hear stories about people breaking them and benefitting from it. But, where is the outrage that colleges have been able to rig the game against the student with ED? ED exists for one reason only - to help the university.
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It is Harvard’s Byzantine SCEA rules the student was violating and I for one agree those are shameful especially for a school with no worries about yield.
Harvard’s REA guidelines are hardly “Byzantine.” They’re simple and clear:
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Applicants cannot simultaneously apply to any binding early decision program.
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In addition, applicants cannot simultaneously apply to any non-binding early action program of a private US institution.
That’s it.
Is it reasonable to assume that any applicant who considers themselves a plausible candidate for Harvard (or any college, really) be able to understand those two simple provisions? I sure hope so for the sake of that applicant’s future success in college and in life. Reading and understanding a paragraph of material should be within such an applicant’s powers.
Moreover, Harvard (like several of its peers in selectivity) allows those admitted REA complete freedom to then later apply ED2 or RD anywhere they wish, and no Harvard REA admit is required to commit until the common deadline of May 1. Harvard then goes one step further and does not ask for a deposit from any who choose to enroll. Seems like a rather reasonable set-up to me.
As an experiment, Harvard suspended its REA program from 2007 to 2011. It then reinstated its REA program, as explained by its president at the time, Drew Faust:
“We piloted the elimination of early action out of concern that college admissions had become too complex and pressured for all students, and out of particular concern for students at under-resourced high schools who might not be able to access the early admissions process. Over the past several years, however, interest in early admissions has increased, as students and families from across the economic spectrum seek certainty about college choices and financing. Our goal now is to reinstitute an early-action program consistent with our bedrock commitment to access, affordability, and excellence.”
Princeton had an unintended one year experiment with a suspension of its SCEA program last year, but nothing about that experience dissuaded them from reinstating it this year.
For a variety of reasons, there is a high demand now for early action and early decision programs that is driven by families, including a large subset who equate admission to selective institutions with a presumption of superior outcomes or acquisition of greater social capital.
If one is cynical, I suppose, one might blame selective institutions for cultivating this demand to obtain a competitive advantage. Parents and applicants who are sore about this situation have two easy ways out: (1) just apply for regular decision everywhere, skipping the early process entirely, or (2) direct demand away from such institutions to the many fine colleges and universities where selectivity is not a principle factor in admission (that is, the great majority of American institutions.)
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I’ve always assumed ED (and to a lesser extent, EA) exists to paper over a different rigged process, which is the process for admitting recruited athletes. If there’s no early round, then the school’s admission processes for recruited athletes look far more lopsided.
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If by “rigged” you mean non-transparent preference, athletic recruiting is probably the least “rigged” part of selective admissions. The desired qualities are widely understood and standardized in the form of athletic results and statistics, strict rules from the NCAA on down to its component leagues govern how recruiting may happen, and the spots available to athletes are generally fixed at most institutions. It is more transparent than nearly any other aspect of admissions because there is often little doubt who the most desirable athletes are.
If you mean that colleges and universities should not seek and preferentially admit good athletes over lesser or non-athletes, that’s a legitimate philosophical position. Equally legitimate, and a reality based on generations of tradition in American undergraduate education, is that athletics and other extracurricular elements of school life are considered important in ways that they are not in American graduate and professional education. Other countries have different approaches, but generally, American higher education is a globally desired product so it must not be as bad as some in this forum often conclude.
Perhaps colleges and universities are cynically employing ED and EA programs “to paper over different rigged” processes. Or, just perhaps, we have the system for selective admissions that organically developed out of a few schools offering early admissions to improve their success recruiting their most desired candidates and then everyone who admitted applicants selectively had to follow suit to be competitive. Either or both could be true, but I tend to think it is mostly or entirely the latter.
When the number of applications per applicant ramped up steeply because the introduction of online applications such as the Common App made the marginal “pain” of each additional application low or non-existent, it established a randomizing assignment condition across each selective band. To put this another way, when multiple applications were difficult to submit, the initial filter of personal choice was more significant. That filter has now migrated to admissions offices, who today must plow through a magnitude more applications. The result is that admissions choices seem more random and capricious IF one is set on an individual school or has a strict preference hierarchy. IF, in contrast, you have a mix of different schools without being fixated on one or two, you are likely to be happy with the result.
No doubt, multiple admission points can drag out a stressful process…but this is only true for those who voluntarily participate. No one has to apply early, or apply at all, to a selective institution. If you are stressed out and view selective colleges and universities as a cabal of criminals, opt out and opt into the thousands of American four-year colleges and universities that are essentially not selective. A student able enough to succeed at an admissions-selective institution will also succeed at one that is not admissions-selective. The few studies done on this seem to vindicate this perspective.
If you opt in and are still unsettled, however, try this thought experiment: think of EA/ED as “regular admission” and RD as “late admission.” See, problem solved. 
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I’ll probably get flagged again for going off topic but since we are already so far off topic here goes: ED also works for those of us who will get more in need aid than we will in merit (leaving aside the rare full tuition or full ride scholarships). My D was accepted to an EA school with very high merit ($36,000 per year, total of $144,000 over 4 years) but our need is higher than that (FAFSA EFC of around $16K, rises to around $19K or so at CSS schools, plus GSL & work study). Our state flagship costs more than that as well, so a meets all need private LAC was the hands’ down winner financially for us, as well as in terms of fit. ED was a great opportunity for her - she was able to apply to her top choice, hear early and know ahead of time that, assuming the NPC was accurate, that we had already made the assessment that we could make it work. Our finances are not especially complicated - no non-custodial parent, no family-owned business, so we trusted the NPC and were not disappointed (final pkg actually came in a bit better than the estimate). So, I would turn it around as to who does ED NOT work for. It does not work for those who have an EFC higher than they can pay and who might get to a number they are comfortable with by applying more widely and waiting to see what they get offered. But for anyone who has a clear first choice and is comfortable with the number the NPC spits out, ED works. For those with higher need it is unlikely that merit aid will come in higher than the need-based aid and ED ups their chances - at least a little - of getting accepted to a needs’ based school. I know that high need is a bit unusual on CC or at least among those who post a lot, but I know what our family income is and how it compares to the US median household income, and our family experience is way more indicative of the majority of households. Of course that does assume a student with the stats to get into a meets need school, but that is a whole other discussion.
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This thread seems to have run its course and is now way off topic.
Closing.
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